Friday 3 October 2014

The Educators (BBC Radio 4)

Education - in its aims and methods - fascinates me. A new type of job market is emerging, which somewhat changes the aims of education, and new technology provides more, and cheaper, opportunities for education.

BBC Radio 4 has just finished a series called The Educators, co-produced by the Open University, where eight movers and shakers were interviewed about their ideas for improving our education system(s).

This should be of particular interest to homeschoolers, unschoolers and teachers as well as anyone who's thinking of a non-standard path for their child's education.

If you can, have a listen. Some of them are fascinating, others less so - here are some mini reviews:



Entertaining and with some useful points (e.g. anti-gnostic views of the body/brain) but probably overstating his case. 3 stars.


Stats/study heavy, no huge revelations but a few useful bits. 2 stars


Very interesting look at a unique school. Some admirable ideas but it's not exactly possible for everyone to duplicate this. 4 stars.


Sorry, I just couldn't listen to her voice and gave up after a while. Give it a try though. 


Basically a psychology/neuroscience angle on it all - some useful bits again. 3 stars


Great stuff on how to use the curiosity and creativity of children to get them to learn. Don't agree with absolutely everything but there's a lot to learn here. 5 stars.


Maths has been taught wrongly, says Prof Boaler. It's pretty hard to disagree with her, although I think there's space for an early 'grammar' stage ( cf. Dorothy Sayers). 4 stars

I don't know how good his videos are but it really highlights the opportunities children have to learn now that are unprecedented in human history. 5 stars