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The U.S. has a tradition of educational philanthropy ( along with generous tax breaks for the benign billionaire) which can't be matched in the U.K. And a whole way of thinking in these matters can't just be summoned up as a response to a few government initiatives. It took over a century and a half to develop that tra...
It may be that Britain needs, as Hamilton advocates, some version of the U.S. government's federal loans scheme which helps researchers to finance their work. But in the meantime people who would once have been very happy to research in Oxford and Cambridge are saying "no thank you" and going elsewhere.
Privatisation would allow both universities to cut free from the state's financial strings, to raise money as they wanted, and to set variable fees according to students' ability to pay- as long as the endowment funds could be massively augmented through private donations. But the option would outrage almost the entire...
Are you feeling better and nicer today?
Do you think that you're better, more moral and less violent than your ancestors? Do you consider human beings now to be a good deal kinder and more peaceful than at any previous stage in human history? Wives, as it were, have you stopped beating your husbands yet- and/or vice versa ?
If the answer is yes then you will be in agreement with Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard, who has just published a new book: The Better Angels of Our Nature. There's no doubt, he says, that the nasty stuff is still lurking deep down in the psyche- the bit that says " Let's go biffing now" when you're o...
There's an extra inducement too in the world that is Pinker. Inside our minds we have 'mirror neurons' which prompt us to empathise with other human beings. That bit of clinical psychology seems to be true, and Pinker draws from it the conclusion that all over the world and in every little way things are getting better...
The idea that humanity is evolving towards universal niceness does seem to be a shade counter-intuitive when we look back at the history of the twentieth century. States and governments became more enlightened in the way they treated their subjects from the 18th century onwards- less inclined to use torture for example...
But the point is statistical as well as moral. Yes- far more people were killed in the twentith century than in previous centuries. But then- there were an awful lot more people around than in the past. So on a percentage basis the overall trend has been down, and humanity's chances of avoiding physical violence has be...
Even within the period 1900-2000 most of the really terrible wars and atrocities occurred in 1914-45. From the end of the second world war to now there's been a dramatic decline in the number of states that are prepared to declare war on each other. And when war does happen fewer combatants get killed compared to the m...
War and violence were just two of the Four Horsemen of the Apoclypse. That still leaves famine and disease. Bad politics and corrupt governments can still accentuate the effects of famine, as in large areas of Africa. But the vulnerability of pre-modern societies to food shortages has now largely disappeared in the dev...
So Pinker can rely on a lot of evidence if he wants to show that the world is a better place. But are we better? And is that why the world has improved? Women, children, ethnic minorities: all get a better deal these days. Animals too are looked after more considerately- though in Britain they always did have a special...
When it comes to those empathy inducing neurons I'm a sceptic. I have no doubt that they exist, and that is why we experience those fleeting stabs of pity. But the point is that they are fleeting, and a moral code needs to be consistent rather than episodic. There's certainly more talk these days about 'feeling' other ...
Empathy comes and goes. It is thoroughly unreliable and can also lead to unjust results. Juries can be swayed by a pretty face or a cute contriver, and nepotism in job appointments is based on empathy. So beware the mirror neurons and their empathetic promptings whuch are really a source of self- satisfaction. Look how...
Why shouldn't headteachers carry the can?
There now seems every prospect that Sir Michael Wilshaw, headmaster of Hackney's Mossbourne Academy, is going to be appointed to run OFSTED as the new Chief Inspector of Schools. Everybody who thinks that education should be about teaching ought to be encouraged by the news. In his time at Mossbourne Wilshaw has turned...
Wilshaw is a remarkable man - neother particularly 'left' nor 'right' he just has a phenomenal instinct for what makes a good school tick. In emphasising that competition is the key to educational achievement Wilshart is going with the grain of human nature- rather than imposing some alien ideology. Allowing people to ...
Wilshart's emphasis on the unique responsibility of the head has been perhaps the single most important element in Mossbourne's success. There's a sharpness of definition here setting him apart from the sloppy orthodoxy which says that everybody has a right to a point of view and that schools should therefore be democr...
