Some reading, watching and listening for the weekend …

1. A blog post by Barnaby Lenon from the University of Buckingham on the use of textbooks – or not – in the UK https://educationblog.buckingham.ac.uk/2021/05/16/why-are-english-schools-not-using-textbooks-by-professor-barnaby-lenon/

“In England 10% of 10-year olds are issued textbooks; in South Korea – 99%. In secondary science 8% of pupils in England are issued with textbooks compared to 88% in South Korea, 92% in Taiwan. Why are English schools not using textbooks?”

Other posts here https://educationblog.buckingham.ac.uk/

2. Another Australian TV programme on education, this time from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), on Why Finland’s schools outperform most others across the developed world  https://youtu.be/7xCe2m0kiSg

3. Another ABC film, about Eddie Woo, the maths teacher you wish you’d had in high school https://youtu.be/SjIHB8WzJek

and here’s Eddie’s TEDxSidney talk, Mathematics is the sense you never knew you had, in which he suggests that “I love mathematics!” is a great conversational gambit for the next party you go to https://youtu.be/PXwStduNw14

4. Two pieces with Irina Dumitrescu from Cologne University:

the first one an LRB podcast where Irina talks about the book ‘Memory Speaks: On losing and reclaiming language and self’ by Julie Sedivy (31:35 into the podcast, if you’re not interested in Antonio Tabucchi) https://play.acast.com/s/tlsvoices/aconstantstateofforeignness

and the second a ‘long read’ of hers about daughters and fathers and students and professors and fathers who are professors https://longreads.com/2021/11/17/the-professor/

5. And, finally and thanks to Amy Lightfoot, a new one to add to our list of wacky acronyms: EAGLE countries. Is your country an EAGLE? Find out here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerging_and_growth-leading_economies