New evidence on childrens’ voices and rights. But does DfE get it?

post by ROBIN ALEXANDER
Fellow of Wolfson College at the University of Cambridge

Children, their World, their Education. The basic premise of the Cambridge Primary Review (CPR) was as clear in the title of its final report as in its choice of investigative themes and questions: education is meaningful only when educators understand and coherently respond to the nature and needs of children and the society and world in which they are growing up. Mastering the practical skills of teaching is a necessary but not sufficient condition, and as an educational rationale mantras like ‘effective teaching’ take us to the nearest 3Rs test but no further.

Sex and Relationships Education – making the difference to difference

post by DEBBIE EPSTEIN
University of Roehampton

Catherine MacKinnon has famously argued that feminist claims based on either the ‘difference’ between or the ‘sameness’ of the genders are flawed. Rather, she suggests, what is important is dominance (MacKinnon 1987) – in the case of gender, male dominance. Gender, she says, is a matter of dominance, not difference.