how corrupt is your country?

It's possibly the case that concentrated wealth leads to concentrated power.

And it seems to be the case that concentrated wealth and power lead to corruption.

Looking at corruption and extreme wealth, corruption fosters extreme wealth, acting as a greasing wheel that contributes to this unbalanced economic process. Therefore, billionaires face incentives to perform these types of acts which tend to perpetuate the corrupt system. However, legal mechanisms are also significant determinants of extreme wealth.

The idea that 'power corrupts' has been around for a long, long time, as shown in this look at power and its corrupting effects: the effects of power on human behavior and the limits of accountability systems.

The latest figures from Transparency International has something to say about the state of the world today, with a report out today: CPI 2025: Findings and insights

Britain doesn't fare very well: Corruption Perceptions Index 2025: UK Corruption concerns risk becoming 'new normal': Results published today show the UK's score has fallen to 70, down from 71 last year. This marks the UK's lowest point... The UK remains 20th in the global ranking for the third consecutive year, a significant decline from its top ten position back in 2017.

The United States has done even worse: US slips to 29th place in global corruption perception index: The United States is now tied with the Bahamas and is outranked by Uruguay, Lithuania and the United Arab Emirates... The ranking has been trending downward for the past 10 years. Last year, it took a hit when President Donald Trump paused investigations into corporate foreign bribery and cut enforcement of a foreign agent registration law and other moves, CNN reported.

The message is clear: Corruption Threatens Democracies Worldwide, Transparency International Warns: Corruption is surging worldwide, threatening public trust, enabling organized crime, and weakening democratic institutions, Transparency International warned Tuesday in its 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). Experts say shrinking civic space and faltering accountability are fueling the problem, putting governance—and citizens—at risk.

How is your country doing?

Corruption Perceptions Index 2025 - Transparency.org

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academic freedom in the united states

This blog has looked at press freedom around the world - but what about academic freedom?

In the United States, they seem quite determined in banning books: the school curriculum and critical race theory.

Here's a report from the latest Philosophy Now magazine in their News: February/March 2026:

Philosophy Professor Banned from Teaching Plato’s Symposium

More than 200 courses at Texas A&M University have been flagged or cancelled as part of a review called by the system board into course content related to race and gender, according to academics who contacted Inside Higher Education and other publications. The scope of the review has extended well beyond contemporary material. Alongside feminist writers and queer filmmakers, foundational figures in Western philosophy have been targeted.

Philosophy professor Martin Peterson, scheduled to teach his usual course on Contemporary Moral Problems, was instructed by university leadership to remove several passages by Plato from his syllabus. In an email from department chair Kristi Sweet, Peterson was given a choice: either eliminate “modules on race and gender ideology, and the Plato readings that may include these,” or else be reassigned to a different course. This effectively banned him from teaching Plato’s Symposium, a canonical Socratic dialogue focused on the nature of love that also discusses issues relating to patriarchy, masculinity and the human condition. Peterson objected strongly, and as the dispute escalated he wrote: “Your decision to bar a philosophy professor from teaching Plato is unprecedented … You are making Texas A&M famous – but not for the right reasons.” Despite his protest, Peterson ultimately agreed to revise the syllabus, replacing the censored material with lectures on free speech and academic freedom. Rather than ignoring the incident, Peterson plans to incorporate it directly into his course material: “I’m thinking of using this as a case study and assign some of the texts written by journalists covering the story to discuss,” he explained. “I want [students] to know what is being censored.”

And here's the reaction from the press at the time:

Professor Replaces Banned Plato Texts With Article on Censorship

Texas A&M Removes Plato from Introductory Philosophy Class

Is Plato woke? Texas A&M professor speaks out after being banned from teaching the Greek philosopher | WUWM 89.7 FM - Milwaukee's NPR

A&M demands prof remove sexual orientation and race from his philosophy class - Dallas Voice

There's an intensifying kind of threat to academic freedom: Watchful students serving as informants

Here's an interview with the professor - and a comment that follows:

I taught Philosophy for forty years before my retirement; and Professor Peterson has, ostensibly been charged with "corrupting the youth" as was one of the charges levied against Socrates. Thankfully, he is not likely to be silenced in in the same way as Socrates. And I applaud the good professor's sense of Socratic restraint in his apologia. The real harm is done to his students, who have been denied the chance to have him guide them to favoring philos over eros, as Socrates argues in his speech. I taught The Symposium many times, and can say that my students' reading it--and in open dialogue about the many perspectives on love that it poses--was one of the most transformative classroom experiences for students that I can recall. I can only hope that Professor Peterson's accusers will come out of their cave, and see the light.

