Thursday, 16th April (Cambridge)

Posted on April 16, 2026 by roycross

1. Two from The Conversation to start with today:

First, a piece by Sam Wass from the University of East London, UK parents urged to curb fast‑paced screen content for small children – neuroscientist who advised government explains why https://theconversation.com/uk-parents-urged-to-curb-fast-paced-screen-content-for-small-children-neuroscientist-who-advised-government-explains-why-278732

One route works through comprehension. Slow pacing, clear speech, exaggerated expressions and simple narrative structure allow children to follow what is happening. Comprehension drives attention. The second route operates through attention capture. Rapid movement, abrupt edits and dynamic sound capture attention automatically. Even if we are trying not to pay attention to something, movement makes it hard to ignore. We think that we developed like this because, historically, motion signalled threat or opportunity. That reflex remains. Attention capture is immediate, involuntary and does not depend on comprehension. Much contemporary digital content leans heavily on this second mechanism. It is instantaneous, and it works on everybody.

Little Mateo’s current favourite programmes, Ms Rachel and Bluey, seem to pass the Wass test!

Second, a piece by Talar Moukhtarian from the University of Warwick, Waking at 3am every night? Here’s what may be going on https://theconversation.com/waking-at-3am-every-night-heres-what-may-be-going-on-278264

Waking during the night is actually a normal part of sleep. Most people wake briefly several times, but usually fall back asleep so quickly they do not remember it the next morning. It becomes more of a problem when those awakenings last longer, or start happening at the same time every night, leaving you less refreshed the next day.

Screen time only gets a mention in passing in the second piece, but maybe, once captured, one’s attention – whatever age you are – keeps you awake?

2. The Civil Liberties Union for Europe (Liberties) is “a watchdog that safeguards the human rights of everyone in the European Union” https://www.liberties.eu/en . Here’s their report on the current state of affairs in the EU, The Liberties Rule of Law Report 2026  https://www.liberties.eu/f/wtaqoq PDF of the executive summary only – probably enough for most of us – below.

The lack of implementation of individual recommendations sets the pattern for the overall trajectory in each Member State. 10 countries remain locked in the ‘Stagnator’ category with no meaningful progress in either direction, namely the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Ireland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Spain. Five ‘Dismantlers’, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy and Slovakia represent the most serious concern, as these countries are actively eroding rule of law institutions, with four of them showing no change from last year. Latvia stands alone as the only ‘Hard worker’. The six ‘Sliders’, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Malta and Sweden are particularly noteworthy given their historically strong democratic reputations, confirming that rule of law erosion is not confined to a small number of outliers.

Well done. Latvia!

LIBERTIES RULE OF LAW REPORT 2026 EXECUTIVE SUMMARYDownload

3. From ELT Buzz (thank you!), What actually Holds My Classroom Together by Melinda Karshner is a piece explaining “what twenty years of teaching taught (her) about classroom management and why the best tool (she has) is being human” https://substack.com/home/post/p-192532417

So let me be clear, I have never had a perfectly managed classroom. My classroom is perfectly imperfect. I am absolutely not saying my classroom is behavior free and that I have somehow unlocked the magic key to successfully managing classroom behavior without fail. No. We are all human, we all have behaviors, on no planet would I claim to have a perfectly well managed, behavior free classroom… but, in 20 years I have learned a lot about what not to do, and about how to get it mostly right.

Slightly strange expression, ‘behavior free’: ‘bad’ behavio(u)r free is what Melinda means, I think.

4. Andy Brock’s latest piece on his blog, Re Education, The Velcro Approach to Scaling in Education, “looks at scaling in education: what it means, why so many global educators talk about it, and whether in the current resource-stretched world it’s still a relevant topic” https://abrock.substack.com/p/re-education-issue-30-the-velcro-f22

Q. [Andy]

Let’s kick off with a bit of history. I’m interested in the history of the development of education systems – how they “scaled”. If you could go back to, say, the history of education in Scotland, how did that go from being a handful of schools in the 15th Century to a school in every parish within 100 years? What were the processes and drivers that enabled that? So, let’s talk a bit about how you see the history of education development in those broad terms.

A. [Brad]

Sure, that’s a good place to start. I feel like there are four histories that come together when you think about contemporary scaling.

For the first history—education as a formal practice—we go all the way back to China 1,000 years ago.

