The Sleepwalk of the West

The Department Whose Name We Dare Not Speak has been restored to it’s former purpose. Obscured under New Labour as The Department for Children, Schools and Families, it is again called The Department for Education – the first move by Michael Gove, the new UK Minister for Education. Does this mark the end of education as we have come to know it? Hopefully so.

In the US, the process whereby a hick church can become a Sunday school then “college” then “university” in only a few short years is trenchantly and hilariously documented in Paul Fussell’s Class: A Guide through the American Status System. An equivalent – only slightly less radical – change happened in the UK when technical [...]

Talking of Cannes festival winners – and the politics they embody – last year’s Entre les Murs (The Class) is another example of the agendas lurking in our culture, in this case French but more generally Western. The ideas behind the film are best illustrated by the perennial debate – or its paucity – over [...]