INTERVIEW: Texas professor censored over Plato curriculum speaks out | The College Fix

What about academic freedom generally in the United States?

Examining threats to academic freedom in America and the world | Harvard Kennedy School

University of North Carolina moves to define academic freedom

40 strikes on academic freedom in 2025: Is US higher ed losing its nerve? - The Times of India

Explained: Why US universities are rejecting Trump’s controversial higher education compact

How University Governing Boards Can Protect the Independence of Colleges and Universities - Center for American Progress

5 growing threats to academic freedom - Yahoo News UK

And elsewhere?

Academic Freedom Index

How to protect your university against authoritarianism | THE Campus Learn, Share, Connect

Academic freedom under threat for more than 50% of world’s population - Index on Censorship

The UK ranks sixty-fourth in global academic freedom ranking, marking steady decline - Committee For Academic Freedom

But perhaps we should define the term first!

Academic freedom - Wikipedia

Committee For Academic Freedom - Homepage

What Is Academic Freedom — and Why It Matters Beyond the University - YouTube

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flowers in history, art and culture

If you're looking for a comprehensive look at the subject, there is the excellent piece: Flowers in Art History: A Comprehensive Guide Through Different Eras — Ellermann Florist and Flower Delivery

In Europe the 'craze' for a particular flower started with the Tulip mania which swept Holland in the 1630s: Tulip mania (Dutch: tulpenmanie) was a period during the Dutch Golden Age when contract prices for some bulbs of the recently introduced and fashionable tulip reached extraordinarily high levels... The introduction of the tulip to Europe is often attributed to Ogier de Busbecq, the ambassador of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, to Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, who sent the first tulip bulbs and seeds to Vienna in 1554 from the Ottoman Empire.

[picture from Wikipedia: A tulip, known as "the Viceroy" (viseroij), displayed in the 1637 Dutch catalogue Verzameling van een Meenigte Tulipaanen ("Collection of a Crowd of Tulips"). Its bulb was offered for sale for between 3,000 and 4,200 guilders (florins) depending on weight (gewooge). A skilled artisan at the time earned about 300 guilders a year.[1]

Staying in Holland, the Dutch Golden Age produced some fabulous paintings of flowers - such as this: Dutch flower painting: In detail | Dutch Flowers | National Gallery, London.

And the most famous flower painting of them all was painted by a Dutchman: BBC Four - Painting Flowers, Sunflower, Van Gogh's Sunflowers and Van Gogh’s Sunflowers: The unknown history - BBC Culture

But what about flowers in other cultures?

In communist China, the sunflower was the symbol of the people always turning their heads to the sun that was Mao: Ai Weiwei – Sunflower Seeds | Artist Interview | Tate - YouTube and Sunflower Seeds by Ai Weiwei Explained: Art, Activism, and Symbolism.

In Ukraine, it is the symbol of their country - and is the yellow of their sunflower-and-sky flag: The Meaning Behind Ukraine’s National Symbols - PostcodeUkraine.org

There's also a whole lot of culture behind cut flowers - and it's quite a big thing: What Are Cut Flowers: History, Meaning, and Arranging Guide - Plant Grower World.

If we are looking for the most exquisite tradition in arranging cut flowers, then we must turn to Ikebana: Ikebana (生け花, 活け花, 'arranging flowers' or 'making flowers alive') is the Japanese art of flower arrangement.[1][2] It is also known as kadō (花道, 'way of flowers'). The origin of ikebana can be traced back to the ancient Japanese custom of erecting evergreen trees and decorating them with flowers as Yorishiro to invite the gods.

You can (in English) Learn the Basics of Ikebana although it does need years of study. Here's something a bit more: IKEBANA, Japanese style flower arrangement (English Version) 〜生け花〜 Japan Vlog - YouTube and Ikebana Explained: 7 Essential Principles of Japanese Flower Arrangement - YouTube

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read, read, read!

Yes, it's national storytelling week!

READING IN THE UK

We're trying to get more young people to read in the UK - because not many are reading: low literacy levels in Britain and education in the UK - high university intake - low literacy rates

Yes, it's quite a problem here: the decline in reading in the uk - and ways to reverse it   

    What are the literacy rates in your country? Are people reading books?

Reading is good for you: reading broadens the mind

    Why should we be reading, then?

Here's something politically controversial: should immigrants be encouraged to use their mother tongue?

    What's the policy in your country for teaching migrants to read?

Because, if you're good at reading in your own language...'first language literacy skills enhance second language learning'

    Do you like reading in your own language - and in English?

Indeed, if you like reading, that's a good start: "children who read for pleasure are better at english"

    Indeed, do you enjoy reading?!

