Tag Archives: Freedom

The liberating power of education

Posted by Dennis Hayes -

In his Letter,The Liberating Power of Education, Harley argues that education has always had a tension between the practical or technical application of skills and the broader appreciation of a liberal approach to knowledge. Our contemporary aversion to teaching ‘the best that has been thought and known’, he argues, represents a long-standing fear of what the masses might do with unbridled access to education. Teaching is an act of faith, he says, one which must be free to produce new and exciting ideas.

Download a free PDF, or buy, Harley’s Letter from the Academy of Ideas

Chair: Dennis Hayes

(Copies of our Salon booklet will be available free to all those attending)

Date, Time and Venue: Thursday 10 March, 18.30 (for 19.00), in the Brunswick Inn, Derby.

Tickets (£3 plus fee) on Eventbrite.

About Harley

Harley has worked in education publishing for over 20 years and is an organiser of the Academy of Ideas Education Forum. He writes and lectures on learning through the ages and blogs at historyofeducation.net. He has written about pre-state education from Ancient Greece to the Industrial Revolution for the Routledge History of Education (forthcoming).

What Women Want: Fun, Freedom and an End to Feminism

Posted by Dennis Hayes -

Our first Salon of 2018 will be the East Midlands launch of Ella Whelan’s brilliant new polemic What Women Want: Fun, Freedom and an End to Feminism. Not to be missed! Here are some comments on her book:

“The brave, bold Ella Whelan is a leading voice of a rising generation of young warriors for free speech, which is lamentably threatened from both the left and the right in today’s world”. — Camille Paglia“And now, in this brilliant book, she puts the case for female autonomy against feminist victimhood. Some feminists will no doubt cry ‘anti-feminist!’, but this would be inaccurate; in fact, this book is in the tradition of the Suffragettes, the female explorers, the female workforce and other female pioneers of the 20th and 21st centuries who demanded that society should mine rather than suppress women’s potential. All women and men who value women’s liberation should read this”. — Brendan O’Neill (from the Foreword).Postgraduate student James Keith will chair this discussion.

Date, Time and Venue: Wednesday 24 January at 7 PM in The Brunswick Inn, Derby. Tickets £3.50 on Eventbrite. Book early as we are certain to sell out.

Continue reading …

Reclaiming freedom in education and society

Posted by Dennis Hayes -

On Tuesday 17 March at 7:00PM in Hallmark Hotel Derby, Midland Road, DE1 2SQ Derby, the East Midlands Salon is hosting a discussion entitled ‘Reclaiming freedom in education and society’

Liberal education and the progress of knowledge depend on tolerance of the widest possible diversity of ideas and expressions of those ideas. As Mill described in On Liberty, revolutions in ideas depend on tolerating even the most countercultural arguments, and personal growth depends on confronting even the most seemingly false ideas. Continue reading …

Fiction, fatwa and fear: writing after The Satanic Verses

Posted by Dennis Hayes -

Book BurningThe 26 September 2013 sees the 25th anniversary of the publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. Rushdie has argued that it could not be published today. Have publishers become cowardly and writers taken to consciously or unconsciously engaging in self-censorship? The furore over the publication of Monica Ali’s Brick Lane or more recently of Sherry Jones’ The Jewel of Medina showed the politically correct watchdogs in the academy are at the forefront of the modern literary censorship as much as any mad mullahs. Continue reading …