Read on for the three other histories!

5. And, finally, a glimpse through the looking glass, Nasha Niva, a Belarusian news site https://nashaniva.com/en/

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Tuesday, 14th April (Cambridge)

Posted on April 14, 2026 by roycross

1. Now this is what could and should be done in schools with AI!

Thai Oral History – Hua Dong Storylines: Weaving Memories with AI https://thai-oral-history-web.vercel.app/

Welcome to our storytelling space! This website is like a living archive of “Hua Dong Community, Phichit,” reimagined through the eyes of junior high school students from Tedsaban Radjaroen School, Hua Dong Sub-district, Mueang District, Phichit in the academic year 2025. We, the students, stepped out of the classroom to sit, talk, and listen to the precious life stories of our community elders. Using Gemini AI, we’ve transformed these local memories into vibrant storybooks, ensuring our heritage can be shared and cherished by readers all around the globe.

Try Grandpa’s Salted Fish or The Mango Ghost of Chong Village!

2. From Jakob Nielsen’s UX Tigers, via OLDaily, Redesigning Workflows for AI  https://www.uxtigers.com/post/workflow-redesign

In a controlled field experiment, startups that redesigned end-to-end workflows around AI generated 90% more revenue than equally equipped peers that used AI mainly to speed up individual tasks.

In other words, don’t waste time on little tweaks at the margins.

3. Well, like many people, I used to think – to use a slightly bowdlerised Yorkshire expression – that the sun shone out of John Hattie’s bottom. Now, I’m not so sure. Take a look at these two pieces:

First, from Stephen Vainker’s blog, The Wreckage, Caged in a fantasy, teachers are angry at Hattie https://stephenvainker.substack.com/p/caged-in-a-fantasy-teachers-are-angry

Second, from Retraction Watch, which tracks “retractions as a window into the scientific process”, University of Melbourne opens formal investigation into education researcher John Hattie https://retractionwatch.com/2026/03/16/university-melbourne-opens-formal-investigation-education-researcher-john-hattie/

4. Alain Wolf has written an interesting paper telling the story of the literature paper in the Cambridge Proficiency in English (CPE) exam, describing its precarious existence from its introduction in 1913 and its silent demise in 2002, A Brief History of the Literature Paper in the Cambridge Proficiency in English Examination (CPE) 1913–2002: Have They Thrown the Baby out with the Bath Water? https://www.ubplj.org/index.php/TBJE/article/view/2697 PDF below as well.

(…) tensions will inevitably arise as soon as one realises that there is a moral dimension to the writing of history. But the point to consider at this stage is that the risk of treating the past as if it were the 21st century is as great as that of treating it as a foreign land. Histories of language teaching (…) often reflect these notions, i.e. that past teaching methods, and by extension the assessment of students, are judged at once according to the strangeness of past minds and by contemporary educational values.

Alain’s CPE Literature paper articleDownload

5. And, finally, a piece for Engelsberg Ideas by Damian Valdez putting the Strait of Hormuz into its historical context, Chokepoints are the true crossroads of history https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/chokepoints-are-the-true-crossroads-of-history/

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Thursday, 9th April (Cambridge)

Posted on April 9, 2026 by roycross

1. First up today, Li Wei in conversation with Zeinab El-Khateeb on The power of language, identity and education https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news/2026/mar/power-language-identity-and-education-academia-et-al

This conversation traces Professor Li Wei’s path from classroom teacher to Director and Dean of the UCL Institute of Education, showing how lived experience drove his research questions. He explains language shift in three generations and why some children become English‑dominant despite living in multilingual homes. With deep expertise in bilingualism and multilingual education, he shares evidence‑based ways to support heritage language maintenance. There’s practical insights for educators, families, and early career researchers alike.

And here’s a piece Li Wei wrote for TESOL Journal a little while back, TESOL educators can contribute to the fight-back against racial discrimination and hatred: A personal view from Britain https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tesj.618

2. More grumpiness from Richard Watson Todd, Breaking the ivory tower https://grumpy.hcommons.org/2026/04/03/breaking-the-ivory-tower/

The gap between researchers and practitioners is one that has been frequently raised. There are numerous papers arguing for the need for more practitioner research, none of which appears to have had much effect. Partly this is because researchers and teachers have different concerns. As I argued in ‘Nice analysis – shame about the data’, what is the point of most structural equation modelling research? Some researchers may be interested, but it’s gobbledygook for teachers. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, there was eminently useful research into teaching strategies with clear practical applications – think of the research of the benefits of wait time in questioning – but this has all but disappeared.