Finally, a bit more politics from the English-speaking world: does wider literacy make for a wiser electorate? and Brexit, Trump and dumbing down

READING IN THE ESL/ESOL/TEFL CLASS

Reading is about communicating, not learning grammar rules or lists of words: the communicative approach in the esl/esol/tefl classroom

    Is this how you were taught English?

It's about reading 'real' stuff: using authentic materials in the esl/esol/tefl classroom

    Do you use only course books in your language classes?

There are some great places to go on the internet to do some reading: great online resources to improve your english

    What are your favourite websites for reading?

There are very specific resources for language learners: the key language learning benefits of graded readers

    Have you tried 'easy readers'? Have you read these together with listening to the text?

There is the AntiMoon website: pause and think: or, how to improve your language skills

    Have you given much thought to how you should be reading?

There are specific methods and approaches: Krashen and the comprehensible input theory and from narrow reading and listening to fluency: part two

    Have you tried focussing on just one author or genre?

And finally, there are different levels, different styles, different ways of saying the same thing: code-switching: jumping between different registers, different voices and different languages

    Can you recognise different 'registers' when you read? And can you learn from this, to integrate them into your own active language?

WHAT TO READ

We read for the story, or not: what makes a good detective story - it's not the plot And we read the classics, or not: reading detective stories from the 1950s

    What sort of things do you like to read?

Some things are better than others: banning books, the school curriculum and critical race theory in the United States

    Are certain books not allowed in your country?

We see books in different ways: books, libraries and librarians

    How many books do you have and where do you keep them?

We see bookshops in different ways: sections in a bookshop...

    Do you like to spend time in a bookshop?

ENGLISH LITERATURE

We need a definition: English literature and English literature and reading in English: a summary

    What do you understand to be the literature of your language and your country?

We need to be careful about how we see English - and 'the danger of a single story' about language and culture: what we think about the British empire - 70 years after the partition of India

    What do you understand about the 'status' of your language?

There is certainly a sense of place in writing: English literature in the south west of England

    Are different parts of your country famous for particular books or writers?

And there is a sense of time and place: Jay Doubleyou: english literature and english society

    What different 'eras' and 'styles' of writing are there in your language?

READING AND PRONUCIATION

There are issues around 'phonics': how to teach/learn reading and a critique of phonics and 

    Do you have issues with pronouncing what you read?

There are different accents in written language: the English-speaking world: Devon in England and the English-speaking world: west Africa

    Can you read in English and still hear the accents?!

Dictation can be a great way to work on both reading skills and pronunciation: practical dictation > online texts and audio and dictation can be fun

    Do you really hate dictation?!

Finally, reading out loud is considered a bit of a no-no; using difficult texts in the esl classroom

    Do you like to read out loud?!

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the lexical approach with the lexical lab

This blog is very keen on the lexical approach - which involves seeing language working in terms of chunking and which can really help us understand how to learn a language.

The excellent lexical lab has lots of online resources on offer - but the founders Hugh Dellar and Andrew Walkley also put on courses at their HQ: English Teacher Training in London - Upgrade Your Teaching Skills.

With more from their latest newsletter We made it through the longest month:

One of the things that has helped me get through this dreary days is looking forwards to brighter things to come – and I'm clearly not alone as we've already had our first few bookings for the TEACHING LEXICALLY course we'll be running in north London this summer. Over two weeks in July, we look at the theoretical view of language that underpins the lexical approach and then unpack the implications of this view for classroom practice.

And there's more in their newsletter, which looks further at the lexical approach and, following from that, the communicative approach:

Finally, here's an excellent overview of some of the most recent large-scale studies into the degree to which AI is helping or hindering education. A word of warning: it makes grim reading for the hardcore tech evangelists out there.

And here's a great video on the way Gen-Z online slang owes a huge debt to the linguistic creativity of Black America.

Oh, and here's a piece on the degree to which what are often thought of as 'Americanisms' have permeated everyday English here in the UK.

Finally, if you get a chance to watch this wonderful BBC drama, do so. It's based around a guy with chronic OCD who's opted to teach Philosophy in a prison. It's warm, human, hard-hitting, very funny and highly original.

Also, in light of the recent appalling events in Iran, this documentary about female singers inside the Islamic Republic seems particularly pertinent.

To finish, don't forget their great Blog.

Enjoy - as both teachers and learners of English!

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it's national storytelling week!

Next week is National Storytelling Week 2026!

