Ageism is putting all our retirements at risk
Pensioner poverty, we are often led to believe, is a thing of the past. Apparently, the Baby Boomer generation has been so successful at defending its interests that the greedy old buggers are raking it in. It is claimed that we live in a ‘retirement aristocracy’. Pensioners spend their days jetting off on holiday or […]
The futility of generation wars
From the early years of the 21st century, the idea that old people have screwed up the world has become the received wisdom. From economic crisis to environmental catastrophe, from the Brexit vote to the election of Donald Trump, from the lack of affordable housing to the persistence of ‘unaffordable’ pensions, blame for a whole […]
The toddlers have taken over
As the parliamentary pantomime over Brexit carries on procrastinating, the audience is united on one thing: utter embarrassment about the behaviour of MPs. Almost three years on from the EU referendum – the referendum they voted to hold, the decision they voted to deliver, the commitment they made in the last General Election – they […]
Everyone’s a loser in today’s fabricated generation wars
According to doomsayers in policy and media circles, the young have never had it so bad, and the fault lies with their greedy elders. The allegedly enormous, voracious baby boomer generation, living it up on the golf course with the ill-gotten gains from gold-plated pensions and over-valued houses, is in the firing line for […]
Buying off young people
As adults, we have some major obligations to our children. We nourish their bodies, helping them through the chaos of toddlerhood and the hormonal hell of their teenage years, so that they grow into physically healthy adults. We nourish their minds, helping them to access the cultural heritage that our society has built up over […]
Don’t turn Britain’s schools into mental health centres
Britain’s schools are changing: not just in terms of what is taught, but also what we expect them do to help pupils. In June 2017, the Times Educational Supplement reported that the government had put £200k behind a plan to train ‘mental health first-aiders’ in every secondary school. The funding is intended to train 3,000 teachers and teaching […]
This strike reminds us what universities are for
Britain’s university leaders might feel that they had been through an ‘annus horribilis‘, said universities minister Sam Gyimah at last week’s official launch of the Office for Students. With scandalised reports of vice-chancellors’ pay, ongoing wrangles over university funding and student tuition fees, and now a large, sustained and well-organised lecturers’ strike paralysing dozens of pre-1992 universities, […]
Time for a truce in the ‘generation wars’
The old and the young need to come together. But how? Mixing Matters, a new report by the charity United for All Ages, has called for the promotion of ‘shared sites’ that can facilitate contact between older and younger people. These include nurseries sharing a space with care homes, sheltered housing developments letting flats for […]
What should schools teach?
In the UK, decades of political meddling in the curriculum have resulted in endless lists prescribing what – and how – teachers should teach. How refreshing then, that unlike many educational policy prescriptions, What Should Schools Teach? does not offer a dazzling list of innovative academic hybrids, along with an interactively inspirational flowchart of how […]
The promotion of ‘generational equity’ is a divisive pursuit
It has become fashionable in policy and media circles to talk about inequality between the generations. We are warned that today’s young people belong to a “jilted generation” (1), or a “stagnation generation” (2), who have been cornered by the economic and political problems of the moment and are unable to buy a house, start a […]