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A radical agenda to make our education system fit for the twenty-first century Our education system has been damaged by politicians who have arrogantly imposed a regime of market-driven reforms. It is time to reframe education as an essential public good, one arising from a hunger to find more engaging ways to learn and the powerful imperative to make our society genuinely equal. In this timely and provocative essay, Melissa Benn argues for a National Education Service. Like the NHS, the NES would provide the framework for a life-long entitlement to education: from early-years provision to apprenticeships, universities and adult education. It should be free at the point of delivery. It should nurture teachers and scholarship, moving beyond an obsession with exam results to create fully rounded, questioning citizens. Its eventual aim should be an integrated, comprehensive system available to all.
We have reached a tricky crossroads in modern women's lives and our collective daughters are bearing the brunt of some intolerable pressures. Although feminism has made great strides forward since our mothers' and grandmothers' day, many of the key issues - equality of pay, equality in the home, representation at senior level in the private, public and political sectors - remain to be tackled. Casual sexism in the media and in everyday life is still rife and our daughters face a host of new difficulties as they are bombarded by images of unrealistically skinny airbrushed supermodels, celebrity role-models who depend on their looks and partners for status, and by competitive social media. The likes of Natasha Walter and Katie Roiphe deal with feminism from an adult point of view, but our daughters need to be prepared for stresses that are coming into play now as early as pre-school. This is a manifesto for every mother who has ever had to comfort a daughter who doesn't feel 'pretty', for every young woman who out-performs her male peers professionally and wonders why she is still not taken seriously, and for anyone interested in the world we are making for the next generation.
How would Antigone fare in a New Labour milieu? One of Us is a subtle and poignant novel about the dangerous space between private and public lives, about kingmakers and power, by a writer who should know... The narrative opens in March 2003. A leading journalist and a forty-two-year-old woman meet at a dingy London cafe in the immediate aftermath of the invasion of Iraq.Anna Adams has a story she is burning to tell, one that goes right to the top of the Cabinet. Her middle brother Jack, the black sheep of the family, has committed a shocking, violent act that the authorities have tried to cover up, and Anna is determined both to defend and celebrate him, at all costs. Anna's tale takes us o...
The heightening impact of ecological and societal crises makes sustainability an increasingly urgent imperative, requiring a fundamental shift in how we understand and practice management and business. In this book, the authors set out the key characteristics of sustainability such as its temporal and multilevel effects and highlight the complex array of sustainability risks and opportunities for business and management. Setting business within a systems perspective, the authors outline different sustainability discourses that frame how business responds to the sustainability imperative. They call for the normative and scientific approaches to sustainability to be merged so that a new transd...
"A superb, crucial, blistering expose of all the myths about our education system that are all too often used to attack it. Melissa Benn again proves why she is one of country's most formidable education campaigners - and why the powerful should fear her. Owen Jones, Guardian columnist and best-selling author Never has it been more urgent to publicise the truth about what works and doesn't work in our education system. Debunking the ideology of marketisation, and exposing the half-truths that pass for objective reporting, Benn and Downs meticulously lay out the evidence: that a national system of comprehensive schools delivers the best outcomes. This hugely important book should be required ...
Using specific examples of incremental and transformational changes, and outlining the long-term corporate benefits of sustainability, the book examines the changes required to achieve true sustainability.
New York Times bestselling author Anne Sebba's moving biography of Ethel Rosenberg, the wife and mother whose execution for espionage-related crimes defined the Cold War and horrified the world. In June 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a couple with two young sons, were led separately from their prison cells on Death Row and electrocuted moments apart. Both had been convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for the Soviet Union, despite the fact that the US government was aware that the evidence against Ethel was shaky at best and based on the perjury of her own brother. This book is the first to focus on one half of that couple in more than thirty years, and much new evidence has surface...
Welcome to Brighton, a city of delirious invention where no-one has an excuse for living a normal life. This book captures the spirit of the seaside resort, bringing together prose, photography and cartoons all inspired by the the south coast city.
It is becoming clear that the old frames of reference are not working, that the narratives used for decades to stave off progressive causes are being exposed as falsehoods. Six myths have taken hold, ones which are at odds with our lived experience and in urgent need of revision. Has freedom of speech become a cover for promoting prejudice? Has the concept of political correctness been weaponised to avoid ceding space to those excluded from power? Does white identity politics pose an urgent danger? These are some of the questions at the centre of Nesrine Malik's radical and compelling analysis that challenges us to find new narrators whose stories can fill the void and unite us behind a shared vision.