In 2026, we will be celebrating National Storytelling Week from Monday 2 February to Sunday 8 February with FREE online events running on Tuesday 3 and Wednesday 4 February 2026. The events will be live-captioned Created by Society for Storytelling, this fantastic annual event is a joyful celebration of the power of sharing stories. Stories teach us about the world; they allow us to step into someone else’s shoes and feel empathy; they help us to relax and escape and they can help develop essential literacy skills.

And this year, they're making it musical:

Our research highlights that exploring stories through lyrics can be an effective way to re-engage young people with reading for enjoyment and writing for pleasure. Slightly more than 3 in 5 (60.7%) children and young people age 8-18 regularly read song lyrics digitally.

All of which can be adapted to the ESL/ESOL/TEFL classroom.

There are lots of things to discuss around storytelling...

Should we allow AI to make up stories for us [see: trurl's electronic bard vs chatgpt]

When it comes to new people among us, especially in our schools, should immigrants be encouraged to use their mother tongue?

When it comes to storytelling, it's often difficult to see what's next...; there are often specific themes, such as creating narratives around money and debt; some stories, such as blockbusters, don't have to be stupid; and look out for the political narratives...

Finally, beyond the UK and the school system, there are lots of writing activities for the ESL class and beyond...

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carl rogers and communication

We seem to forget that people matter! Psychologist Carl Rogers put them first:

The person-centered approach, Rogers's approach to understanding personality and human relationships, found wide application in various domains, such as psychotherapy and counseling (client-centered therapy), education (student-centered learning), organizations, and other group settings.

Looking at his person-centered therapy:

Person-centered therapy emphasizes the importance of creating a therapeutic environment grounded in three core conditions: unconditional positive regard (acceptance), congruence (genuineness), and empathic understanding.

And in education:

PCT has also been applied in educational and youth counseling settings. Its emphasis on empathy, acceptance, and authentic communication makes it particularly effective for adolescents and young adults who are navigating identity development, interpersonal challenges, and emotional regulation. Additionally, the non-directive nature of PCT allows it to be used across cultural contexts where traditional therapist-led approaches may not align with community values or client expectations.

He's quite important, with his Humanistic Approach and Psychology:

In the landscape of 20th-century psychology and education, few figures loom as large as Carl Ransom Rogers. His person-centred approach to therapy and education has left an indelible mark on how we understand human growth, learning, and interpersonal relationships...

These ideas have had a profound impact on our understanding of child development and learning. They have influenced educational practices, particularly in Early Years settings, by promoting child-centred approaches that value each child’s unique perspective and potential for growth (Rogers, 1969).

Rogers’ work has not only shaped the field of psychology but has also had far-reaching implications for education, counselling, and even international diplomacy. His emphasis on empathic understanding and unconditional positive regard has influenced approaches to conflict resolution and peace-making on a global scale (Kirschenbaum, 2007).

From the Infed website, we go deeper into Carl Rogers, core conditions and education:

The strength of Rogers’ approach lies in part in his focus on relationship: "We cannot teach another person directly; we can only facilitate his learning".

Carl Rogers was a gifted teacher. His approach grew from his orientation in one-to-one professional encounters. He saw himself as a facilitator – one who created the environment for engagement. This he might do through making a short (often provocative, input). However, what he was also to emphasize was the attitude of the facilitator. There were ‘ways of being’ with others that foster exploration and encounter – and these are more significant than the methods employed.

He was particularly interested in Experiential Learning:

Rogers distinguished two types of learning: cognitive (meaningless) and experiential (significant). The former corresponds to academic knowledge such as learning vocabulary or multiplication tables and the latter refers to applied knowledge such as learning about engines in order to repair a car. The key to the distinction is that experiential learning addresses the needs and wants of the learner. Rogers lists these qualities of experiential learning: personal involvement, self-initiated, evaluated by learner, and pervasive effects on learner.

Here are a couple of (short!) videos:

The Humanistic Theory by CARL ROGERS - Simplest Explanation Ever - YouTube

Carl Rogers: Meaningful Learning and the Role of the Facilitating Teacher - YouTube

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trurl's electronic bard vs chatgpt

BBC Radio 4 does a 'bedtime story' most evenings - and this week, it's been The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem - Trurl's Electronic Bard.

As the BBC blurb says: Stanislav Lem's comic parables The Cyberiad, first published in the 60s, anticipate nanotechnology, our ambivalent relationship with the internet and debates around AI and creativity.

Published 60 years ago, The Cyberiad is indeed very relevant to today's 'debates'...

