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From
the Director |
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Congratulations to all who took part in the Debating
Matters Competition National Final. Queen
Elizabeth Sixth Form College from Darlington won
the team competition and Rachel Greener from
Elfed High School won 'Best Invdividual'
after a long weekend of hard-fought debate at King's
College London and the National Portrait
Gallery, showing that substance matters more than
style and that teenagers need not be patronised. All of the
weekend's sessions have been recorded and will be available
on Fora
TV over the course of the next month. To hear some of
the debaters' arguments, head over to Friction.TV
where 'vox-pops' recorded over the weekend will be available
as of the end of next week.
October's Battle of Ideas festival is taking
shape, with over 80 speakers already agreed to speak in nearly
70 sessions, with many more to come. We can also announce
this year's headline partners as Pfizer,
The Times, the Royal College of Art,
the Economic and Social Research Council
and BT. The Battle of Ideas website
is currently being redeveloped but you can keep up to date
with festival news on the temporary site.
Finally, we need your help to keep organising the most intellectually
challenging events around - your financial support is invaluable.
For those of you who are IoI associates, we appreciate your
generous support. For those of you who aren't yet, joining
as an IoI associate will help us expand our
output, allowing the IoI to continue expanding the boundaries
of political debate.
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NEWS
AND EVENTS |
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IoI
MANCHESTER SALON
Tuesday 10 July
The first meeting of the Institute of Ideas’ Manchester
Salon will be a book discussion. Physician, philosopher and
writer, Raymond Tallis will introduce Ian McEwan’s Saturday.
The discussion is open to IoI associates and other attendees
by invitation. For further information, please email Hilary
Salt at manchestersalon@instituteofideas.com. |
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SCIENCE
EDUCATION PROJECT & EDUCATION FORUM
The
Corruption of the Curriculum, a new book examining
recent developments in education, features contributions from
Michele Ledda and Shirley Lawes, members of the IoI Education
Forum, and a reproduction of David Perks' essay, What
is science education for?, originally published by the
Institute of Ideas in a book
of the same title.
Dennis Hayes of the IoI Education
Forum has assessed some of the arguments presented in
the book in the Education
Forum Opinion section and Michele Ledda has published
a rebuttal to his critics on The Guardian's Comment
is Free blog. Watch Claire Fox News on 18
Doughty Street on 23 July when Claire will be joined by
contriubutors David Perks, Shirley Lawes and Michele Ledda,
and editor Robert Whelan, to discuss the state of education
today. |
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ACADEMICS
FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM
The AFAF statement of academic freedom was the focus of a
discussion in the latest edition of The
Philosophers’ Magazine.
The statement can be signed on-line here |
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MORE
SCIENCE EDUCATION:
SCIENCE
TEACHERS IN REVOLT!
Thursday 5 July, 7pm @ Plumbers Arms SW1
The introduction of the new science GCSE curriculum this year
has not gone down with teachers as well as it might. An open
letter posted to the AQA examination board and the government
found its way onto the internet, with two petitions being
subsequently lodged on the 10 Downing Street website, which
can be signed here.
An informal group
of teachers and academics has been formed to look at the possibility
of developing a public face to the reaction against the new
science curriculum. The first meeting
is on Thursday 5 July in London.
For details contact mail@davidperks.com |
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OTHER
NEWS AND EVENTS |
*IN
TRANSIT* EVENT:
DEBATABLE!
THE ROLE OF THE ARTS IN PUBLIC SPACE
Tuesday 24 July, 6.30pm @ Westbourne Studios W10
Tiffany Jenkins will lead a discussion focusing on the purpose
and value of permanent and temporary works of art in public
space. Topics for debate will include the use of the arts
as a back door consultation tool; funding of the arts to deliver
community development or social work priorities; or as a quick
fix community cohesion exercise.
Event
information |
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BARB
JUNGR SINGS...
Barb Jungr, IoI associate and speaker at this year’s
Battle of Ideas ‘Battle over Music’ strand of
debates, will be performing ‘Barb Jungr sings Bob Dylan’
at the Almeida Theatre on Monday 23 July. |
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'This
book does something different from the mass of works bemoaning the overwork
and stress caused by an over-assessed and bureaucratised curriculum. It
exposes the anti-intellectual political manipulation of the curriculum
that is destroying education'
Dennis Hayes, Joint President University and College Union,
2006-7
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IoI
FORUMS |
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BOOK
CLUB |
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MEDIA |
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APPEARANCES |
Claire
Fox will be speaking at an ‘Inter-faith conversation’
at the Local
Government Association annual conference on Wednesday
4 July.
Claire Fox will be speaking at the Hebden
Bridge Festival on 'Freedom of Expression' on 21 July.