So a good head ought to know how to be scary- not necessarily all the time but just often enough to remind people who is in charge. It's a demanding and lonely business being a proper head. Which is why most state schools have comforting managerial structures to take the strain away. Assistant heads, deputy heads, head...
In a dramatic break with its recent past OFSTED has announced that from now on its schools' inspection teams will be concentrating on how effective schools are at......... teaching. It's an announcement that will bemuse many people who are unfamiliar with the weird world of Britain's educational business and the bizarr...
The answer of course lies with OSTED's preoccupation with what it calls "well-being issues". Schools' inspectors were once intellectually distinguished figures and the heirs to a mighty tradition inaugurated by that great Victorian Matthew Arnold- a second rate poet but a first rate Chief Inspector of Schools. They now...
For a very long time now in British education context has been everything. Schools have been measured and graded as if they were agencies specifically set up to promote social change. And educational content- teaching- has come very low down in the list of things to do. That is why over a quarter of schools deemed to b...
So I suppose we should all be glad that 'teaching standards' and 'pupils' achievements' should now be mentioned explicitly in the inspectorate's brave new proclamation of its own 'core skills'. As always with OFSTED though there's a kick in the tail. There's going to be a new website where parents can go on line, anony...
Like any governmental organisation OFSTED exists primarily in order to exalt its own self-importance and to promote the self worth of its staff. And despite all their talk about 'diversity and excellence' the inspectors, by their very existence, concentrate power in the hands of the state. An on-line complaints system ...
The case of Peter Wilson, the Blackpool teacher suspended on account of malicious charges of inappropriate behaviour, throws into sharp relief one of modern schooling's nastiest aspects- kid power endorsed by pen pushers. When the matter came to court he was acquitted of all charges in a matter of minutes, but he remai...
Wilson has endured months of indignity, and all because he patted pupils on the back in order to encourage them in their work. He forms one of the very small minority of male primary teachers, and his misfortune illustrates one of the reasons why it's so difficult to get men to opt for a career in the classroom.
Awareness of child abuse hardly registered at all before the 1980s. But local authorities and their social services departments have now gone into overdrive, and any form of physical contact - even somethng as innocuous as patting on the back- can become evidence of a diseased mind.
We are all now familiar with the idea that certain children are at risk, but teachers can be vulnerable too. Theirs is an unusual trade because for most of the time they do not work side by side with colleagues. Accountants, say, or lawyers, work in an office environment where colleagues' professional patterns of work ...
It is surely a terrible thing that our society- with its very high level of sexual awareness- has now produced pre-teen children who are so familar with the vocabulary of child abuse that they can use it in order to blacken a professional's reputation. Those who should be hanging their heads in shame today include the ...
This is a case which should never have come to court. But today's bureaucracy of 'care' operates according to the rulebook rather than by applying common sense. Even after Wilson's swift acquittal at Preston Crown Court, Blackpool council and Lancashire's social services department are still not falling on their swords...
SHOULD UNIVERSITIES COOK THE EDUCATIONAL BOOKS?
I like to think I'm a meritocrat. People with real ability ought to be recognised, whatever their social origins, and they should be given the opportunity to excel. And so I worry about the British record in this regard. If you're born poor in this country, the probability is that you will stay poor. This country's vas...
Britain in the mid-20th century was a good deal more socially mobile than it has now become, and the socially very mixed grammar schools played a key role in opening our country up to new talent. Their abolition by the Labour governments of the 1960s was the fatal first step towards the cataclysm, and the goal of a cla...
Streaming by ability- an anethema during the 1970s heyday of comprehensive faith- has now made a come back in our state secondary schools. But the comprehensive school is a neighbourhood phenomenon, and selection by post code has replaced competitive selection at eleven years old. If your family lives in a leafy suburb...