Especially in the last couple of years, there's been a lot of commentary:

Stanisław Lem’s The Cyberiad: I started on the part of the work called “The First Sally (A) or Trurl’s Electronic Bard,” and it hit me! The Electronic Bard is basically Lem’s prediction, from 1965, of ChatGPT. The Twenty-Third Sally, or How ChatGPT, The Electronic Bard, Created a Cacophony of Digital Storytelling in a Literature Class

"Have it compose a poem--a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter s!" The Lippard Blog: Trurl's Electronic Bard vs. ChatGPT

The science-fiction writer didn’t live to see ChatGPT, but he foresaw so much of its promise and peril. Thinking About A.I. with Stanisław Lem | The New Yorker

Rather creepily, one of Google's AI things is named after the story - as discussed on this Google Group's pages: Trurl's electronic bard

And here's a service which calls itself a Google bard ai detector AI Detector – Trusted AI Checker for ChatGPT, GPT5 & Gemini | JustDone AI

And to finish this bit, here's the full story - in digital format of course: Trurls-Electronic-Bard.pdf

AI news: Artificial Intelligence absorbs of Shakespeare’s sonnets to create original poem | Science | News | Express.co.uk [from 2020]

Finally, though, today's news from the BBC shows that it's not just poetry that AI is producing but pop divas: Sienna Rose: AI suspicions surround mysterious singer - BBC News

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what is 'enshittification'?!

A recent piece in the New Yorker on The Age of Enshittification looked at an interesting word: “Enshittification” was named the word of the year by the American Dialect Society in 2023 and by Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary in 2024. The embrace of the term reflected a sense of collective frustration.

And a recent piece on this blog also looked at the term: 6-7 or parasocial or enshittification - what makes a good word of the year?: “The gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of profit-seeking.”

Back to the very beginning and end of the New Yorker piece:

Sometimes a term is so apt, its meaning so clear and so relevant to our circumstances, that it becomes more than just a useful buzzword and grows to define an entire moment. “Enshittification,” coined by the prolific technology critic and author Cory Doctorow, is one of these. Doctorow came up with the phrase, in 2022, to describe how all the digital services that increasingly dominated our daily lives seemed to be getting worse at the same time. Google Search had become enshittified, showing ads and product links instead of relevant website results. TikTok had become enshittified, artificially “heating” specific videos so that some would go viral, inspiring copycats and goosing engagement while frustrating creators whose output didn’t get the same treatment. Twitter would soon become royally enshittified in its reincarnation as X, losing its status as a global town square, as it tipped into Muskian extremism and rewarded grifters and meme accounts over legitimate news sources. Spotify, iPhones, Adobe software, e-mail inboxes—it was hard to think of a platform or device that wasn’t seeing a decay in user experience. Wasn’t technology supposed to endlessly improve in the long run? ...

The book stops short of fully extrapolating enshittification to national politics, but the term is certainly also relevant in that realm. If the playbook Doctorow describes involves promising benefits to people only to erratically renege on, and degrade, existing services, then Donald Trump is the enshittifier-in-chief. Under his second Administration, scientific research, diplomacy, corporate watchdogging, and social services have all gotten worse. The beneficiary, of course, is largely Trump himself. Perhaps the worst outcome of enshittification is that it drives us to expect things to be bad, and to assume that they will only get worse.

Which is where the piece by the inventor of the word comes in, in a piece which Cory Doctorow wrote for the Guardian this week: Trump may be the beginning of the end for ‘enshittification’ – this is our chance to make tech good again - or: The US president is weaponising tech, but his tariffs and Brexit provide a surprising opportunity to gain back digital control of our lives:

We adopted laws – at the insistence of the US trade rep – that prohibit programmers from helping you alter the devices you own, in legal ways, if the manufacturer objects. This is one thing that leads to what I refer to as the enshittification of technology. There is only one reason the world isn’t bursting with wildly profitable products and projects that disenshittify the US’s defective products: its (former) trading partners were bullied into passing an “anti-circumvention” law that bans the kind of reverse-engineering that is the necessary prelude to modifying an existing product to make it work better for its users (at the expense of its manufacturer). But the Trump tariffs change all that. The old bargain – put your own tech sector in chains, expose your people to our plunder of their data and cash, and in return, the US won’t tariff your exports – is dead.

With lots more here:

Enshittification - Wikipedia

'Enshittification' is coming for absolutely everything | FT [February 2024]

What Is Enshittification? Definition, Effects, Mental Health Risk [November 2025]

What Does 'Enshittification' Mean And When Does It Happen? | HuffPost UK Life [November 2025]

Finally, for a look at this from two years ago when the term first came out, see this piece: Jay Doubleyou: controlling ai - part two: how chatgpt is ruining the internet:

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leopold kohr: opposing the cult of 'bigness' - and understanding that 'small is beautiful'

The idea that Small Is Beautiful was first popularised by the German-born British economist E. F. Schumacher over fifty years ago.