3. Here’s Tobias Carroll’s monthly ‘Watchlist’ of newly translated fiction for Words Without Borders, featuring Canada, France, Indonesia, Spain and Sweden https://wordswithoutborders.org/read/article/2026-03/the-watchlist-march-2026-tobias-carroll/

4. By Samantha Floreani for The Guardian, Australia’s teen social media ban is a flop: but there’s no joy in ‘I told you so’ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/01/australia-teen-social-media-ban-criticism

Around seven in 10 children remain on major platforms. Who could possibly have predicted that this wasn’t going to work? Well, lots of people.

5. And, finally, a traditional “coffin merit-making” ceremony from Thailand, Norn Long Sadao Kroh https://www.thainewspix.com/en/preview/34653

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Tuesday, 7th April (Cambridge)

Posted on April 7, 2026 by roycross

1. I found this piece by John B. Judis, Trump as Alexander the Great: A Theory That Explains Iran (And Everything Else): Hegel figured it all out 200 years ago, really quite convincing https://www.notus.org/perspectives/trump-as-alexander-the-great-a-theory-that-explains-iran-and-everything-else

(…) too many Democrats are missing the forest for the trees. Yes, Trump himself may soon be disgraced, but he and his administration have set in motion long-term changes that are going to be with us for the foreseeable future. Trump, it is increasingly clear, is a figure of enormous historical significance who is reshaping America and the globe in ways that will not easily be undone by Democratic wins in future elections. Liberals, naturally, would like to believe the opposite: that once they triumph at the ballot box, all can go back to normal. “Time will show the Trump era to be less turning point, more freakish aberration,” Simon Tisdall, a foreign affairs columnist for The Guardian, wrote in December. “In history’s bigger picture, Trump is a blotch, an unsightly smear on the canvas.” This could not be more wrong. And the ill-conceived but also era-defining war in Iran — the seventh country that Trump has attacked in his second term — is just the latest manifestation of how Trump is irrevocably changing our world.

2. Here’s Elisabeth Kendall explaining for the Engelsberg Ideas podcast what motivates the Houthis in Yemen, The Houthis’ forever war https://audioboom.com/posts/8882640-the-houthis-forever-war

Following the outbreak of the war in Iran, the Yemeni militant group now has an outsized ability to disrupt global trade and threaten regional stability in the Middle East. But who are they and what do they really want?

3. Who’d want to invigilate an exam nowadays? Here’s a (slightly tongue in cheek) review of the best smart glasses, Smart Glasses for Exam Cheating: Best Models, Prices and Risks in 2026 https://abit.ee/en/smart-glasses/smart-glasses-exam-cheating-ray-ban-meta-rokid-ai-glasses-even-realities-g1-brilliant-labs-frame-ai-en

Smart glasses have graduated from geek gadget to a device that university disciplinary committees, proctoring companies and legislators are seriously debating worldwide. Ray-Ban Meta, Rokid AI Glasses, Even Realities G1, Brilliant Labs Frame — each of these models can photograph exam questions, send them to cloud AI, and return answers through a hidden earpiece within seconds. Here is a detailed breakdown of how it works, what each model can do, and why using one in an exam is not just an academic risk — it’s a real legal minefield.

4. Cadbury, Fry and Rowntree, all eighteenth or nineteenth century Quaker foundations, were the big three names in chocolate in the UK for well over a century. KitKat anyone? Dairy Milk? Turkish Delight? Here’s a Guardian piece by Chris Osuh on how one of those companies, Rowntree, is grappling with its history, Rowntree’s trust appoints Keon West to tackle brand’s colonial history https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/apr/02/rowntrees-joseph-rowntree-charitable-trust-keon-west-head-of-reparations

It’s a story that connects the inventors of the KitKat – the beloved British chocolate bar – with colonial history and its legacies. Now, the ways in which enslavement, indenture and European imperialism fed supply chains for Rowntree’s, the confectioners who invented Fruit Pastilles and Smarties as well as KitKat, are being confronted. The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust (JRCT), a leading philanthropic organisation endowed by Rowntree’s profits, has appointed a head of reparations, who will start work later this month.

