Archive for July, 2007
The Philistines are upon us
Posted by Robert Whelan in Family, Marriage and the Culture on 23/07/2007
What is a Philistine? Strictly speaking, the Philistines were the Canaanite enemies of the Hebrews living along the southwestern coastline of present-day Gaza. However, its modern usage derives from the great Victorian cultural commentator Matthew Arnold who used the term to describe those who have no conception of the value of art, culture or spiritual values in life. ‘The people who believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very rich… are just the very people whom we call the Philistines.’
It is sad to have to report that the well-known think-tank Demos has just published a report which exposes both it and the report’s author to grave suspicions of philistinism. ‘Publicly-funded culture and the creative industries’ by John Holden, published by Demos, is the most grossly philistine account of the arts, or the ‘creative industries’, that I have ever read.
Our Island Story triumphant!
Posted by David Conway in Education on 20/07/2007
Asked this morning on BBC Breakfast if there was one history book he would recommend, historian and Observer columnist Tristram Hunt answered “Our Island Story”. This of course is H.E Marshall’s enchanting children’s history book which Civitas brought back to life in 2005. Since this single mention, just hours ago, sales of Our Island Story have rocketed. How we know is because, incredibly, the book’s hardback sales rating on Amazon has zoomed up to 25 on their Hot 100 Books list. (To give you an idea, all but the very latest of the Harry Potters are just a few ahead in the sales league).
“We’re doing everything that is needed. Thanks for your interest. Goodbye.”
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 19/07/2007
A theatre on Broadway. A Hollywood actor starring at a blockbuster show. Demand is high and a waiting list is building up. But there it seems there aren’t enough ushers to put on a matinée performance, so the cast go and put on the show in a private members’ club instead – those who can’t afford to join are forced to wait, and wait…and, yes, wait, until they finally get to see the evening show on Broadway. Now think of the NHS…sound a familiar story?
John Petri, an orthopaedic surgeon, formerly under the employment of James Paget NHS Foundation Trust, is adamant that NHS waiting lists can, and should, be eliminated. But the problem is that no-one is asking the obvious question: why do we have waiting lists? It’s surely the lack of resources and the lack of doctors and nurses, right? Wrong.
A new consensus: A levels ARE less valuable
Posted by Nick Cowen in Education on 19/07/2007
When the Civitas report on Blair’s failure to improve education over the last decades was released, Jim Knight MP squared off against Robert Coe, whose work we have cited, on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme (approximately 12 minutes in from the beginning). To the whole nation, he denied that exams had got any easier during Labour’s time in government and that an A level today had exactly the same value as a decade earlier. Perhaps he had no other choice but to take this line. The dramatic rise in exam results had to be due to the prudent stewardship of New Labour’s education reforms. What a difference a couple of weeks make! Now a new government adviser acknowledges that A levels have lost value at least in his area of Physics and Maths.
Everything Now Lies Finely in the Balance
Posted by Nick Cowen in Social Cohesion on 17/07/2007
Three closely connected unresolved issues hold the key to peace abroad today and with that a resolution of the tensions currently posing the gravest threat to social cohesion at home.
continued on the Centre for Social Cohesion blog.
A primary concern
Posted by David Conway in Education on 13/07/2007
It is a response utterly characteristic of New Labour: ‘deal’ with a problem – generally years late – by creating a completely new one.
As we’d suspected, under Brown the direction of school reform is not going to change. For the last ten years, a critic’s template might well have been produced to pull out each time a new schools’ scheme was announced. Initiative after initiative showed almost uncanny consistency in managing to evade the causes of the crisis at hand. Continuing this trend was yesterday’s announcement of a secondary curriculum overhaul, a move, theoretically, to give teachers more flexibility.