But his challenge to 'bigness' came from his mentor Leopold Kohr. And indeed, another of Kohr's pupils gave the lecture The Wisdom of Leopold Kohr at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics - this being the educationalist and philosopher Ivan Illich who has featured several times on this blog:

During his life-time, this teasing leprechaun was recognized by very few as a man ahead of his time. Even today, few have caught up with him; there is still no school of thought that carries on his social morphology... Throughout his life, Kohr labored to lay the foundations for an alternative to economics; he worked to subvert conventional economic wisdom, no matter how advanced.

With more on Leopold Kohr from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics:

Believing in the effectiveness of returning to the local level to solve the problems affecting humankind, he saw small self-governing communities as best able to solve their problems with their own resources.

He was against 'bigness':

Leopold Kohr was highly critical of the claim that the world is split into too many states and opposed pan-nationalist, continental and global unions. He argued that the success of Swiss Confederation did not lie in a union between the French, German and Italian-speaking peoples, as that would lead to the domination of Swiss Germans and to the gradual decline of other groups. The reason that Switzerland remained diverse was that instead of having three nationalities, it was federated into 22 cantons, representing the actual cultural divisions of Switzerland. Kohr argued that number of autonomous cantons "eliminates all possible imperialist ambitions on the part of any one canton, because it would always be outnumbered by even a very small combination of other".[15]

According to Kohr, a European Federation of unequally large states would lead to a domination of a single nation and thus an erosion of dialects and smaller languages "with just the same inevitability as the German federation, in which 24 small states were linked to the one 40-million Power of Prussia ended up in Prussian hegemony". For him, a successful European unification can be based only on the Swiss model, which would entail splitting the existing nation-states into smaller ones on the basis of cultural and historical regions. He defends the concept of Kleinstaaterei by arguing that while in the Middle Ages, wars were common, they were brief and caused little to no devastation. However, after the consolidation of Europe into a few large states, every war that erupted between caused huge destruction and loss life.[15]...

Kohr also discusses the problem of cultural heritage and cultural assimilation. According to him, culture is a product of individuals, and since individual cannot prosper under a large power, neither can culture. He describes democracy as a "system of divisions, factions, and small-group balances", which slowly wither away under internal consolidation of a large state and with it the ability for cultural and intellectual flourishment.[27]

Following the banking crisis of 2009, the author Paul Kingsnorth wrote in the Guardian that this economic collapse is a 'crisis of bigness':

One man who would not have been surprised by this crisis of bigness, had he lived to see it, was Leopold Kohr. Kohr has a good claim to be the most important political thinker that you have never heard of...

Drawing from history, Kohr demonstrated that when people have too much power, under any system or none, they abuse it. The task, therefore, was to limit the amount of power that any individual, organisation or government could get its hands on. The solution to the world's problems was not more unity but more division. The world should be broken up into small states, roughly equivalent in size and power, which would be able to limit the growth and thus domination of any one unit. Small states and small economies were more flexible, more able to weather economic storms, less capable of waging serious wars, and more accountable to their people. Not only that, but they were more creative. On a whistlestop tour of medieval and early modern Europe, The Breakdown of Nations does a brilliant job of persuading the reader that many of the glories of western culture, from cathedrals to great art to scientific innovations, were the product of small states.

To understand the sparky, prophetic power of Kohr's vision, you need to read The Breakdown of Nations. Some if it will create shivers of recognition. Bigness, predicted Kohr, could only lead to more bigness, for "whatever outgrows certain limits begins to suffer from the irrepressible problem of unmanageable proportions". Beyond those limits it was forced to accumulate more power in order to manage the power it already had. Growth would become cancerous and unstoppable, until there was only one possible endpoint: collapse.

Here are some very helpful reviews and summaries of The Breakdown of Nations by Leopold Kohr on Goodreads

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the return of the erasmus student scheme - and the esl/esol/tefl industry

Before Brexit, the UK benefitted from the Erasmus programme which enabled higher education students to study or work abroad as part of their degree, as well as staff to teach or train in over 30 European countries - which included places outside the EU.

The UK left the EU in 2016 and seemed to think the Erasmus project wasn't that important: U.K. Mourns the End of Erasmus Program in Wake of Brexit - The New York Times 

Here's a view from 2021:

The UK government’s decision not to participate in the Erasmus scheme is short-sighted and will undoubtedly have negative economic, political, cultural and linguistic consequences for a country trying to reposition itself globally. On the plus side, it is great news for the students of Northern Ireland that the Irish government in Dublin has committed to subsidise the Erasmus Year for Northern Irish students at an expense of more than 2 Million Euros. You cannot put a price on what this offers in terms of ‘soft power’ influence. The Conservative government in Westminster could learn a lot from their Irish neighbours.