5. And, finally, some light relief with Roger Luckhurst: The Great Majority: Body Snatching and Burial Reform in 19th-Century Britain https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-great-majority/

As populations flocked to city centres in the 19th century, church cemeteries began to overflow with the dead. Roger Luckhurst exhumes the history of this period, when anatomists fuelled a body-snatching trade led by “resurrection men” and reformers sought alternatives to the toxic urban graveyards and their pestilent fumes.

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Thursday, 2nd April (Cambridge)

Posted on April 2, 2026 by roycross

1. Jim McKinley is giving the next (online) seminar in UCL’s Academic Writing series at 16:00 UK time on 9th April on Beyond polishing: Generative AI, academic voice, and the future of student writing. More info and registration here https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/events/2026/apr/beyond-polishing-generative-ai-academic-voice-and-future-student-writing

Generative AI is increasingly used to “polish” academic writing, but its influence may begin much earlier, shaping how writers construct voice, stance, and argument before editing even occurs. Drawing on a comparative study of Master’s-level student writing from 2019 and 2025 at a UK university, this seminar explores how AI-mediated writing practices are changing academic prose over time. The study shows that AI polishing consistently reduces hedging, removes self-mention, and shifts writing toward more categorical and impersonal styles. More significantly, recent student drafts already resemble AI-generated text before polishing takes place.

2. I mentioned NATESOL’s annual conference on Tuesday. Their next online event, Building foundations: Enhancing writing skills for low-level learners with Lesley Painter-Farrell, is also at 16:00 UK time next Thursday, 9th April. You’ll have to choose! More info and registration here https://www.natesol.org/event-details/building-foundations-enhancing-writing-skills-in-low-level-learners

Supporting and developing students’ literacy skills requires teachers to implement a variety of approaches that are both top-down and bottom-up, and that embrace students where they are and what they bring to class. This means fostering an asset-based mindset that is inclusive and encouraging. The process of developing literacy skills is not easy. Teachers need to be adaptable and aware of the many tools they can use to help diverse students. In this presentation, we will initially explore the various challenges teachers face when developing literacy skills, including those encountered when working with students who have low literacy skills in their home languages.

3. An illustrated gift article from The New York Times by Pablo Robles & Agnes Chang describing some of the impact that is already being felt of the USA and Israel’s attack on Iran, How the Iran War Has Rippled Across the World https://tinyurl.com/3pb8hmcp

4. Two pieces from The Times and The Sunday Times:

Rishi Sunak writes a good weekly column for The Sunday Times (for which he gives his fee to charity). Here’s his latest, on the appointment of the BBC’s new Director General, My strategy to make the BBC thrive again https://www.thetimes.com/business/companies-markets/article/rishi-sunak-my-strategy-to-make-the-bbc-thrive-again-0wq2qtdxp

It sounds like something out of the TV show W1A. The BBC has appointed as its new director-general someone with no experience of journalism, broadcasting or the corporation itself. But when you consider the ways in which the media landscape is changing, you can begin to see the logic behind the choice of Matt Brittin, a former Google executive. In December, for the first time, the reach of YouTube in Britain (51.9 million) exceeded that of all the BBC’s channels combined (50.8 million), according to official ratings data from Barb. YouTube is owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet.

Plus, the latest weekly column from Fraser Nelson for The Times, a plea for more serious thinking by politicians, Our old parties have absolutely no idea https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/old-political-parties-no-ideas-tdvb8wklr

If they want to beat Reform and the Greens, it’s now or never for the Tories and Labour to answer the big questions. (…) Every disaster in Westminster can be traced back to a scheme cobbled together without proper debate. When governments do make breakthroughs it’s because someone, somewhere, did serious thinking. And if a prime minister arrives in No 10 with no ideas, then what? Ask Keir Starmer.

