My name is Joel Lazarus. After leaving university, like so many young men and women today, I went to work in finance. After five years working on trading floors in Tokyo and London, I left to get a postgraduate education that took me first to SOAS and then on to Oxford. I completed my PhD in October 2011. Read more…
That education is a living, not a mechanical process, is a truth as freely admitted as it is persistently ignored (lecture in Calcutta in 1936 quoted in Dutta and Robinson 1995, page 323)
Brian Holmes (1920-1993) joined the Institute of Education, University of London in 1953 where he was Professor of Comparative Education at the Institute, 1975-1985. This article is largely drawn from the work of Brian Holmes in National Government and Location in the European Context, Handbook of educational ideas and practices, 1989, ISBN: 0415020611; pp 382 – 393 Read more…
Grant DeVolson Wood was an American painter, art theorist and teacher who lived February 13, 1891 February 12, 1942. One year after joining the faculty at the University of Iowa, Grant Wood wrote a statement outlining his basic principles of art. Read more…
At the age of 13 Maria Montessori decided to become an engineer. She enrolled in a technical school but changed her focus to medicine. In 1896 she was to become the first woman in Italy to graduate from medical school. Soon after she broadened her scope to become an educator. She studied young children in asylums and was drawn to the work of Jean Marc Gaspard Itard and Edouard Seguin. Read more…
What comes to mind when we think of the word ‘Education‘ ? On one hand we must acknowledge that education has been used as much as a tool of oppression than as a means of liberation and collective progress. Thinking of the namesake of this project – The Ragged Schools – we can find lots of examples where the noble idea of sharing knowledge for the good of all was perverted to petty tyrannies. Read more…
In trying to get bearing on many of the discussions that arise when thinking about education, I took to the books. 1993 Ruth Jonathan was Head of the Department of Education at the University of Edinburgh and was Chairman of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain. In her work she examines the complex notion of education. This blog entry revoices and examines some of the thinkers and issues highlighted in her contribution to the Handbook of Educational Ideas and Practices. Read more…