Michael Merrick

😅

I wonder if hopes of a consensus may be overly ambitious - a settlement key parties can live with might be the best that can be hoped for. Any proposal will have to include a carve-out for church schools, non-negotiable, a significant caveat that some interest groups will find tough to swallow.

The Catholic Church is the largest provider of secondary education in the country, and the second largest provider of primary. We have our own RE curriculum, always have, a foundational part of our partnership with the State. Any National Curriculum changes must preserve this.

I really hope the proposal to put RE in the national curriculum is not a wedge to weaken the rights of Catholic schools. We already have our own RE curriculum. This must be recognised in any proposed changes.

Don't get me wrong, the jury is still out as to whether Labour's vision of a comprehensive system is deliverable (or affordable) either. But as much as I disagree with many of their changes, I do think they have the right to rebalance those scales a bit.

The whole 'grammar school for all' thing was a useful soundbite, and a helpful statement of aspiration, but it cannot survive contact with reality. The comprehensive system isn't built for that. And the people on the wrong edge of those fine words matter too

More, it was placed behind a moral ban - anybody who did discuss it were smeared as lacking ambition, or failing poor people, or soft bigotry etc. And so the massive disengagement was just dismissed as an issue of leadership or discipline. Wrong move.

My curriculum take is this: the educational trads brought this curriculum refocus on themselves. They didn't take their win. Phillipson is able to push this because the question of plurality (of interest, utility, and aptitude) was not permitted to be considered.

(I also wonder if this is why the techbros/LfG guys have shown little interest in schooling - cognitively it is filed as distinct from expertise development or economic/tech/industrial goals). This is fundamentally a question of purpose: what is our education system for?

I think you could go further - so far as they exist, what societal goals have we historically maximised for? I'd suggest the organising principle has generally been social justice, an extension of the personal. Are these the right goals? Are they held in correct proportion?

This is not to say it does not have its clear benefits - see my thread on mission command and auftragstaktik - but in a changing world the core philosophical challenge remains: what is our education sector for? Is it achieving those goals?

But I also wonder if the hands-off approach, the idea of just flooding the market with highly educated people and the broader social or political goals will magically emerge and be served by them, has been tested to destruction.

The old answer is that an educated populace is a net good that hits both these goals - a rising tide that raises all boats. To a certain level of attainment, that strikes me as evidently true.

The former might mean an increase in individual cases of injustice for service of a wider goal or interest, the latter might mean a decrease in coherence of education as a strategic investment and the pursuit of more individualised pathways of development.

It's a big question. If the former, it might mean education restructured to maximise for eg/ academic ability, or industrial/technological goals, or sector expertise. If the latter, then maybe maximising for diversity of input and delivery over eg/ strategic or efficiency goals.

Here's a question: should our education system be designed to serve the broad national interest, or individual interest? Where do those things contradict/overlap? Should it exist to maximise societal goals, or personal goals?

Gove came closest I guess - every school a grammar school, education for social justice, free schools from LA control - but even that was just applying administrative glaze to a settled position, and even those fairly mild positions were seen as somehow radical. Says it all.

It's like we packaged it up into its own little silo, all fundamental questions of meaning and form settled, and just let the profession quibble with itself about details over the best means of delivery. But as a moral, spiritual and political endeavour? We have lost interest.

Politicians get involved if it's to politicise the measurables or use it as a stick. Very few are considering ideas - what is schooling for? Who is it for? How best delivered? How does it relate to our prosperity, or wellbeing, or flourishing? What responsibilities do we have?

Where is the Newman, Eliot, Oakeshott, Arnold, Montessori, Toynbee, Mason, Belloc, Sayers, Lewis, Tawney, Dawson of today? Why is it barely mentioned in discussions on growth, or industrial policy, or national interest, or civic renewal? We have lost interest

Nobody talks about education anymore. All the interesting groups talking about Britain's future and growth and renewal barely mention it. The commentators and the wider culture barely consider it. The politicians just go with the flow. As an arena of ideas, we have lost interest.

Let them die The case for assisted dying

“Assisted dying would appear to mitigate some of those problems, curbing the pensions bill, the NHS bill and the care bill.” The New Statesman says the quiet part out loud: kill granny to save money. www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

Prayers with Tyler Robinson's father tonight. Finding out your son is a killer is one thing - having the courage to turn him in to the authorities in a state with the death penalty is another. This kind of sacrificial duty is the real model of manhood. His heart must be broken.

that's fair (although not using the 'For You' tab is an easy way to circumvent that) but it doesn't detract from the horror of what this site has offered a platform to - it's there on the trending tab. It seems inconsistent to call it out in one place and not the other

Certainly if you left Twitter for BlueSky because you found it toxic, but continue to hang around here after what's happened this last 48 hours, then it seems to me you are - or should be - in a bit of quandary

Will be honest finding it difficult to engage on here. What I've seen on this platform in the last 48hrs is just so dark - and widespread - I'm not sure it makes sense to persist.

agree - look at it on the trending list and the great majority are utterly despicable

The continuing spread of political violence is one thing - the reaction to it is quite another. This place is an utter cesspit at the moment Stephen, people celebrating, saying he deserved it, mocking him, having a dig at his wife and kids. It's the reaction that horrifies.

Keep thinking about his wife and kids. They were there in the crowd. How dark the world must seem to them right now. Please do pray for them - even if you don't think it works, or don't have a religion - please just say them a quick prayer

Seems like a good time to ask the question again: how do we address progressive radicalisation? It is extreme, pernicious, and (as today) sometimes violent. We are not really set up for this - and yet, for the common good, it will need addressed like all other forms of radicalisation.