With characteristic certainty and self-assurance, Professor Richard Dawkins recently tweeted his irritation with those who describe science as a social construct. “Science is not a social construct. Science’s truths were […]
An open letter to Jan Thomas, Vice-chancellor of Massey University. Massey University in Wellington is the venue for an event on 13 November called Feminism 2020, organised by Speak Up […]
A nationwide one-day strike by 50,000 teachers in both the primary and secondary sectors took place in New Zealand on 29 May. It was the first time in the history […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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) […]
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, […]
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. […]
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 […]
