Barbara Davidson
@barbdavi.bsky.social
Interested in English&arts education, literacy, law, social justice, criminal justice, prison reform. Camden via Co. Down. Germano-Franco-Italophile.
Reposted by Barbara Davidson
To ‘ultra-crepidate’ (19th century) is to lecture others on subjects you know very little about.
September 23, 2025 at 5:11 PM
To ‘ultra-crepidate’ (19th century) is to lecture others on subjects you know very little about.
Reposted by Barbara Davidson
Chris Mason is a profoundly unserious man who writes about politics as if it were a video game with no real consequences. True to form, this article is purely about optics. Not a single policy is mentioned
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Chris Mason: Reform conference shows party's growing ambition like never before - BBC News
The conference feels like that of a big party - but retains the insurgency vibe that the party is seeking to channel.
www.bbc.co.uk
September 6, 2025 at 10:15 PM
Chris Mason is a profoundly unserious man who writes about politics as if it were a video game with no real consequences. True to form, this article is purely about optics. Not a single policy is mentioned
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Reposted by Barbara Davidson
Indeed. ⬇️ Why not therefore join @englishassociation.bsky.social 😊
June 27, 2025 at 9:35 AM
Indeed. ⬇️ Why not therefore join @englishassociation.bsky.social 😊
Reposted by Barbara Davidson
'Whatever malicious thing can be found anywhere in the world can be found [in London]… actors, jesters, smooth-skinned lads, Moors, flatterers, pretty boys... quacks, belly dancers [and] sorcerers'.
A visitor to London, 1180.
A visitor to London, 1180.
June 24, 2025 at 8:14 AM
'Whatever malicious thing can be found anywhere in the world can be found [in London]… actors, jesters, smooth-skinned lads, Moors, flatterers, pretty boys... quacks, belly dancers [and] sorcerers'.
A visitor to London, 1180.
A visitor to London, 1180.
Brilliant to have spent Saturday at the @englishassociation.bsky.social conference as one of its new trustees. A privilege to hear the fabulous Michael Rosen in full flight on the purpose of poetry in education and a range of charismatic panelists on topics from poetry in practice 1/
June 17, 2025 at 10:33 AM
Brilliant to have spent Saturday at the @englishassociation.bsky.social conference as one of its new trustees. A privilege to hear the fabulous Michael Rosen in full flight on the purpose of poetry in education and a range of charismatic panelists on topics from poetry in practice 1/
Reposted by Barbara Davidson
Very good thread. Generally, reactionary complaints about “rewriting history” rely on a sleight of hand: that the version of history written by previous generations is somehow “neutral” or “apolitical”, but that versions written by this generation are “political” or even “woke”.
Five years today, the statue of Edward Colston was pulled down in Bristol.
Boris Johnson accused protestors of trying to "photoshop" the past and "lie about our history".
I'm reposting below a thread I wrote at the time: on history, memory, and how we decide who to celebrate in our public spaces.🧵
Boris Johnson accused protestors of trying to "photoshop" the past and "lie about our history".
I'm reposting below a thread I wrote at the time: on history, memory, and how we decide who to celebrate in our public spaces.🧵
June 7, 2025 at 3:52 PM
Very good thread. Generally, reactionary complaints about “rewriting history” rely on a sleight of hand: that the version of history written by previous generations is somehow “neutral” or “apolitical”, but that versions written by this generation are “political” or even “woke”.
This is 👌
Five years today, the statue of Edward Colston was pulled down in Bristol.
Boris Johnson accused protestors of trying to "photoshop" the past and "lie about our history".
I'm reposting below a thread I wrote at the time: on history, memory, and how we decide who to celebrate in our public spaces.🧵
Boris Johnson accused protestors of trying to "photoshop" the past and "lie about our history".
I'm reposting below a thread I wrote at the time: on history, memory, and how we decide who to celebrate in our public spaces.🧵
June 7, 2025 at 8:21 PM
This is 👌
Delighted and proud to have joined the board of The English Association,which does such brilliant work supporting and promoting the learning, teaching and enjoyment of English at all levels of education and bringing together people passionate about the subject from all over the globe.
🥳Meet our new trustees! 🥳
We are delighted to welcome seven new trustees of the EA, bringing expertise in government, law, publishing, secondary education, teacher education, and the GLAM sector to the Board.
englishassociation.ac.uk/meet-our-new...
We are delighted to welcome seven new trustees of the EA, bringing expertise in government, law, publishing, secondary education, teacher education, and the GLAM sector to the Board.
englishassociation.ac.uk/meet-our-new...
englishassociation.ac.uk
June 6, 2025 at 10:30 AM
Delighted and proud to have joined the board of The English Association,which does such brilliant work supporting and promoting the learning, teaching and enjoyment of English at all levels of education and bringing together people passionate about the subject from all over the globe.
Reposted by Barbara Davidson
'The Blue Road' - the Edna O'Brien documentary by @sineadoshea.bsky.social - is on Apple TV. It is incredible. (I watched it back to back with @housewifeoftheyear.bsky.social - also on Apple TV - just to ruin myself altogether).
