Discussions

As an inveterate lifewide learner, I am always open to new opportunities and I always look for the best in people. So, when I met a businessman who shared my passion for destigmatising mental illness, I willingly undertook to provide whatever intellectual and practical support I could for his social enterprise. I had reached the age of retirement, had a pension which kept the wolf from the door, and felt it was time to give back to society, in the only way I knew how, with my mind and experience. Little did I realise that this would become an object lesson in ‘buyer beware.’

I don't quite know where this thought belongs in our discussion groups, but I came across this beautiful, moving piece purely by chance and wanted to share it with everyone.  Some of you may already be familiar with it: it is a 1971 song by Bill Withers entitled 'Grandma's Hands'. Speaking of it many years later, he says this is the composition that he is most proud of having written.  What do you think?

Holding back his tears, Alan Middleton expressed his frustration at the abuse he had experienced by those supposedly providing apprenticeships for England’s unemployed youth.  He was speaking in a Panorama programme transmitted on 2 March 2012, tellingly entitled ‘The Great Apprentice Scandal’.

Earlier articles and discussion points have mentioned the tension between prescription by legal and regulatory agencies, namely government policy/Ofsted, and the simultaneous exhortations to develop pedagogy that requires more discretionary scope and time for teachers to foster imagination, grow social and personal values, and essentially do more than train for the performance of good lessons and the acquisition of high scores in externally imposed assessments.