5. And, finally, one great writer writing about another, Elif Shafak on Ursula Le Guin, A Woman Who Refused to be Boxed In https://elifshafak.substack.com/p/a-woman-who-refused-to-be-boxed-in

A couple of years back, in London, after a conference on the arts, society and technology, I found myself sitting next to a “futurist” who, I later learned, had considerable money and power in the tech industry. A futurist, I was told that day, is an expert who analyses growing trends and innovations, makes forecasts about what lies ahead and helps companies and individuals re-adjust to fast-shifting social, cultural, economic and political developments. It is all about long-term decisions, predictions and projections. We started chatting about what the world might be like in a hundred years’ time and beyond. What kind of political structures, tendencies for autocracy, societal attitudes, and belief systems might be emerging…. I don’t remember exactly what made me say this but in response to a comment by him, I said: “But of course Ursula K le Guin has been writing about this in the 1970s — imagine!” He looked at me, drawing a blank. I told him that Ursula K Le Guin was an American author; a novelist, poet, an incredible mind, who, in my opinion, had created a whole new genre of her own, such was the power of her fiction. ‘Oh, I see,’ he said with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. ‘I know I should not tell you this, but I don’t really read fiction.’

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Tuesday, 31st March (Cambridge)

Posted on March 31, 2026 by roycross

1. Short but not too short notice, I hope: How much education does a teacher need? is the intriguing title of the OECD webinar tomorrow, 1st April, at 09:00 UK time with speakers from South Africa, Estonia, Australia and the OECD itself. More info and registration here https://meetoecd1.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_xyy4ilPGTdKq-_JgmIq03A#/registration

The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers. But how can education systems ensure that teachers are prepared to give high-quality teaching? What qualifications should teachers be required to have? How can different pathways into teaching ensure equal levels of support for teachers?

2. Here’s Andy Brock’s latest post on his Re Education blog, The $4bn Ed Tech Paradox: African Ed Tech is Missing Out https://abrock.substack.com/p/re-education-issue-29-the-4bn-ed

If you put a Teacher, a Minister of Education, a Non-Profit Director, and an Investor in a room to define “EdTech evidence”, you’ll get four different answers.

● For the Teacher, it’s the moment a disengaged learner leans in.

● For the Minister, it’s national literacy and exam scores.

● For the Non-Profit, it’s a rigorous Randomized Control Trial (RCT).

● For the Investor, its value creation—measured through user engagement, retention curves, and unit economics.

The reason for this disconnect is a fundamental Diligence Divide: those with the contextual expertise and the people with the capital are speaking two entirely different and often incompatible languages.

3. Here’s one I filched from Steven Downes’s OLDaily, The Five Biggest Pitfalls of Collaborative Grouping (And How to Avoid Them) https://spencereducation.com/group-collaboration-next-level/

We’ve all been there before. You’re working with a few other people and everything just seems to click. It might be on a ball field or court. Or it might be in a jam session or a rehearsal for live theater. If you’re lucky, it might be a collaborative team of teachers. You bounce ideas back and forth and offer honest feedback from a place of trust and mutual humility. The mood shifts from intense concentration to laughter to deep discussion and maybe even vulnerability. In these moments, you realize that together you are creating something you could never create on your own. However, we’ve all experienced the downside of small-group collaboration, where things move slowly with constant discord or flat disengagement. Deep down inside you wish you were working alone. In some cases, team dynamics can be downright toxic.

4. This year’s NATESOL Annual Conference – their 42nd – is on 16th May, on the theme of ELT and Technology, and, appropriately enough, it’s a hybrid event. More info and the call for presenters attached; let me know if you’d like me to ask the organisers for a free ticket on your behalf, please.

NATESOL 2026 Conference Call for ProposalsDownload

5. And, finally and without false modesty, Ethnologue describes itself as “the go-to source for language research, analysis & decision-making” https://www.ethnologue.com/ Lots to explore: maybe start with their list of the world’s 200 most spoken languages https://www.ethnologue.com/insights/ethnologue200/ Guess the top ten before you look? I realise some of you will not need to guess!

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Thursday, 26th March (Cambridge)

Posted on March 27, 2026 by roycross

1. Rachael Fionda introduced me to Gwich’in language and culture and its rich website https://gwichin.ca/ in her NILE webinar on Language Policy and Language Pedagogy earlier this week. The Dinjii Zhu’ Ginjik (the Gwich’in language) is spoken by fewer than 300 people, nearly all over forty years old, in Canada’s Northwest Territories.

