Young Harry Holland: the soapbox preacher
Harry Holland and the early labour movement in Australia and New Zealand – Part 2. (For Part 1 click here). Little detail is known of Harry Holland’s childhood. Despite being […]
Category Archives: education
What is a social revolution and how does it come about?
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to watch Maestra, a short documentary about the 1961 mass mobilisation to eradicate illiteracy in the early years of the Cuban revolution.1 […]
Balkans 1996
I often have reason to complain about Facebook, but sometimes it ‘works’ so well, the way nothing in the past ever did, and I am grateful for it. A short […]
National myth-making – and a new antidote
April is the month when national myth-making goes into high gear in Australia and New Zealand. It was on 25 April 1915 that a combined Australian–New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) […]
Education, the professions, and a lousy compromise
The world’s oldest profession is – contrary to the popular saying – the scribe. The scribe arose together with the rise of written language and number in antiquity, because reading, […]
Defending Malala: the well-intentioned errors of some atheist campaigners
Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani woman who campaigned for equal rights for women, especially the right to education, is a worthy recipient of the European Union’s Sakharov prize for human rights. […]
Charter Schools and union busting
The New Zealand government is pressing ahead with its intention to introduce charter schools, and has recently announced the names of the first educational entrepreneurs who will run charter schools […]
