Rousseau’s Émile confronts an uncomfortable truth: human beings are shaped long before they are capable of judgement or resistance. Social constraint precedes understanding, and autonomy arrives late, already burdened by what has gone before. This essay examines Rousseau’s attempt to manage that problem through education, its paradoxes and limits, and why return and revision are possible — but reset is not.
A reflection on how Europe might rediscover a shared moral centre without enforcing religious uniformity. Using Jesus’ ethic as one integrative voice among many, this piece explores innate moral capacities, cultural modelling, and the creative–destructive axis at the heart of human behaviour. Includes scientific notes and two asides on moral development and plural ethics.
A reflection on how debate in Britain has become the preserve of the few, leaving most pupils trained to perform rather than to think. Drawing on personal experience, it argues for a new educational humanism grounded in moral, civic and intellectual formation.
A personal and historical reflection on German education from Humboldt to the 1970s: the rigor of continual assessment, the dignity of the old Abitur, the rise of the Gesamtschule, and the slow erosion of standards in the late twentieth century. Seen through the eyes of an English teacher working in North Rhine-Westphalia, this article contrasts German seriousness with British drift and explores how a once-formidable system began to follow the comprehensive path already taken in the UK and the USA.
A reflective essay on how early patterns of love and fear shape adult life. From Hemingway and D. H. Lawrence to the words of Jesus, it explores how we learn courage, how dependence becomes maturity, and how the “kingdom of heaven within” points to self-knowledge rather than belief.
Modern schooling does little to help children discover what moves them or what they might live for. The timetable is full, the spirit empty. Passion, curiosity, and imagination — those inner resources that make learning joyful — are treated as optional extras. Since the 1990s, legislation and professional fear have drained warmth from classrooms; teachers now perform roles rather than form relationships. The result is an education system that functions but no longer inspires — a wall between intellect and soul.
A reflection on how Britain’s independent schools and social hierarchies mirror one another—each a compartment where people learn the codes of belonging that keep them exactly where they are.
It is a paradox that in Britain, after thirteen years of compulsory schooling, many young people emerge without a secure grasp of either English grammar or basic arithmetic, while at the same time official figures tell us that one in five schoolchildren suffers from a “probable mental disorder.” Adults fare little better: rates of anxiety, depression, and mixed emotional disorders are climbing steadily, particularly in the working class.