Lifestyle topics
Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition. Jacques Barzun, quoted in The Guardian. If you pay pathetic salaries you get what you ask for. A young lad I know, 12, left his publically-funded primary school unable to spell and with indifferent grammar. The school had been praised …
Continue reading ‘Teaching and the cock-eyed attitude to it.’ »
“When a British government is deeply bothered by something, it enacts legislation. “When it isn’t, it commissions an inquiry” or – worse still – “appoints a tsar”. Britain is currently less socially mobile than at any point in the last 60 years. A person called James Caan, an “entrepreneur”, who was recently appointed as the …
When the former Bear Stearns boss Jimmy Cayne walked out of the ailing Wall Street bank in 2008, “he claimed there wasn’t a dry eye on in the house”. That’s not how staff remember it. Indeed, in his book House of Cards, William Cohan observes that Cayne was heartily disliked. That contrast was recently explored …
The UN World Population report for 2012 predicts that the world’s population, now 7.2billion will rise to 9.5 billion by 2025, and, by the end of this century, will reach 11 billion. By mid century Nigeria will have a bigger population than the United States. The biggest increases will be in Africa, India, Indonesia and …
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination spans the world”. Albert Einstein Children are not born with imagination. They have to be taught it and encouraged in it by teachers, by fairy tales and tales of bravery, daring and so on. They have to be read to, told true stories, encouraged to …
