Background

These are brief quick-and-dirty outlines of ideas which tend to come up in discussion, but which I don't always have time to expand upon: it seemed like a good idea to have somewhere to point people to:

Basic and other roles  This is a useful if ancient model, which I find particularly relevant in a discussion of equal opportunities.

Language Codes  Basil Bernstein does not seem well-served on the web, and his ideas on language codes are frequently misunderstood, so here is my not-entirely-reliable reading.

Shame-Culture and Guilt-Culture  As I write, yet another political "scandal" is working its way through the piranha press. (It doesn't matter which one-there is always one in the UK. We need them to keep the "newspapers" in business.) However, few people involved or commentating seem to be aware that such happenings follow a distinct set of cultural rules, which were identified long ago: here they are.

Riesman model of Education and Culture  Here's another golden oldie: I explain why I find it such a useful organising model

Competence, Proficiency and beyond  This is an attempt to explicate the "ludic" quality which seems to me to characterise the expert practitioner. It draws on Dreyfus and Dreyfus but seeks to go on from there...

Gradgrind  Unfortunately, one of the problems of our fragmented culture is that passing references do not always mean much to some people. Thomas Gradgrind is the archetypal philistine teacher, in Dickens' Hard Times. Since the book is out of copyright (and I don't believe anyone should be forced to read Dickens, who may have been revolutionary in his day, but is grossly over-rated in my moderately well-informed opinion), here is the relevant excerpt.

Introduction to Action Maze  Now for something rather different: the introductory page explains it all.