“Now, same time too, as you all know, we haven’t got no written history of our Dene Nation.  For this part of the world.  …We haven’t got no written statement of our own.  After the Mission have come into our land here, both Hudson’s Bay and the Mission, only then did we [draft a] written statement of our history.  …We know, for sure, that we have been in this North Land for a long, long time.  [For example,] the Rat River… goes up and past the summit lake which is called Daadzaii Van, or Loon Lake.  And then you get to Bell River, the small Bell River, first.  And then you get to the Big Bell.  Now it’s called Bell River since 1898, but before that, people knew these rivers as Chii Vee Njik.  Chii Vee Njik Gwitsal– Little Bell River, Chii Vee Njik Gwichoo– Big Bell River.  So, you will know by these names that people have used all these areas for many, many years.  …Made their living for many years.” (Jim Edwards Sittichinli)

2. From Daisy Christodoulou, on her blog No More Marking, The ethics of AI assessment: five big issues – What do teachers, students and parents think about AI marking essays?https://substack.nomoremarking.com/p/the-ethics-of-ai-assessment-five

(…) it is obviously wildly unrealistic to expect human teachers to routinely provide feedback on essays within a couple of hours. In fact, one of my biggest bugbears as a teacher was when a student would hand an essay in a week late and then turn up at the staff room door at the end of the day asking if I’d marked it! If AI can deliver quicker feedback, that’s definitely a good thing.

3. From Carne Ross, How Power Works: Iran and the deeper forces driving US military action https://carneross.substack.com/p/how-power-works-iran-and-the-deeper

The US and Israeli attacks on Iran are only possible because of their vast military superiority. Israeli military power — both its scale and technology — is itself a function of US power. The United States can strike any point on Earth within hours, with negligible risk to its own forces. It can deploy overwhelming air power in any region. This awesome power alone helps explain the propensity to use force: the more dominant a state’s military power, the lower the perceived cost of using it — and the more likely it is to be used. But there’s something more. This military power often fails to translate into political success. Yet the US persists in choosing this tool. Why? The reasons are often obscure.

4. Another piece on Iran, by Amjad Iraqi for The London Review of Books, From Gaza to Iran https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n06/amjad-iraqi/short-cuts (Open access at the time of writing.)

It’s no surprise that Operation Roaring Lion (Israel’s name for its campaign) and Operation Epic Fury (as the US calls its own) bear the hallmarks of Israel’s offensives on the Gaza Strip. For more than two years, Israel has radically reshaped its policy of managing conflict by what it calls ‘mowing the lawn’. Since 7 October 2023, its political and military leaders have embraced a much more ambitious and devastating approach, which has been tested in Gaza, then replicated in Lebanon and to some extent in Yemen. Palestinians and their supporters have long likened the occupied territories to a ‘laboratory’ where Israel experiments with military tactics, surveillance technologies and methods of population control, before applying them elsewhere. War with Iran is a long-held ambition of Netanyahu’s, but Gaza is where he and his generals designed the playbook that is now being followed in that war.

5. And, finally, Katja Hoyer and Christopher Dillon’s new free German history podcast, Reichs and Republics https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/BATTLEGUIDETOURSLTD9754164360

Bismarck this week!

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Tuesday, 24th March (Cambridge)

Posted on March 24, 2026 by roycross

1. Posted by a friend on LinkedIn – thanks, Martin! – from Index on Censorship, School book banning escalates in the UK as Greater Manchester secondary school censors scores of books https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2026/03/school-book-banning-escalates-in-the-uk-as-greater-manchester-secondary-school-censors-scores-of-books/

A school librarian faced a disciplinary hearing, and scores of books were removed from her school library after she stocked Laura Bates’ ‘Men Who Hate Women’.

If you’ve not come across Laura Bates’s book before, the full title is Men who Hate Women – from incels to pickup artists, the truth about extreme misogyny and how it affects us all. More here on Amazon: https://amzn.eu/d/0dh4XypW

2. Here’s an interview with EvanFrendo on the Teacher Talking Time podcast, The End of Traditional ELT: Why Teachers Must Unlearn Everything https://youtu.be/Id2Kv2NEIDw

“We’ve got to have a very hard look at ourselves and stop calling ourselves experts just because we have a Master’s from 10 or 15 years ago. Those times are over, and we’ve really got to focus on what added value we can bring that AI can’t.”

It’s a longish, discursive, interesting interview: I’m sure Evan won’t mind if you speed him up!