Why Jettison Erasmus? The negative consequences for the UK of walking away

Before Christmas, it was announced that the UK will rejoin Erasmus student scheme in 2027 and in the latest EL Gazette, we get the view from the world of esl/esol/tefl:

The Erasmus scheme, known officially as Erasmus+, will be reopened to those involved in education, training, culture and sport from 2027...

“It’s incredible news – we are delighted that this opportunity is returning for our members as well as millions of people in the UK and the EU,” said Annie Wright, joint acting chief executive of English UK...

David Hughes, the chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said the announcement was “brilliant news” for staff and students of all ages in further education colleges...

Alex Stanley, vice president for higher education of the National Union of Students said: “In the time we have not been in Erasmus, the number of UK students studying in the EU, and vice versa, has plummeted. This announcement will expand opportunity through universities and vocational courses, strengthen ties with our European neighbours, and allow a generation of students the chance to study abroad at a much more affordable rate.”

Return of Erasmus a boost for UK ELT - E L Gazette

And English UK certainly thinks that "The return of Erasmus+ will boost UK ELT".

Finally, here's the official government page: The Erasmus+ programme - GOV.UK

Sounds good! UK to re-join Erasmus+ – here are six benefits of the European exchange scheme

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english teachers abroad: stories and histories

Here's a great book just out which shows the life of the TEFL teacher over the decades - as reviewed by the EL Gazette:

As this is a history of TEFLers and not a history of TEFL, it is certainly a first, and anyone who has ever taught English overseas will love it. Written in two parts, the first part of The Experience of Expatriate English Language Teaching outlines the everyday experiences of expat TEFLers as depicted in fiction, memoirs, biographies and autobiographies. The second covers the history of the ELT profession as reported by language tutors dating from Shakespearian times to the present. Being at various times erudite, sardonic and often self-deprecating, author David Wilson has provided a veritable feast to sit back and enjoy over the winter.

“A veritable feast”: The Experience of Expatriate English Language Teaching - E L Gazette

Here's the preface, available as a free download: the-experience-of-expatriate-english-language-teaching-sample.pdf

With more from the publisher: The Experience of Expatriate English Language Teaching - Cambridge Scholars Publishing

And from Amazon: The Experience of Expatriate English Language Teaching: Amazon.co.uk: Wilson, David B.: 9781036446031: Books

There are other accounts - but personal stories rather than a 'history':

Day in the Life of a TEFL Teacher | TEFL BARCELONA

My Life-Changing TEFL And Digital Nomad Experience | TTA

My TEFL Experience in Spain: A Great Experience Teaching English

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metaphor is everywhere - and is the stuff of language

Using metaphor is a very good way to communicate.

For example, in how to give a 3 minute presentation we learn that winning speakers made use of metaphor and other verbal illustrations to simplify a complex idea.

If we accept that we are by nature multilingual, then it's good to have an understanding of how metaphor works and that it is central to how in fact language works.

We live by metaphors, as in clichés, pragmatics and how we use language to connect us beyond the actual words used:

Metaphors We Live By - Wikipedia [metaphor is a tool that enables people to use what they know about their direct physical and social experiences to understand more abstract things like work, time, mental activity and feelings.] and Metaphors We Live By: George Lakoff and Mark Johnson - YouTube [Lakoff and Johnson argue that metaphors aren’t just poetry, but a fundamental part of our brain conceptual system. That is, they’re central to the way we perceive ourselves, others, and the world.]

It goes pretty deep, whether it's the language of money... the language of religion... the language of love...:

The Bible is peppered with the language of debt. Sin, forgiveness, reckoning, redemption - all of these words actually derive from the language of ancient finance. What's more, this seems to be true in all the great religious traditions - not just Judaism and Christianity, but Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Islam - all of their texts are filled with financial metaphors, many of which relate to issues surrounding debt... We tend to think of these religions as teaching us that we must repay our debts. But the truth is that the financial metaphors in religious texts are oddly ambivalent. The original translation of the Lord's Prayer from 1381 reads "Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors". But do we forgive our debtors? Actually, most of us don't.

