Today is also a new socks day

Today is a day of excitement for look what has come through the post!

The whole world will be your enemy, prince with a thousand enemies. And when they catch you, they will smash you with a hammer. But first they must catch you.

Education is chronically underfunded. Deliberately for decades now and no amount of moving the deck chairs about will make it better.

I have long thought that most “wow golden ratio” stuff can be summed up by “some things are approximately one and a half times as big as other thing”. There are enough actual great Fibofacts without that (e.g. every fifth fibonacci number is divisible by 5$

Watched University Challenge with my dad last night for the first time in about 20 years. Was pleased with myself for getting the maths questions right. Then I remembered I am a professor of mathematics. Took the shine off.

A thought in #HolyWeek. When we're distant from others, our minds create pictures of them. If they've hurt us, those pictures become monsters. Perhaps the difference between righteous indignation & irrational grudge-bearing is down to whether we're resenting the person, or the projection?

More than 1,500 mathematicians are demanding that their field’s most prestigious meeting be moved from the U.S.

My favourite proverb is Swedish "Eksamen er den flittige elevs fest" - exams are the party of the well-prepared student. Convincing students to be well-prepared so they can enjoy the party is an eternal struggle. This assembly was my attempt a few years ago: james-handscombe.co.uk/scholarship/...

One of the reasons for the school not keeping a small sixth form is that they make a loss on it. Because the Academy funding formula is based on pupil numbers, not subjects offered.

It’s difficult to express how harmful the country’s current approach to sixth form education is, that at the moment of greatest impact we stop investing in the productivity of our young people and encourage them to see themselves as part-timers, only partially involved and included.

Good letter in response to the frustrating but predictable post 16 funding announcement.

You would all be going mental about this if it was a Muslim school. It’s a Christian school and I suspect the Daily Mail isn’t going to scream about how they’re destroying British Values.

It’s difficult to express how harmful the country’s current approach to sixth form education is, that at the moment of greatest impact we stop investing in the productivity of our young people and encourage them to see themselves as part-timers, only partially involved and included.

So, James, how do you suggest we reform the upper house? Well, I’m glad you asked. 1) Keep current life peers (as of today, no packing it at the last minute), we’re not short of the things 2) Replenish the supply through a number of channels as follows:

William Butler Yeats gazing in the direction of Bethlehem:

Eric Williams’ Capitalism and Slavery is compelling, thorough and, in the best traditions of scholarship, niche, nerdy and nuanced. Now to find Seymour Drescher’s refutation!

So, James, how do you suggest we reform the upper house? Well, I’m glad you asked. 1) Keep current life peers (as of today, no packing it at the last minute), we’re not short of the things 2) Replenish the supply through a number of channels as follows:

It really feels to me as though we’ve got ourself into the worst of worlds here. An upper chamber appointed for life by the government of the time is not a democratic institution -

I do sometimes do mathematics in assemblies (it’s quite hard without a blackboard at hand) - perhaps I need to revisit this challenge, both for the perplexity on the faces of the majority and the fist-pumps of joy from the enlightened handful james-handscombe.co.uk/esoterica/44...

The giants of Rabelais, Pantagruel and Gargantua are old friends: here they help me in my attempt to be felicitously daring in dealing with some problematic behaviour (tackling such things without being preachy is a common challenge for assemblies, I think) james-handscombe.co.uk/scholarship/...

We want to grow and selling out again would really help. If you bought a first edition and liked it please say. Here's a wonderful review from the lovely @kayeinglis.bsky.social ko-fi.com/post/Book-Re...

It refers to this xkcd: xkcd.com/406/ I particularly enjoy the statistical analysis of the author’s wildly swerving train of thought‘s flirtation with coherence - there are modern politicians who would benefit from the same attention. Ah, nostalgia for the days when this was just the internet.

I was looking for an assembly on academic honesty and couldn’t find one on the website so I pulled one out of the archives on being scrupulous - it doesn’t have the AI content I’d include now (perhaps I need to have another go to update it). james-handscombe.co.uk/scholarship/...

