Featured article: Education

Jim Rose: education becomes a sideshow 15 December 2008 spiked
The government’s review of primary education is about training children to conform to political pieties. Read on...

It's the end of the world (and I feel fine) 30 September 2008 culturewars
As the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was started on Wednesday 10 September, the world held its breath. Read on...

I'd like to teach the world to think ... 23 April 2008 spiked
The introduction of ‘thinking skills’ in British schools treats educational thought as a learned behaviour. But children are not dogs to be trained. Read on...

The big bang implosion of physics 19 February 2008 spiked
In cutting their funding of the physical sciences, and devaluing science education, the US and UK governments are committing ‘scientific vandalism’. Read on...

Behind Blair's 'bigging up' of science 16 November 2006 spiked
UK prime minister Tony Blair recently claimed that Britain’s future is ‘lit by the brilliant light of science’. So why does the future of science education in schools and universities seem so gloomy? Basic science is being shunned in our universities as more and more physics and chemistry departments are closed down. In schools, media studies has overtaken physics as a subject of choice at A-level. It seems incontrovertible that science is just not as popular as it used to be. Read on...

Teach science for science's sake 15 August 2006 spiked
Replacing physics, chemistry and biology with lessons in 'scientific literacy' will make children more wary of science in general. It’s the summer holidays, and the crazy examinations reporting season is upon us again. However, something odd has happened this year. Instead of a constant diet of stories scandalising rampant grade inflation, the press seems to be waking up to the strange battle over the identity of school science education. Read on...

+ Battles in Print 2007

Particle physics is sexy! October 2007
Marilyn Monroe is said to have had a thing for Albert Einstein. Sadly, it is unlikely they ever met. However, in recent times it seems the press have been more interested in Einstein’s womanising than in his contribution to physics. Read on...

What neuroscience cannot tell us about humanity October 2007
The holy grail of modern neuroscience is to unravel the mechanics of consciousness and explain the machine that gives rise to the mind. The new science of the mind promises to uncover the biological basis for many aspects of the human character and potentially to know our thoughts better than we know them ourselves. Read on...

+ Battles in Print 2006

Tomorrow's Innovators - will today's science education create the Brunels and Einsteins of tomorrow October 2006
Teaching science should be an uncontroversial aspect of every child’s schooling. When the government placed it at the core of the National Curriculum it did so because it believed it is a priority for the economy to have a scientifically educated workforce. However, something has gone awry. Pupils are not flocking to study the sciences at A-level and university science departments seem to be under increasing pressure to justify their right to exist. As a country, we seem to be intent on abandoning our leading role in science and technology, despite the protestations of academics, politicians and business leaders.
Read on...

+ Environment

Drax protesters: radicals for austerity 6 September 2006 spiked
In the name of reducing CO2 emissions, greens are demonising mass electricity production – one of the marvels of the modern age. I have vivid memories from my student days of picketing Didcot power station during the miners’ strike in Britain in the mid-Eighties. It was freezing cold, with six inches of snow on the ground at 6am in the morning. Read on...

+ Creationism

Creationism: why we need open debate 18 September 2008
The Royal Society’s cowardly decision to force out its education director shows its inability to defend science. Read on...

The creation of a phantom enemy 20 April 2006 spiked
It is the scientific establishment's own self-doubt that lies at the root of the furore over creationism. It seems that a new spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of creationism. During the past week Britain’s National Union of Teachers (NUT) put forward a motion at its national conference to end state funding of religious schools. Meanwhile, the arrival of John Mackay, an Australian creationist, on British shores prompted a full-page article in the Guardian. Read on...

Intelligent design and educational stupidity 14 march 2006 spiked
Worried about the rise of creationism in UK schools? This teacher blames the timidity of the science establishment. After the verdict went against the teaching of intelligent design in schools in Dover, Pennsylvania, you could be forgiven for thinking that the argument for teaching creationism was on the decline. However, in the UK the educational establishment seems hell-bent on introducing those very same ideas into all state schools. Read on...

+ Behaviour

Testing Adult Authority 14 February 2006 spiked
The UK government wants to turn teachers into shock troops against kids' bad behaviour. Not surprisingly, teachers aren't too keen. The attempt to reinstate teachers’ authority in the classroom and instil a culture of respect among young people by allowing teachers to remove children’s iPods seems doomed to failure before it starts. Few teachers seem to want the powers that Tony Blair keeps foisting upon them. Of course, a few newspaper journalists will jump on the bandwagon, calling on the government to get tough on unruly kids, but somehow those with the responsibility for actually caring for young people don’t seem very keen to do so. Read on...

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