What is a Philistine? Strictly speaking, the Philistines were the Canaanite enemies of the Hebrews living along the southwestern coastline of present-day Gaza. However, its modern usage derives from the great Victorian cultural commentator Matthew Arnold who used the term to describe those who have no conception of the value of art, culture or spiritual… [Read More]
Asked this morning on BBC Breakfast if there was one history book he would recommend, historian and Observer columnist Tristram Hunt answered “Our Island Story”. This of course is H.E Marshall’s enchanting children’s history book which Civitas brought back to life in 2005. Since this single mention, just hours ago, sales of Our Island Story… [Read More]
A theatre on Broadway. A Hollywood actor starring at a blockbuster show. Demand is high and a waiting list is building up. But there it seems there aren’t enough ushers to put on a matinée performance, so the cast go and put on the show in a private members’ club instead – those who can’t… [Read More]
When the Civitas report on Blair’s failure to improve education over the last decades was released, Jim Knight MP squared off against Robert Coe, whose work we have cited, on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme (approximately 12 minutes in from the beginning). To the whole nation, he denied that exams had got any easier during… [Read More]
Three closely connected unresolved issues hold the key to peace abroad today and with that a resolution of the tensions currently posing the gravest threat to social cohesion at home. continued on the Centre for Social Cohesion blog.
It is a response utterly characteristic of New Labour: ‘deal’ with a problem – generally years late – by creating a completely new one. As we’d suspected, under Brown the direction of school reform is not going to change. For the last ten years, a critic’s template might well have been produced to pull out… [Read More]
Just as you think some kind of consensus has emerged to let things be in the NHS for the moment, another bombshell comes along. ‘Localise where possible, centralise where necessary’, runs the catchy slogan to the latest reform package aimed at the NHS. The report, undertaken by Sir Ara Darzi, the new junior health minister,… [Read More]
It will take some time to unpick the latest additions and subtractions of the National Curriculum. But the main theme this round seems to be lowering children’s horizons. More compulsory elements of the History Curriculum have been axed, reduced down to essentials like the Glorious Revolution in order to tie into the requirement for pupils… [Read More]
According to a report in today’s Times, the Public Accounts Committee has condemned the government for having ‘left itself “financially exposed” over the 2012 Olympic Games and at risk of letting costs spiral put of control’. The basis for its charge has been the government’s having let the original Olympic budget treble to £9 billion.… [Read More]
Today we hear from the BBC that a well-known and highly successful private girls’ school, Colston Girls’ School in Bristol, is taking steps to move into the state sector.