[There is in The Merchant of Venice] the ironic weight the actors gave to all the financial metaphors that Shakespeare deploys in the love plot. Bassanio’s pursuit of Portia is first announced as his scheme “to get clear of all the debts I owe”, because Portia is rich. He refers to Portia’s famed “worth”, and calls her a “rich” “gem”. He marvels: “Look on beauty, / And you shall see ’tis purchas’d by the weight.” And while Shylock demands the fulfilment of the “bond” that Antonio signed, the pledged lovers twitter happily about “love’s bonds”, and Graziano speaks of the “bargain” of their faith. At the end, Portia tells Antonio that he is going to be Bassanio’s “surety”, to guarantee his faithfulness.

Or, to look at a BBC piece on the words that help us understand the world: 

We use them so much in everyday language that we often don’t even notice them, but metaphors and similes help us think more deeply – and make sense of the world around us...

And here's a fascinating piece on The Ubiquity of Metaphor from the perspective of a behavioural scientists.

So, it's more than just a bit of 'fancy' or 'flowery' language: language is metaphor.

Let's look at some philosophy and whether someone can explain structuralism to me like I'm 5;

1: Levi-Strauss reckoned that the way we think about things has been set in place already by cultural factors (mainly language) - so the individual is almost a base through which ‘society’ does its work. Think about it like this - language existed before we were, and will continue after we will be gone, but we think through it and it constrains our understanding. The language allows understanding by contrasting together concepts, like dark:light. Would you understand dark if you didn't understand light? Then language goes one step further, and uses metaphor (or, if you like, myth) to allow even deeper understanding of something. So dark is to light as order is to chaos as Man is to Woman. You understand the first concept much more richly by linking it to your understanding of the other contrasts.

2: We actually understand things only through metaphors. Every word was once a metaphor - 'muscle' for example, came through the German word for 'mouse', because muscles looked like little animals moving under the skin. This extends up how we act out concepts. When we speak of 'knowledge', for instance, we understand it to be a 'space'. We 'shed light on that' or 'find common ground', or 'another perspective'. We therefore exchange knowledge freely, because everyone can stand in that space. Other cultures, for instance the Maori of New Zealand, understand knowledge to be a treasure. They therefore DON'T share knowledge except with (male) descendants, and don't particularly care if it's actually right or not, because it was a gift from their ancestors. See how this metaphor language stuff shapes society and understanding?

And let's look at the magazine Philosophy Now and A Gentle Introduction to Structuralism, Postmodernism And All That:

Structuralism arose on the continent, in particular in France, in the early 60s. The first ‘big name’ was Claude Lévi-Strauss, an anthropologist, who took on Jean-Paul Sartre, the leading French intellectual and philosopher of the time, and didn’t so much win, as went unanswered (which from Sartre’s point of view was worse). Here was France’s main philosopher, Sartre, who usually had something to say about everything, being attacked in Lévi-Strauss’ The Savage Mind, and yet not replying! The implication was that he couldn’t reply, and the intellectual mood began to move towards Lévi-Strauss’ intellectual position, which he called structuralism.

A simple explanation of structuralism is that it understands phenomena using the metaphor of language. That is, we can understand language as a system, or structure, which defines itself in terms of itself. There is no language ‘behind’ language with which we understand it, no metalanguage to explain what language means. Instead it is a self-referential system. Words explain words explain words (as in a dictionary), and meaning is present as a set of structures.

Helpful?!

To finish, here's something a bit strange(r)...

Going further, malaphors are when we get our metaphors mixed up [as in "it's not rocket surgery" instead of "it's not rocket science"!]

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classical dance from africa

'Western classical' (or 'art') music forms are associated with 'the West', but there are some fabulous examples of these coming out of other parts of the world. It does depend on your taste in music, but, before the political mess really started in Venezuela, there was a wonderful project happening there and the recycled orchestra of Cateura Paraguay is another great piece of inspiration.

On the BBC World Service today and on their excellent set of podcast documentaries, we can hear about the Kibera ballerinas: just listen to the first five minutes to get a sense of what this extraordinary project is all about...

[Or, if you prefer to get your BBC podcasts this way: Kibera Ballerinas - The Documentary Podcast - Apple Podcasts]

This is all about their latest piece: Dancing Through the Dust: Ballerinas turn one of the Kenya's Largest Slum into a Stage for a Christmas Show - with more pictures here: In Pics: Christmas ballet performance in Nairobi's Kibera slum-Xinhua

Here's a video of their work:

Ballet in Kibera, Kenya #UniteFor Community - YouTube

To finish, here's something from professional dancers in Senegal:

DANCING AT DUSK - A moment with Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring - YouTube

This Breathtaking Film Captures 38 African Dancers Performing Pina Bausch's Rite of Spring

Brought to the stage in Paris:

Pina Bausch's The Rite of Spring | The evolution of an epic - YouTube

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