Author of Public Lives, One of Us, School Wars, Life Lessons and others. Working on two new writing projects.
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Articles by Melissa Benn
Exam Nation — Sammy Wright on how the school system is failing students
Sammy Wright is the latest representative of an interesting cohort: high flyers who have gone into teaching in state schools and have...
A Goldsmiths Diary
These are desperate times in the UK higher education system. Every week there are closures of degrees or departments, and sizeable redundancies. Disproportionately it is the arts, humanities and social sciences that are affected, a consequence of their downgrading in recent years. The frequency with which common-sense opinion pieces in the tabloid press have questioned (and often ridiculed) the value of the liberal education prepares the ground for so many of these cuts.
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What is included in my trial?
A Cold War Tragedy
A Cold War Tragedy Posted on August 12, 2021 Melissa will be in conversation with Anne Sebba about her new book, ‘Ethel Rosenberg – A Cold War Tragedy.’ Weds 15th September 2021, 5-6pm, in the Robert Graves Tent at the Wimbledon Book Festival. More information here.
In conversation with Ed Miliband
Posted on June 19, 2021 Inspired and informed by his hugely popular podcast, Reasons to be Cheerful, Ed Miliband’s new book, Go Big: How To Fix Our World, shows us that whilst the challenges we face as a society are daunting, solutions to them already exist.
Putting the special back into special needs.
I can still vividly remember Michael Gove’s first speech to the House of Commons as Secretary of State for Education in 2010. A blast of oratory in which he charged the outgoing New Labour government of failing poor children with talent. During Labour’s 13 years in office, Gove thundered, on average only 45 children on free school meals had won a place at Oxford or Cambridge – a ‘shameful record’.
Melissa Benn in zoom-free conversation with John Bercow
Posted on April 1, 2021 Saturday 24 April 2021 | 11:15am Order! Order! Former Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, talks candidly about his no-holds barred memoir Unspeakable with Melissa Benn. This event will be filmed in London in the days before it is shown on-line – so no zoomy-ness involved, just real people in real conversation. But John Bercow will be available at the time of transmission to answer peoples’ questions arising from the discussion.
Melissa Benn | writer & campaigner | News & events
Levelling up: Histories, Cultures, Challenges Posted on May 15, 2021 Melissa Benn will be taking part in this discussion on May 17th 17:30 pm – 19:00 pm Online-via Zoom: book via this link https://www.history.ac.uk/events/levelling-histories-cultures-challenges The government’s ‘Levelling Up’ agenda comes at a time when Covid has revealed, and often increased, existing structural inequalities in the UK.
Vindication: A Life Of Mary Wollstonecraft
We have updated our Privacy Policy Please take a moment to review it. By continuing to use this site, you agree to the terms of our updated Privacy Policy. Gordon's moving tribute brings alive the depth and complexity of the woman, and the intellectual debt that generations of Wollstonecraft's political daughters owe her to this day.' Melissa Benn - The Independent 'Gordon's biographical method is exciting.
How coronavirus could shift the toxic poverty narrative
Less shaming and more empathy is needed by Melissa Benn / May 5, 2020 / Leave a comment Food bank usage is up during the Covid-19 lockdown Credit: PA images It is rare that the central argument of a book is so eerily transformed by events. If it had not been for the coronavirus, Mary O’Hara’s The Shame Game would have been respectfully received and tidily shelved alongside several other stringent assessments of the ugly politics of austerity.
episode 2 of BBC Radio 4's The Learning Revolution
The second episode of Alex Beard’s The Learning Revolution for BBC Radio 4 falls short of asking the big questions about teaching’s present and future challenges, writes Melissa Benn Since he published Natural Born Learners in 2018 Alex Beard has become something of a one-man explorer of education’s near future. In this second instalment of his Radio 4 series, he looks specifically at the challenge of teaching, and all the usual paradoxes come tumbling out.
We Need New Stories by Nesrine Malik — let the truth be told
When Nesrine Malik was a child growing up in Sudan, her grandmother told her stories about the house and lands that her grandfather had...
Wondering which books to read on your summer break? Here's some ideas from 6 education leaders
Are you wondering which books to read on your summer break? We asked six people in the education field to recommend two books (one ‘work’ and one ‘play’) that they’ve particularly enjoyed over the past 12 months.
Verso
Melissa Benn is a journalist, novelist and campaigner. She has written for the Guardian, the New Statesman, Public Finance, Cosmopolitan and the London Review of Books, among many others. Her writing on education includes Education and Democracy, co-edited with Clyde Chitty, and A Comprehensive Future: Quality and Equality for All Our Children, written with Fiona Millar.
