"School21 based in the east of London, near the 2012 Olympic Park and due to open in September 2012.100 School21, a privately run, state-funded school, founded by Peter Hyman, a former speechwriter for Tony Blair, has an engineered curriculum with particular emphasis on learning how to learn and developing thinking and questioning skills" - you used to see Peter Hyman interviewed on programmes such as Newsnight, but not recently (presumably he is too busy now?). This school might be worth further study. Presumably it is intended as a blueprint? http://www.school21.org/news-and-events/
"...leadership in the sense of being able to influence those around you in the family, community, workplace or classroom. In this sense, leadership really is, or should be, for everybody. The challenge for a school or school system is to teach this quality which encompasses much of what sometimes goes under the heading of ‘21st century skills’ " - the idea of teaching leadership sounds disturbingly like the activities of Common Purpose. And surely the left is not so degraded as to want to create political leadership schools on the model of the German napolas? This seems almost Jesuitical in ambition.
"As traditional institutions, such as the family or church, break down, increasingly schools are the only social institutions we can rely on to inculcate in young people the values or ethical underpinning on which our collective future depends" - absolutely not! The idea that we would surrender the "inculcation" of ethics to teachers is alarming in the extreme. Can you imagine the sort of society we would end up with.
"The population explosion of the past 70 years, the rise of cities, especially megacities – many with extremely diverse populations thanks to the extraordinary and growing patterns of migration in the past half century – all demand that a shared ethical basis crosses the boundaries of culture and nationality" - I think the authors are falling into the trap of assuming migrants are just economic units acting rationally, whereas many of them (perhaps most) will be attracted to particular countries because of their national characters (America and the United Kingdom are almost overwhelmed by migrants desperate to get in, whereas very few migrants are clamouring to get into Russia or China).
"...leadership in the sense of being able to influence those around you in the family, community, workplace or classroom. In this sense, leadership really is, or should be, for everybody. The challenge for a school or school system is to teach this quality which encompasses much of what sometimes goes under the heading of ‘21st century skills’ " - the idea of teaching leadership sounds disturbingly like the activities of Common Purpose. And surely the left is not so degraded as to want to create political leadership schools on the model of the German napolas? This seems almost Jesuitical in ambition.
"As traditional institutions, such as the family or church, break down, increasingly schools are the only social institutions we can rely on to inculcate in young people the values or ethical underpinning on which our collective future depends" - absolutely not! The idea that we would surrender the "inculcation" of ethics to teachers is alarming in the extreme. Can you imagine the sort of society we would end up with.
"The population explosion of the past 70 years, the rise of cities, especially megacities – many with extremely diverse populations thanks to the extraordinary and growing patterns of migration in the past half century – all demand that a shared ethical basis crosses the boundaries of culture and nationality" - I think the authors are falling into the trap of assuming migrants are just economic units acting rationally, whereas many of them (perhaps most) will be attracted to particular countries because of their national characters (America and the United Kingdom are almost overwhelmed by migrants desperate to get in, whereas very few migrants are clamouring to get into Russia or China).
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