education – Arena

16 Dec 2022

When professional mathematicians as a body declare a school mathematics curriculum to be nonsense, this need not be accepted as unassailable truth.

Wrong Way, Go Back: Education, Social Class, Déjà Vu and Dread

Arena Online

Paul Gardner

24 Feb 2022

The scale of the gap is evident in the capacities of different schools to resource educational provision, with a school on one side of the divide building a second theatre and a school on the other side wondering if it can afford to replace a worn carpet.

The imminent crisis of mind

Arena Online

Paul Gardner

27 Jan 2022

Teachers across multiple settings are reporting much the same thing: that young children are now starting school lacking the level of oral language of their counterparts a decade ago.

Alan Roberts Prize: What if Ivan Illich Were Elected Mayor?

Arena Quarterly no. 7

Samuel Alexander, Brendan Gleeson

Sep 2021

The winning essay for 2021 in Arena’s annual Alan Roberts Prize.

Systemic reckonings and online learning

Arena Online

John Ryan

3 May 2021

The paradox of teaching then is that teachers are attempting to create contexts for students to think for themselves, to stay sane in an age of division while operating within an institutional structure designed to create compliant and obedient workers, a goal that is continually reinforced by the state for neoliberal purposes.

‘We are disposable’: Casual work, low pay and low power

Arena Online

Orlando Forbes, Andrew Jones

25 Feb 2021

By deliberately misclassifying these workers as casuals, employers have been able to satisfy their ongoing labour needs, benefit from wage penalties, and withhold entitlements at the same time. Who should be regarded as ‘double dipping’ under such circumstances?

School’s Off-Campus, But It Shouldn’t Be Out Completely

Arena Online

Sarah Bailey

13 Aug 2020

Maybe what we have to hold onto is the idea of education as a good in its own right, not a dreary task to be got out of the way before we start the fun stuff, or a series of obstacles to be navigated en route to job-readiness.

Towards Inanition: Diminishing the Humanities, Communications and Arts at Our Peril

Arena Online

Baden Offord

23 Jun 2020

Reason, rationality, calculation and measurement need to be transformed by empathy, compassion, imagination, dialogue, creativity and importantly the questioning of authority and power.

‘We’ve Been Sick for a While…’: English Language Education Industry’s Problems Run Deeper than COVID-19

Arena Online

Andrew Jones, Orlando Forbes

5 May 2020

Many have made the case that the COVID-19 pandemic poses an existential threat to English Language Intensive Courses for Overseas Students (ELICOS) and therefore to these jobs, students and institutions. Although this is nominally true, the crisis has revealed the unsustainable and unethical business practices on which ELICOS colleges have always depended.

"Placing his programs in the ‘radical centre’ is a misnomer