Bright pupils who work in order to get on and get out of the bog-standard comprehensive face an almighty challenge. And those who have Oxbridge hopes will often be discouraged by teachers who may well resent the evidence of ambition. But if they do make it there- or to one of the other major UK universities- the eviden...
So why do I oppose the idea that universities ought to skew their admissions procedures in favour of applicants from sink schools and whose A level results are poor? Universities are in the business of picking winners, so shouldn't they make allowances when minds that are naturally bright just haven't been taught? This...
It really should not be the job of our universities to intervene in secondary education in order to try and correct the system's failings by disregarding exam results. Standards applied by different examination boards in awarding A level grades may be a tad variable, but at least the results offer empirical evidence of...
The proposal though to disregard grades would involve universities in having to make a whole series of judgements about just how bad a school might or might not be. And that kind of data is very uncertain. School X- let's call it 'Gove Academy'- might be going through a very bad patch in 2010-15, and as a result some p...
Schools, moreover, change. Bad ones can can get even worse- but they can also improve. And good schools can also slip down. From 2015 onwards Gove Academy might be improving dramatically under a new head. But does that mean its pupils ought to be discriminated against in the allocation of university places? And is it i...
British education has not been wanting in hare-brained schemes that end in bureaucratic chaos. And this is the latest example. Let's not take the spotlight away from what's actually going wrong in the classrooms, and let universities keep to their proper role in teaching and reseraching instead of attempting to cook th...
JULIAN ASSANGE: pretentious,pompous and preposterous.
Was there ever a more pompous, preposterous, self-righteous, cynical,preening, hypocritical and downright creepy figure in the annals of recorded time than Julian Assange, the self-styled servant of truth whose 'unauthorised autobiography' (something of a literary first surely as a genre) is about to be published? This...
In a rare moment of self-knowledge Assange seems to have decided that his conversations- the basis of the book-actually tell us rather too much about his personality and motivation. In that regard at least- if in no other- he's right on the money. 'I'm not an original political thinker' he informs us from that aloof di...
We need people who will scrutinise governments, excoriate tyrants, and hunt for the truth in a world where lies become powerful and where democracies are deceived. But what we do not need are hackers lacking in any sense of decency and respect for other people, and who live their lives by remote control rather than thr...
When in doubt and stuck for an argument remember to use the word ' community' as often and as loudly as you possibly can. This iron law of Welsh public life has been well to the fore in recent days as politicians, clergy and commentators struggled to find the right vocabulary when responding to the deaths of four miner...
Just four micro-pits survive in the south Wales coalfield compared to the hundreds, large and small, coalworks that were once scattered across that dramatic landcape. The industry's decline can be dated back to the 1950s when coal extraction became very expensive compared to cheaper foreign imports. Even before then th...
The horror at Gleision is a reminder that coal extraction is both dfficult and dangerous however modern the technology. And an investigation will need to discover whether safety standards were allowed to slip, as happened with the railways after their privatisation. But the comparison with the Aberfan disaster of almos...
All of these settlements contain neighbours, friends and families- the people who will be needed by the bereaved of Gleision. But they do not show that ' a sense of community' is uniquely Welsh. Communities of neighbours exist in their different ways right across the UK- whether they are crofters in Skye or Islington-b...
The limp sentiment that ' a sense of community still survives' is really just a reflection of the fact that no one knows what to do with large areas of industrial Wales. Those tightly terraced villages came into existence to serve just one purpose- the housing needs of those who worked in the pits. Now that coal has go...
Having chosen to be governed locally by just one party for most of the twentieth century Wales has limped into the twenty-first century burdened by a public and official class which is bereft of ideas and ambition. Talk about the wonder that is 'community' is both banal and hypocritical. Those who indulge themselves in...
Why has literacy become such a problem in English education? By the end of the nineteenth century the country was recording well over ninety per cent rates in basic literacy and numeracy. The new state primary schools- as well as the Sunday schools run by the chapels and churches- had pioneered a vast transformation. B...
Any government which tries to do something about this catastrophe enters a minefield of vested interests, low expectations, and educational jargon. There's nothing quite like the education business when it comes to creating a cloud of unknowing.
