What does it mean to be an educated person?
Speech by Michael Gove....
The Secretary of State speaks to the Brighton conference on setting higher expectations for every child. Originally given at Brighton College. This is the text of the speech as drafted, which may differ slightly from the delivered version.
Truth is beauty and beauty is truth
Parents, it is sometimes alleged, don’t want choice in education. Well, many of us here are parents, so let me pose some choices.
You come home to find your 17-year-old daughter engrossed in a book. Which would delight you more - if it were Twilight or Middlemarch?
You see your son is totally absorbed, hunched over the family laptop. You steal a look over his shoulder - and what would please you more - to see him playing Angry Birds, or coding?
Your son says he wants to spend more time with one particular group of friends. Which would be more inspiring - because he wants to improve his pool or because they’re in the cadets and he wants to join?
Your daughter says she wants to compete with the very best, but which is more wonderful - on Big Brother or at the Rio Olympics?
False choices? I suspect those of us who are parents would recognise that there are all too many children and young people only too happy to lose themselves in Stephanie Meyer, while away hours flinging electronic fowl at virtual pigs, hang out rather than shape up and dream of fame finding them rather than them pursuing glory.
And I also suspect that all of us who are parents would be delighted if our children were learning to love George Eliot, write their own computer programmes, daring to take themselves out of their comfort zone and aspiring to be faster, higher or stronger.
Unless, of course, we write for Guardian Education.
Read more... (DfE - 9 May)