3. And here’s a new British Council report on the topic of AI, AI in language learning: lessons for school leaders https://futureofenglish.britishcouncil.org/hubfs/Global%20-%20Future%20of%20English/Resources/FoE%20AI%20guide%20for%20school%20leaders.pdf PDF below as well.

There’s scarcely a field that Artificial Intelligence (AI), specifically in the form of large language models (LLMs), hasn’t impacted. That includes language education, which has been fundamentally reshaped since ChatGPT’s public launch in 2022. Those changes have come with immediate challenges, threats and opportunities. In fact, a 2025 British Council survey revealed nearly eight in ten teachers (79 per cent) report they have already had to rethink how they set assignments in response to AI either to prevent misuse or to intentionally build it into the curriculum1. But the same is also true in the longer term.

FoE AI guide for school leadersDownload

4. There’s no way round it, this one’s a bit depressing: a LinkedIn posting by @StuartG. on the Post Office sub-postmasters scandal here in UK, They Let Him Die Waiting https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/let-him-die-waiting-stuart-gw-md34e/

Every wrongly convicted sub-postmaster in Britain was supposed to receive at least £600,000. That was the promise. That was the floor. Ministers said so in Parliament. It was repeated in Select Committee hearings, in press releases, in carefully worded statements designed to suggest that the State had finally, belatedly, done the decent thing. But the promise was not all that the political rhetoric claimed it to be — not because the money did not exist, but because the machinery built to deliver it was deliberately designed by Officials to ensure that the innocent victims. who had suffered the most would be the last to see a penny of it.

5. And, finally, in complete contrast to that last item, the poet Dean Wilson’s home page is not at all depressing https://www.deanworld.org/ Dean performed at the Philip Larkin Society conference I attended last week. Here’s Dean’s introduction to his Pebble of the Day video https://www.deanworld.org/pebbles.

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Thursday, 19th March (Hull, where I’m attending the 2026 Philip Larkin Society Conference)

Posted on March 19, 2026 by roycross

1. To start with today, Keep calm & carry on: Patience and perseverance in learning from Alexandra Mihai on her blog, The Educationalist https://educationalist.substack.com/p/keep-calm-and-carry-on-patience-and

Today I want to write about something that I deeply value and see as two important conditions for learning: patience and perseverance. In a world where we seek quick answers and thrive on instant gratification, cultivating patience almost feels like a luxury. It is often seen as counterintuitive, nostalgic, or even useless. Why wait when everything is moving so fast? But, as I argue in my last post, sometimes it’s worth waiting and pausing precisely because everything is moving so fast. Because we need to process everything we have access to, in order to transform it into learning. And for this we need to train our patience. Learning is not linear, there are many ups and downs, and if we were to give up at the first obstacle we would never get anywhere.

2. This one, at 14:00 UK time this coming Monday, March 23rd, is a bit language-teaching nerdy: Supplement to Aligning Language Education with the CEFR: A Handbook. More info and registration here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/supplement-to-aligning-language-education-with-the-cefr-a-handbook-tickets-1984807728345

‘What’s the CEFR?’, many of you may be asking, to which the question the answer, ‘It’s the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages,’ may not help very much. Here’s the Council of Europe’s CEFR website https://www.coe.int/en/web/common-european-framework-reference-languages/level-descriptions

3. Here’s a piece on the UKFIET blog by Margo O’Sullivan, Why are we silent? 9 out of 10 children in Sub-Saharan Africa are not learning, and the elephant in the classroom is still being ignored https://www.ukfiet.org/2026/why-are-we-silent-9-out-of-10-children-in-sub-saharan-africa-are-not-learning-and-the-elephant-in-the-classroom-is-still-being-ignored/ When I read the title of the piece, I’d expected it to be about EME (English Medium Education), but it’s not.

Three years ago, in March 2022, UKFIET published a blog I wrote on what I considered the most critical issue for poor children’s learning outcomes: teacher absenteeism. This ‘elephant in the classroom’ is what eventually led me and two Ugandan colleagues to establish Power Teachers Africa in Uganda in June 2024. Three years on from the blog’s publication, I still cannot understand the silence surrounding this crisis. In 19 countries across Eastern and Southern Africa, teacher absenteeism rates range from 15% to 45%. In Uganda, recent data reveal a staggering reality: while teachers may be on the payroll, 52.3% were not actually teaching in the classroom when surveyed.