On Friday the government announced that that from next summer onwards all five and six-year olds in England will face a new reading test based on phonics- a system whereby children learn the sound of letters and of groups of letters clustered together. Phonics is really what most of would call an introduction to spelli...
Schools went in for 'whole-language' in a very big way from the 1970s onwards with children being taught that the meaning of a word is determined by the way it is used. This dreadful nonsense- endorsed by some bogus philosophy and shallow linguistics- gave some teachers an opportunity to spend their time supervising 'c...
If phonics gets children to learn the alphabet and its sounds- then all well and good. But you hardly a need an educational philosophy ( and phonics has its own forest of jargon) in order to justify the point that there is a connection between letter patterns and the sounds they represent. It's a striking proof of the ...
CAIRO (Reuters) - Islamic State claimed responsibility for a gun attack on a checkpoint east of the Libyan capital Tripoli earlier this week, the group’s Amaq news agency said on Saturday.
Thursday’s attack took place between the towns of Zliten and Khoms on the coastal road leading from Tripoli to the port city of Misrata, an area in which members of the Islamist militant group are known to be operating, according to the Zliten mayor.
Amaq said “seven Libyan road security personnel were killed” in the attack by Islamic State fighters, while around 10 more were wounded. It provided no evidence.
A local official and a resident on Thursday said at least four people had been killed in the attack, among them security personnel.
Libya has seen occasional attacks by Islamist militants who have benefited from the turmoil that followed a NATO-backed uprising in 2011.
Islamic State has said it was behind a deadly attack by gunmen on the offices of the electoral commission in Tripoli in May and an attack on a court complex in Misrata last year.
Local forces drove the militant group from its former stronghold in Sirte, southeast of Misrata, in 2016, but Libyan and Western officials say militants have sought to regroup through mobile desert units and sleeper cells in northern towns.
The United Nations is leading efforts to prepare for national elections in Libya, which it hopes will reunify rival factions based in Tripoli and the east of the country.
The BAE Systems Harrier GR9, Nimrod MRA4 and Lockheed Martin’s short take-off and vertical landing F-35B have been confirmed as the main casualties of the UK coalition government’s Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR).
Announcing the results of the review process on 19 October, prime minister David Cameron said the Royal Air Force’s long-delayed Nimrod MRA4 programme is to be cancelled, while the UK’s remaining Harriers will be retired early to safeguard the service’s fleet of Panavia Tornado GR4s, which he says deliver more capabili...
Cameron also slammed the previous Labour government’s selection of the F-35B, and says the UK intends to switch its selection to the JSF’s “more capable, less expensive and longer-range” carrier variant (F-35C pictured below). The decision will also require one of the Royal Navy’s two Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft car...
Previous plans to greatly increase the size of the RAF’s Boeing CH-47 Chinook fleet have also been watered down, with the Ministry of Defence to acquire just 12 more aircraft. This will increase the RAF’s inventory of the type to 60 aircraft, Cameron says, with an earlier commitment to upgrade the service’s Eurocopter ...
Other actions announced by Cameron include plans to cut 5,000 RAF personnel by 2015. This will leave the service with an operating strength of 33,000. The service's Lockheed Martin C-130J tactical transports will be retired from use in 2022, 10 years sooner than previously planned, with the UK to retain its commitment ...
Cancellation of the Nimrod MRA4 programme brings to an end a troubled acquisition programme worth around £3.6 billion – the bulk of which has already been spent. Contracted in 1996, the project was originally to have delivered 21 maritime patrol aircraft, but had subsequently been slashed to just nine.
The decision leaves the UK with no dedicated maritime patrol aircraft capability, and extends a gap caused by the retirement of the RAF’s last Nimrod MR2s earlier this year. And in another blow to the RAF's future intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance operations, the SDSR has also recommende...
Cameron says the measures to be adopted will result in financial savings worth £4.7 billion over the life of the review period. The process was launched to address a defence budget “Black Hole” totalling £38 billion.
