School Trips

When I was young we were told travel broadens the mind. Today, just before the Easter holiday, we find that travel broadens the profit margin for the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Last year, 40,000 children, with parents, played truant and went on holiday during term times. Might free schools(!) allow this liberty as being educationally, as well as economically, damn good (INa)SENSE?

Published!

My new book, "Free Schools??? That's the Spirit!" Will be published on February 23rd. You can pre-order it here:

Free Schools??? That's the Spirit!

My new book, Free Schools??? That's the Spirit! is now with the publishers, with publication expected within the next month. Here's the finalised cover and blurb. If you feel that kids can sometimes be better teachers than the adults in their lives, what price traditional education? If you feel that a degree is no longer a passport to rewarding employment read about what advantages a person-centred approach to whole-life learning can offer. If you're surrounded by people disillusioned with present systems of learning how about approaching your local bookseller to arrange a booksigning!

Free Schools??? That's the Spirit! ISBN: 9781843868965

Vital personalised choices are at the heart of Free Schools???
initiatives. Christopher Gilmore and Susan his visionary colleague
and single mother of three, have developed a cutting-edge à la carte
curriculum complementary to most prevailing systems. After
successfully piloting ‘My Identity Audit’ in public and private schools,
they developed a rich range of innovative educational exercises.
This book teems with well-argued and refreshingly provocative
ideas appealing to all optimists who see life as our best teacher.

Consider those who leave education without qualifications only
subsequently to excel in the arts or business. Others with degrees stack
supermarket shelves – if they can get a job at all. Not an entirely new
approach yet woven throughout are radical insights inviting
adventurous breakthroughs…!

Christopher and Susan present scores of multi-dimensional
strategies to stimulate the love of learning in each spirited
individual, with an emphasis on wellbeing, peace and
sustainability. Th eir innovating team of experts now offers
training and courses under their rainbow umbrella of
INaSENSE Ltd (http://www.inasense.co.uk/).

By putting a happy heart before a hurting head, Free Schools??? places
students of all ages at the centre of all their learning choices. While
calling for fellow travellers, Christopher shows how independence of
Spirit guides us quicker to the goals we wish to achieve. So let’s feed all
of our unique gifts, he says, and daily uplift ourselves with the desire to
explore and ever improve our true inner Self (with a capital S!).

Update

As a director of INaSENSE, I'm celebrating the launch of our new website here. I'm also happy to report that my latest book, "Free Schools ??? - That's the Spirit!" has been accepted for publication by Vanguard Press, part of the Pegasus group. The latest it might appear is next May but hopefully it may be sooner. Any reader of this post bursting to give their views on free schools and/or faith schools please let's share thoughts.

Dead Brainy?

Is standardised good grammar potentially too generalised to facilitate individual expressiveness - like fundamentalist dogma?

A Quaker lady, not known to me, is reported to have suggested that the word "god" was more a verb than a noun. Any comments? After all, Toby Young's West London Free School is proposing all children learn Latin up to the age of 14. Is this an imposition on the free will of students? How can a dead language help us to be more alive in the 21st Century, let alone lead you to free expression?

Free Schools?

Thanks Marcus. Sorry, can't remember you surname, only your face, just about. Buzzing after hearing your message. You're now about the third person who has spent three paragraphs praising my novel "Alice in Welfareland". Given that Alice, like Luther, is a reformer in my book; given again that the equivalent of the boss of Ofsted is characterised as Humpty Dumpty and yet again given that my Alice like thousands of current schoolchildren has become a refusenik. It's when she truants that she meets the Fat Educator on his wall, too fat to see the writing on the wall below his bulge. He takes a fancy to Alice but not to tract. Again, like Luther, she's banging on about the need to chage oppressive systems, mainly of course prescriptive education limiting love of learning and love of making choices and watching their consequences.

As a sequel to "Alice" I have now written "FREE SCHOOLS ??? - THAT'S THE SPIRIT". Thinking of one of my many playshops, the one entitled "ASTRAL ALICE, THE FIRST INDIGO CHILD?" This approach, inspired by Lewis Carroll and his love of fun and fantasy in "lessens" has been amplified and updated by me, as in the novel. Anyone out there interested in a Lewis Carroll type approach to education in or out of schools, colleges, universities and hopefully not free schools, please let's share more fun through creativity in a collegiate way that won't exclude anyone for any reason. If love is inclusive, why should we?

Free Schools. A good or bad idea?

Is it time for pupil power along the lines of a junior version of the rebellion in the Arab countries, namely a grass roots uprising? Alternatively as with the schisms that happen within all religions, will individualised mission statements lead to élitism? And if so is the whole process in danger of becoming fundamentalist? So far a "one-size-fits-all" system is failing to nurture uniqueness and encourage specialisation. Can the ideal education system ever be achieved by politicians allowing more personal freedoms?

All creative comments welcomed.