Shirley Dent will be presenting ''…thou read'st black
where I read white': William Blake, the far-right and freedom
of artistic expression' at the Blake
at 250 3-day international conference on William Blake,
on 31 July at York University.
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VIDEO
/ AUDIO
Visit
the IoI Media
Archive for audio recordings of forums and events. |
Claire Fox will next be on the Moral
Maze on 11 and 18 July, BBC Radio 4, 8pm.
Claire Fox News will next be on internet TV channel 18
Doughty Street on 9 July with a special edition on the
Debating Matters Competition. The following show will be on
23 July, discussing the state of education today. The previous
Claire
Fox News on 25 June was on India and China, ethical shopping,
and economic growth vs happiness.
Claire Fox will be a guest on the Anita
Anand show on BBC Radio Five Live on 25 July, 10pm.
Claire Fox will be on Up Front on 18
Doughty Street on 17 and 26 July, 7pm.
A video of Claire Fox’s opening remarks at the Unlock
Democracy session at this year’s Compass conference
on 9 June is available on YouTube.
Dolan Cummings will be on Up Front on 18
Doughty Street on 5 and 12 July.
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IN
THE PRESS |
Carbon
rationing: a valuable way of cutting carbon emissions?,
Claire Fox, Science & Public Affairs, June
No
strings attached! Why Arts Funding should say no to Instrumentalism,
Claire Fox, Arts & Business Future Culture Symposium
(pdf)
Claire Fox was cited in the new BBC impartiality report From
Seesaw to Wagon Wheel: Safeguarding impartiality in the 21st
century (pdf) published 18 June.
Claire Fox was quoted on BBC
News online in relation to the FOREST dinner on 25 June
marking the introduction of the smoking ban.
Digging
up the roots of the IPCC, Tony Gilland, spiked,
28 June
Why
we must stop deferring to authority, Dolan Cummings, spiked,
15 June
Shirley Dent writes regularly for the Guardian Arts
& Entertainment Blog. See her most recent article, Burning
pages, 29 June.
Shirley’s Guardian blogs are archived here.
Jane Sandeman, convener of the IoI Parents Forum, was quoted
in Is
it ’cause I is middle class? The Times, 20
June.
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This
month's highlights on Culture Wars include an essay
by teacher Michele Ledda, who argues that 'personalised learning'
devalues education and diminishes citizenship. Plus Barb Jungr
on Scott
Walker, Andrew Haydon on The
Lord of the Rings on stage, and more reviews of current
books, films
and exhibitions.
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‘Surely
the job of journalism is sometimes (shock horror) to challenge the audience,
to actually make them think what they didn’t think before. If you’re
just going to give them a mirror back of themselves, or repeat what you
think will make you popular with them, you’re dishonouring the audience,
and it shows a lack of nerve in journalism'
Claire
Fox
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DEBATING
MATTERS |
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NATIONAL
FINAL
Congratulations to Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College
from Darlington who after a weekend of hard fought argument
have won the 2006/07 Institute of Ideas and Pfizer Debating
Matters Competition. Out of the 119 schools that took part
in this year's competition, only eight made it to the three
day final at King's College London and the
National Portrait Gallery. Well done to all
of the students who took part and who helped to up the intellectual
stakes of the debates from the floor as much as on the panels.
The judges and speakers who took part over the weekend commented
on the high standard of debates with Mark Walport, director
at the Wellcome Trust, saying that 'it's
been an absolutely terrific afternoon of debates. It was quite
clear from the day's discussions that what we were dealing
with was more about substance than about style.'
The winning students took home some great prizes, including
£7000 worth of books from Hodder Murray
for their schools, dualdect phones from Skype,
books from Encylopaedia Britannica, membership
and free overnight stay at the Youth Hostelling Association
and magazine subscriptions to total:spec
and prospect magazines.
Thank you again to all our other sponsors (the Wellcome Trust,
Pfizer, Hodder Murray, the Medical Research Council, Canterbury
Christ Church University, EESCN, University of Newcastle,
Manchester's Museum of Science and Industry, Natural Environment
Research Council, University of Leicester) for all their support
this year.
Winner: Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College (Darlington)
Runner-up: Elfed High School (Buckley, North Wales)
Best Individual: Rachel Greener, Elfed High School
Highly Commended: Charlie Winstanley, Blackburn College
Commended: Sam Burt, Harvey Grammar School (Folkestone)
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VIDEO
/ AUDIO |
Ardingly College and Harvey Grammar School competed on the
BBC
Sussex breakfast show ‘hobby’ quiz with Neil
Pringle on 26 June
Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College were on Alpha
FM on Thursday 28 June on news bulletins throughout the
day
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