London was calling Jordyn Woods, and the timing was no coincidence, according to Us Weekly.
“Jordyn is thrilled to be in London and actually timed her trip around when the Keeping Up With the Kardashians trailer dropped so she could distract herself and focus on the future,” a source told the publication.
Woods was recently banished by the Kardashian tribe after kissing Khloé Kardashian’s on-again, off-again boyfriend Tristan Thompson. Khloé and Tristan share a daughter together, True, who celebrates her first birthday on April 12.
The falling out was particularly hard on makeup mogul Kylie Jenner, who had been best friends with Woods. Not only had Kylie often referred to Woods as daughter Stormi’s “Auntie Jordy,” but she had also let Woods live in her mansion in Hidden Hills.
After the scandal broke, Kylie cut off contact and Jordyn has since moved out.
The KUWTK trailer, which dropped on March 27, focuses heavily on the cheating scandal, with multiple shots showing a heartbroken Khloé crying to the camera. In one clip, she emotionally screams “Liar!” into the phone.
However, it only mentions Jordyn once, when Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner offers a toast to Jordyn and Kylie. The trailer is currently trending at #12 on Youtube.
Nonetheless, Jordyn was “mortified by the trailer, and her mom is upset about it too, but they expected it,” the source added.
Jordyn has indeed been posting regularly on social media and seems to reference her recent zeal in a post from when she first arrived in London on March 26.
Happy to be back ???? good morning London.. don’t mind all of the photos I’m going to be posting this week ????
Though Kylie Jenner is still not reportedly speaking to Jordyn, she is following her on Instagram.
In addition to getting away from gossip, Woods is also in London for the launch of her new Eylure false eyelash collection. The lashes retail for $8-$10 and have been earning positive reviews.
Jordyn was not the only woman caught in a scandal with basketball star Thompson. The Cleveland Cavaliers player was infamously caught on video cheating on Khloé days before she was due to give birth.
Though Khloé forgave Thompson in an attempt to keep the family together, she ended their relationship after the Jordyn revelations surfaced in February. Thompson has another child, Prince, with ex Jordan Craig.
Fascinated by the ludicrous laws she had heard about from friends around the U.S., photographer Olivia Locher set about documenting them—in her signature style.
In the state of Michigan, it is illegal to paint a sparrow with the intention of selling it as a parakeet. Which means, unfortunately, that if you are skilled enough to catch a white-and-brown sparrow, hold it still for long enough to paint it green, blue and yellow, then pawn it off on to some poor schmuck as a parake...
At least that’s according to Olivia Locher’s photo book I Fought The Law, which warns readers in the introduction to take its proclamations with a grain of salt. An offshoot of Locher’s 2013 photo series of the same name, the book’s colorful and satirical images illustrate “America’s most unusual laws.” Some remain on ...
For example, Alabamans will be relieved to hear that it is in fact not illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your back pocket. You can do that freely there. But in the 1800s, that act was against the law in Kentucky and Georgia, where thieves would lure horses away from their owners with sugary-sweet ice-cream in their...
Locher found that online and in conversations with people, there were all kinds of rumors and facts about completely bizarre laws in every state. Most of them were so surreal-sounding that they conjured up a very distinct image in Locher’s mind. From 2013 to 2016, she shot 50 photos—of myths, past laws or actual laws—o...
With Halloween around the corner, I'm thinking you're looking for some totally adorable, incredibly delicious, seriously easy treats to make, right? Well, you're in luck! This yummy Cupcake Graveyard is the perfect thing to whip up for a Halloween party, or simply for your family. And honestly -- what kid wouldn't want...
1. Prepare cupcakes according to package directions.
2. Frost cupcakes after they've cooled.
3. Crumble chocolate cookies, and sprinkle onto frosting.
4. Place wafer cookies into cupcakes as "graves"
5. Decorate wafer cookies with chocolate icing.
6. Place ghosts next to graves.

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