I was looking for an assembly on academic honesty and couldn’t find one on the website so I pulled one out of the archives on being scrupulous - it doesn’t have the AI content I’d include now (perhaps I need to have another go to update it). james-handscombe.co.uk/scholarship/...

Confidence is always more attractive than fear.

There are so few books that it’s inappropriate for kids to read if they can understand the words and are interested enough to do so. Rather than censoring our libraries to them we should be flinging the doors wide to all thst has been written:

Would love to know what’s actually happening in this school because it sounds like there is a real problem with the way “safeguarding” is being implemented and perhaps even being abused by people with their own agenda.

She's back. Green life pouring back in. The old ways are open. Summer is on its way.

This is one of my favourites.

Gibbet Cross. A Willerby Story. Podcast episode. 6 minutes with original music. Come find us. willerby.substack.com/p/gibbet-cro...

2/2.. and the article falls into the familiar pattern of saying the problem is kids not "achieving their potential" rather than looking at the experiences of those who do find learning harder. Like the poor in the Bible, they will always be with us whatever we do.

I really think that society as a collective thinks people with learning disability and those who love them should lower expectations and accept they will have a worse life than others. They are the most marginalised group in society by far.

Amazing Opportunity! Harris Westminster is looking for a new Principal - taking charge of a school which is objectively the best one in the imaginable universe (I am also personally fond of it but don’t let that cloud my view). Message me if you want a chat www.harriscareers.org.uk/200/search-o...

Amazing Opportunity! Harris Westminster is looking for a new Principal - taking charge of a school which is objectively the best one in the imaginable universe (I am also personally fond of it but don’t let that cloud my view). Message me if you want a chat www.harriscareers.org.uk/200/search-o...

Sathnam says I should read this so it is muscling past two other half-read books.

More on Pericles, together with the importance of qualifications as a safety net and security blanket for when you go out into the wide world. james-handscombe.co.uk/esoterica/pe...

I’m sorry, doing this in a baseball cap sold by your campaign store is deliberately disrespecting the dead.

Ice hockey time! Steelers v Blades (we’re supporting the home team)

Just in Sheffield to check out the new water-fountain (whose social-media campaign went semi-viral with commentators raising such concerns as the risk of drongos using it as a urinal.) During my inspection I saw no such drongos.

The question of whether tomorrow will be better than yesterday, what we can do to make it so, and how we can have confidence that our hard work will be worthwhile (extensively scored by the marvellous Fleetwood Mac and visited by the ubiquitous Princess Bride) james-handscombe.co.uk/scholarship/...

Yeats is a staple of Harris Westminster assemblies - a long-standing favourite of mine supplemented by recommendations over the years. In this one I delight in both autumns and intertextuality, in the way reading increases your pleasure in reading. james-handscombe.co.uk/scholarship/...

I think that student/teacher relationships are interesting - particularly as the students grow older and we expect/require them to be more independent and responsible whilst still hoping they’ll do what they’re told (soundtrack by Aretha Franklin) james-handscombe.co.uk/kindness/tak...

Is this politician serious about selective education (a flow chart) Q: Are they standing in a secondary modern school saying “We will build dozens more schools like this.” Yes?: Maybe - you should at least hear them out and give respect to the head of that school.

As always: its not just grammars you're bringing back, its secondary moderns. And no one wants their kids to go to one. Which is a issue when 75% of kids will do so. Always missed in this debate. You're making the education of the majority worse, to privilage a small minority.

Sometimes students need to be urged to find joy, glee even, in their scholarship. With poetry from e e Cummings, a bit of Shakespeare and the glorious image of Stormzy sitting in a primary school surrounded by children crying ”we’re all peng tings” james-handscombe.co.uk/scholarship/...

My most controversial assembly to date: why I’d like to be called Mr Handscombe and why I think misogyny is bad all soundtracked by Taylor Swift and with bonus pirates. james-handscombe.co.uk/kindness/no-...

Learning is a challenge, it needs to be a challenge and it can be a challenge even when it doesn’t need to be. Students need to seek out challenge both strategically and serendipitously and to relish the stretch. With a lot of poetry & a little musical theatre. james-handscombe.co.uk/esoterica/sm...

One of those statements I’d expected to be uncontroversial.