Academy of Ideas

#EducationForum: After toppling statues, is it time to rewrite the curriculum?

EDUCATION FORUM: Should we welcome the de-colonisation of the curriculum as a way of correcting white Anglocentric bias and institutional racism? Or, however well-intentioned, will it encourage tokenistic box-ticking lessons? Might more diversity in the curriculum allow our BAME students to better see their identities affirmed or is this superficial gesture politics? The answers to these questions may depend on how we see schools. Are they microcosms of society and community, where diversity and identity are explicitly celebrated? Or are knowledge transfer and the curriculum a specific domain which should be immune from the external preoccupations of the world of politics and pressure groups? What should be the aim of a good education: to affirm a young person’s identity or take them beyond it? Tarjinder Gill, Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, Gemma Rees and Andre Ediagbonya-Davies discuss.

#LockdownDebates: From furlough to mask-wearing: can we ever return to normal?

LOCKDOWN DEBATE: How best can work and life return to normal post-Covid? Will normality ever return? Many argue we will have to learn to live with the ‘new normal’, accepting facemasks, elbow-bumps, and under-filled pubs. Some even celebrate it, arguing that office life is dreary compared with the extra time to spend with family and friends that working from home allows. Do we need to make a more full-throated case for a return to normal life, or is this too risky when the virus still causes deaths across the world? Should we celebrate the chance to re-evaluate social norms and working practices, or do we risk leading narrower, more parochial lives? What exactly has been missing during the lockdown – and why should we care? Dr Clare Gerada, Ben Habib, Norman Lewis, Rebecca Lowe and Anne-Elisabeth Moutet discuss.

#BookClub: Burning books and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451

BOOK CLUB: During a summer of pulling down statues and renaming buildings and streets, could the next step be the symbolic burning of books? Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is a book about the burning of books in a future society that no longer reads them. Professor Dennis Hayes explores the construction and vision of the book as well as what it may or may not contribute to our understanding of the present.

#LockdownDebates: How innovation works, with Matt Ridley

LOCKDOWN DEBATE: Matt Ridley discusses his new book in conversation with Rob Lyons. Innovation is key to economic growth and the improvement of human welfare. In his new book, How Innovation Works, Matt Ridley examines how new technologies, products and medical advances come about. He notes that innovation is more than mere invention - the aim is not simply to create an interesting new device, for example, but to produce something that is genuinely useful and widely available. What drives innovation? Is he right to conclude that we cannot speed up innovation through central direction? What are the barriers to greater innovation now and in the future? Matt Ridley and Rob Lyons discuss.

#SportscastOfIdeas: Sporting life beyond lockdown

SPORTSCAST OF IDEAS: For months the lockdown has starved us of sport. But in the past couple of weeks it has made something of a return. And not only are the back pages and sports channels sparking into life but football, rugby, tennis, cricket have all made the front pages too as they become entangled with the big issues of our times, whether the coronavirus pandemic or Black Lives Matter protests. Hilary Salt, Duleep Allirajah, Geoff Kidder, Rob Lyons and Alastair Donald discuss.

#LockdownDebates: Has the NHS had a good crisis?

LOCKDOWN DEBATE: The Covid-19 pandemic has put an unusual strain on health systems around the world. What can we learn from how the NHS is dealing with the crisis? Should we continue with a model of healthcare that is both publicly funded and (mostly) publicly provided? Could we learn from other countries’ systems that have coped better? Are the problems the NHS has faced a result of politicians not backing up supportive words with adequate funding? Or has the NHS’s place as our ‘national religion’ prevented an honest debate about its future Kate Andrews, Dr Lee Jones, Henrik Overgaard-Nielsen and Patrick Vernon discuss.

#Arts&SocietyForum: The shock of the old in Steven Berkoff’s ‘Greek’

ARTS & SOCIETY FORUM: When Patrick Marmion first saw Stephen Berkoff’s Greek as a student back in the Eighties at the Edinburgh Festival it blew his head off. A notoriously difficult man himself who has been accused of all sorts of sexual transgression, there are aspects of his writing which are gloriously uncomfortable for today’s audiences. And yet with all the repressive puritanism that’s accompanied the counter revolution against the liberalism of the Sixties and Seventies, too many writers have lost touch with their creative libidos and we have grown accustomed to a theatre that is led by bloodless, neutered moralists. Patrick Marmion and Wendy Earle discuss.

#BookClub: Sally Rooney’s Normal People and the triumph of intimacy

BOOK CLUB: Author Ella Whelan looks at how a modern interest in the politics of consent comes face to face with old-school romance in Sally Rooney's Normal People.