When I was ten or eleven my primary school class was taken on a trip to Blenheim Palace. Big excitement as it included a boat trip on the Thames. I don’t remember too much about the trip but I did have this Brownie Box camera and a whole twelve picture roll of film. The camera has a now cracked leather…
There’s a current craze for teaching coding in schools and computer science classes are back in fashion in a big way. (I don’t know what schools are squeezing out to make room for this but it’s probably the usual suspects). A 2016 Gallup report found that 40% of American schools now offer coding classes – up from only 25% a few years…
Rhubarb, Rhubarb Words A definition of rhubarb – the noun – is meaningless background noise. This meaning is attributed to the mid 19th century practice of the theater company of Charles Kean at the Princess Theater, London. In crowd scenes actors repeated the word “rhubarb” to mimic the sound of indistinct conversation. Rhubarb was chosen because it has no harsh-sounding…
From the orphans of Flanders to the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School – four photographs with an uncanny and chilling similarity. Keep your eyes forward, your hands on the shoulders of the person in front of you and keep quiet. – instructions during a high school shooter drill. We’ve come to accept that the only thing we can…
Education thought leader takes a deep dive into learner agency and direct instruction. Image: Banker by Jason de Caires Taylor
When I was four years old I found a sixpence on the quay at Poole Harbour. I’ve been picking up stuff that catches my eye ever since. Beach glass, shells, rounded stones and the sea-drift that the tide brings in. Rusted nails and washers, Gate hinges and horse shoes, Marbles and chestnuts. The lost abandoned, dropped, and discarded; the…
Valentine for Ernest Mann You can’t order a poem like you order a taco. Walk up to the counter, say, “I’ll take two” and expect it to be handed back to you on a shiny plate. Still, I like your spirit. Anyone who says, “Here’s my address, write me a poem,” deserves something in reply. So I’ll tell a secret…
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road. Before the advent of motorways in the UK (first section of the first – the M1 opened in 1959) it was true that almost any straight road you found in England was built by the Romans. The burst of road building during the industrial revolution meant generations of British schoolchildren introduced…
1940 has been well served by blockbuster movies this past year. Last summer there was Dunkirk as legendary saga and then this winter Darkest Hour focussed on the Westminster drama of the political backdrop. Dunkirk tells the story of the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force by following what happens to some representative figures – soldiers trying to get off the beach; a…
This post was updated on March 9th 2019 with the addition of a postscript: A film about Hamilton’s life and work via ht @LucyLondon7 This is one of those “nevertheless she persisted” stories. The Canadian artist Mary Riter Hamilton had studied in Europe before having to return to Canada to care for her ailing mother. At the outbreak of the…
When Norah Neilson Gray (1882 -1931) taught at St. Columba’s School for Girls in Kilmacolm her students called her “Purple Patch” because she was always urging them to look for the color in the shadows. You can see that she took her own advice in this painting Hôpital Auxilaire 1918. It shows the reception area of the Royaumont Abbaye Hospital as it was…
There isn’t much to learn about Nellie Elizabeth Isaac online and some of it’s inaccurate. But as always with the string of magic beads that is the internet – there is always something to discover. Isaac was born in 1886 and grew up in respectable middle-class Hampstead (not West Ham). Her father Percy Lewis Isaac was a naval architect and marine…
Some paintings are made to pair with a poem. Read Edward Thomas’s As the Team’s Head Brass and then take another look at A Winter Landscape, 1926 by Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson (1889–1946) As the Team’s Head Brass As the team’s head-brass flashed out on the turn The lovers disappeared into the wood. I sat among the boughs of the fallen elm That…
In 1918 Australia appointed sixteen official war artists. All were men. Iso Rae – who had lived in France throughout the war – was not included. The Australian impressionist painter Isobel Rae (1860-1940) moved with her mother and sister Alison – also an artist – from Melbourne to Paris in 1887. Three years later they settled in Étaples in northern France.…
All agreed that 1917 had been a sad offender. All observed that 1918 did not look promising at its birth. At midnight on New Year’s Eve 1918 the poet Edmund Blunden looked out over the whole Ypres battlefield: It was bitterly cold, and the deep snow all round lay frozen. We drank healths, and stared out across the snowy miles…