4. Only four cities from Africa in this Time Out list of The 50 best cities in the world in 2026 Guess which ones before you look at it? https://www.timeout.com/travel/best-cities-2026

5. And, finally, the guiding spirit of these two days for me, Philip Larkin, reading his own poem, ‘Church Going’ https://youtu.be/mN_vWfSgWe4

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Tuesday, 17th March (Cambridge)

Posted on March 17, 2026 by roycross

1. This piece by Brendan Simms for Engelsberg Ideas, What drives Trump 2.0?, surprised me with its delineation of beliefs consistently held by Donald Trump – today more usually portrayed as the very antithesis of consistent – for forty years https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/what-drives-trump-2-0/

What exercised Trump (in the 1980s) was what he regarded as the unfair distribution of the cost of the common defence, especially the way in which – in his view – US allies ‘took advantage’ of his country. This sentiment infused his sulphurous open letter ‘To the American People’, which appeared as a full-page advertisement in the New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe on 2 September 1987 (at a cost of $94,801). The background was the ‘tanker war’ during that summer, which had seen US Navy vessels protect international shipping against Iranian attacks, while US allies in the Gulf – and across the world – held back.

2. Here’s another, related Engelsberg Ideas piece, this one on Iran, by Ali Ansari, The Islamic Republic in ruins https://engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the-islamic-republic-in-ruins/

The launch of operation ‘Epic Fury’ on the morning of 28 February has been greeted with a mixture of anxiety, apprehension and, among the Iranian opposition at least, exultation. (…) For Trump and his administration, any agreement had to include a wider range of concessions, on missiles, support for proxies and, more vaguely, the Islamic Republic’s treatment of its own people. Commentators were dismissive of this last point, but it probably had a greater impact and influence on Trump’s decision to act than many appreciate. Certainly, without the unprecedented slaughter of Iranians by the regime last January, the moral imperative would have been absent.

3. Two pieces from The Conversation that have caught my eye recently:

How conversation works – and why people with hearing loss rely more on their powers of prediction, by Ruth Corps https://theconversation.com/how-conversation-works-and-why-people-with-hearing-loss-rely-more-on-their-powers-of-prediction-277448

Summoning a single word in your mind and then saying it takes at least 600 milliseconds. Yet the most common gap between one person finishing a speaking turn and the other beginning is around 200 milliseconds, regardless of the language they are speaking. This means we usually start talking too quickly to have planned our response after the other person has finished. Somehow, our brains are always ahead of the conversation.

Pregnancy changes the brain – and we are only beginning to understand how and why by a team from Tübingen University https://theconversation.com/pregnancy-changes-the-brain-and-we-are-only-beginning-to-understand-how-and-why-277565

Researchers scanned the brains of 127 first-time mothers five times: once before conception, twice during pregnancy, and again at one and six months after giving birth. It is the largest study of its kind ever conducted. Brain imaging studies that follow the same people across pregnancy – with scans before conception and after birth – are extraordinarily difficult to run. Researchers must identify women planning to conceive, begin scanning before pregnancy begins, and then track them across months of physiological upheaval.

4. An atmospheric and well-illustrated piece by Liam Denning for Bloomberg Opinion, Finland Is Ready for Russia. Is Anyone Else? https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2026-opinion-finland-is-ready-russia-arctic/

This is where the West ends. Drive northeast from the Lapland village of Salla for 20 minutes, and route 82 runs into a closed chain-link gate. “Don’t touch,” warns a sign in Finnish. Beyond, up a gentle slope, looms Russia. Finns used to drive across here to fill up on half-price gasoline. That was before Russia started pushing migrants across the two countries’ roughly 830-mile border as human weapons in a hybrid war and then attacked Ukraine. Sealed in 2023, the crossing was deserted when I stopped there on a bright winter morning. Just a lonely stretch of road through Finland’s endless boreal forest, cut short by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s newest Arctic frontier with its oldest adversary.

5. And, finally and with fingers crossed it’s still open access, Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, made available by The Paris Review, where it was first published, to coincide with Clint Bentley’s film of the book being nominated for an Oscar on Sunday https://www.theparisreview.org/fiction/396/train-dreams-denis-johnson

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