Supporting Healthy Digital Platform Competition in the Georgian Agriculture Market
⇓ More from ICTworks Supporting Healthy Digital Platform Competition in the Georgian Agriculture Market By Guest Writer on August 15, 2018 When working in international markets, there is one golden rule to ensure sustainability: make sure your interventions do not distort markets. In small markets, such as Georgia, a country with less than 4 million people, 50 percent of which are self-employed in the agriculture industry, this is especially important.
Verso
Our education system has been damaged by politicians who have arrogantly imposed a regime of market-driven reforms. It is time to reframe education as an essential public good, one arising from a hunger to find more engaging ways to learn and the powerful imperative to make our society genuinely equal. In this timely and provocative essay, Melissa Benn argues for a National Education Service.
Education worth thinking about
The latest Green Paper in the UK on higher education puts ‘Student Choice’ as a top policy objective. But are there real choices for those who believe in “education for education’s sake”? In the first few months of this year a small London-based charity, The IF Project, invited applications for a 10-week course at a no-fixed-abode “free university”.
Grammar Schools: schools that work for everyone?
Recorded on 17 May 2017 at Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building In response to the Government's May 2017 Schools White Paper, the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) and Times Educational Supplement (TES) host "The Big General Election Grammar Schools Debate" on whether there is a place for grammar schools in the UK education system. Will they work for everyone, not just the privileged few?
VersoBooks.com
Our universities are at breaking point. Governments have systematically imposed new procedures regulating funding, governance, and assessment, forcing them to behave more like business enterprises in a commercial marketplace than centres of learning. This week on the Verso blog, writers respond to Speaking of Universities, Stefan Collini's cogent analysis of the marketisation of universities.
Standing on the shoulders of Summerhill School
From the beginning of my work with Summerhill, initially as a fulltime science teacher, I worked with the children to share their experiences with other schools, teachers and universities. " Then there is a book by Robert Peal called Progressively Worse: the Burden of Bad Ideas in Education which the Daily Mail enjoyed publicising.
The Uberfication of teaching
This is part two of an interview with Graham Brown-Martin. Part one is here. One of things I see happening now, within the public sector, in a sense, is an attack on ‘the commons’. By ‘the commons’, I mean things like education and healthcare, the judicial system, law enforcement, which should rightly be owned by the people.
Silent lunches: how do we get to educational reform in the US?
“As you well know, there is a lot of inequality in American schools and schooling… and a whole emphasis on standardised tests, especially in schools of the kids of the poor.” Lynda Stone spoke at the “John Dewey’s “Democracy and Education” 100 Years On” conference at the University of Cambridge, 2016. This is transcribed from her 15-minute talk. “I don’t want to be the hopeless one. I want to talk about the process in the context of the US today.
Democracy education under siege and now Trump
“Build the Wall! Build the Wall! BUILD THE WALL!” Update from the US professor of the philosophy of education who was president of the John Dewey Society 2009 - 2011. In early November, Donald Trump won the election if not the popular vote. The next morning a video appeared on national news sites of youth at a Michigan middle school yelling at their peers: “Build the Wall! Build the Wall! BUILD THE WALL!” The election clearly had touched young people.
Our crisis of democracy is a crisis of education
From Trump to climate change, our children must be prepared for the huge challenges of this century. So why are we still preparing them for a nineteenth-century industrial culture which doesn’t exist? This is part one of an interview with Graham Brown-Martin. I think that the crisis of democracy we’re experiencing at the moment does have some roots within education provision.
Melissa Benn: Is politics and policy too toxic for Dewey?
This is the transcript of a talk delivered by Melissa Benn at the “John Dewey’s “Democracy and Education” 100 Years On” conference at the University of Cambridge, 2016. I am delighted to be here. I feel a little bit apprehensive, because you are an audience of academics and thinkers.
Degrees of privilege
We pretend that the university entry system is broadly meritocratic. But in Britain the privately educated child of a professional family is three times more likely to get into a top university than the child of poorer parents. It will take radical reforms to reverse that. “A university education will be free to every man and woman …” predicted John Elfreth Watkins in 1900 for the Ladies' Home Journal, the highest-selling US women’s magazine of the day.
Verso
For the crackle, scratch and foxing: Reflections of a former postie Matt Kerr, a former postal worker and current union organiser, on the value of post and the parallels between his experiences and Long Live the Post Horn! Verso Books 23 August 2020 Reading List Work and Automation: Verso Student Reading A selection of Verso books addressing the relationship between technology, work and society: all 40% off until the end of September.
School Wars: The Battle for Britain’s Education
Like many other Western countries, the United Kingdom is experiencing a trend toward privatization and fragmentation in education. In this short book, which has sparked considerable debate in the United Kingdom, Benn documents the expansion of private and semi-private schools that benefit from tax-exempt status and subsidies yet are disproportionately populated by the children of the wealthy.
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