June 5, 2025 at 10:31 AM
'The Blue Road' - the Edna O'Brien documentary by @sineadoshea.bsky.social - is on Apple TV. It is incredible. (I watched it back to back with @housewifeoftheyear.bsky.social - also on Apple TV - just to ruin myself altogether).
‘the project of the humanities can, in our rapidly darkening moment, be one of resistance. Fiction can ask questions that insist on human dignity, human variousness. Writers can ask, what futures are possible?’
tinyurl.com/TLS-article
tinyurl.com/TLS-article
‘Literature is the antidote to numbness’
Katherine Rundell Seamus Heaney wrote, “We go to poetry, we go to literature in general, to be forwarded within ourselves”; that, and to forward each other. Literature alone can’t, of course, save us ...
tinyurl.com
June 3, 2025 at 10:37 AM
‘the project of the humanities can, in our rapidly darkening moment, be one of resistance. Fiction can ask questions that insist on human dignity, human variousness. Writers can ask, what futures are possible?’
tinyurl.com/TLS-article
tinyurl.com/TLS-article
Reposted by Barbara Davidson
Check out our newest article from our Director discussing the challenges poetry faces in educational settings. #Poetry #Education
www.teachingtimes.com/tackling-the...
www.teachingtimes.com/tackling-the...
May 12, 2025 at 11:32 AM
Check out our newest article from our Director discussing the challenges poetry faces in educational settings. #Poetry #Education
www.teachingtimes.com/tackling-the...
www.teachingtimes.com/tackling-the...
Reposted by Barbara Davidson
'Incalculable damage' are such weasel words. You avoid spelling out what that 'damage' consists of - how & where exactly, & by whom - while affirming the full range of anti-immigrant sentiment & the inchoate sense of victimhood that fuels much of it.
May 13, 2025 at 8:59 AM
'Incalculable damage' are such weasel words. You avoid spelling out what that 'damage' consists of - how & where exactly, & by whom - while affirming the full range of anti-immigrant sentiment & the inchoate sense of victimhood that fuels much of it.
I agree with everything @iandunt.bsky.social has written. What a disgrace.
Hard to say how disappointing this morning‘s speech really was. Morally AND intellectually.
Agree with every line here by @iandunt.bsky.social 👇
Agree with every line here by @iandunt.bsky.social 👇
Starmer is as bad as those who came before him. What a bitter disappointment
Echoing the far right on immigration, his moral and intellectual stature has fallen away
inews.co.uk
May 12, 2025 at 4:48 PM
I agree with everything @iandunt.bsky.social has written. What a disgrace.
Nothing accidental about Starmer’s chilling language.I proudly live and work in London among nationals of hundreds of different countries.My neighbours and friends enrich our communities with their skills, languages, food, culture, hard work.I stand with them.I walk forward with them.I always will.
And it's reinforced with the other rhetoric: "squalid", "incalculable damage". Starmer made a choice not to go with "balancing" language. Whether he's an actual Powellite or just cosplaying as one, it's unconvincing and unpleasant. The "hygiene" issue for politicians works both ways.
At this level of politics there is no way someone didn't know Starmer's "island of strangers" line would be heard loud and clear as a dog whistle by far-right groups in the vein of Powell's "found themselves made strangers in their own country". Just stop with the defences of it. It was deliberate.
May 12, 2025 at 4:42 PM
Nothing accidental about Starmer’s chilling language.I proudly live and work in London among nationals of hundreds of different countries.My neighbours and friends enrich our communities with their skills, languages, food, culture, hard work.I stand with them.I walk forward with them.I always will.
Reposted by Barbara Davidson
Roses are redde
Noble are the manatees
Yf we wante a bettir future
Teach artes & humanityes
Noble are the manatees
Yf we wante a bettir future
Teach artes & humanityes
May 12, 2025 at 4:30 PM
Roses are redde
Noble are the manatees
Yf we wante a bettir future
Teach artes & humanityes
Noble are the manatees
Yf we wante a bettir future
Teach artes & humanityes
youtu.be/NJYoqCDKoT4?... Borges on the wonderful breadth and depth of the English language
J. L. Borges on English
YouTube video by Andrea Cirla
youtu.be
May 12, 2025 at 12:34 PM
youtu.be/NJYoqCDKoT4?... Borges on the wonderful breadth and depth of the English language
Reposted by Barbara Davidson
ChatGPT ys an excellent antidote to learninge
May 7, 2025 at 4:11 PM
ChatGPT ys an excellent antidote to learninge
I can hardly bear to read this. The unspeakable cruelty towards these new mothers and their babies.
‘The pain was worse than giving birth’: why are so many women separated from their babies in prison?
‘The pain was worse than giving birth’: why are so many women separated from their babies in prison?
First they had to give birth in custody, then their babies were taken away. Sometimes they never got them back. Here’s what 29 women told the Lost Mothers Project
www.theguardian.com
May 7, 2025 at 1:28 PM
I can hardly bear to read this. The unspeakable cruelty towards these new mothers and their babies.
The current system of assessment in schools and unis is untenable. But it’s not just one of assessment and grading, it’s also a crisis of learning, of intellectual development. What can be done?
If academic institutions want to grade students in a meaningful way, I suspect they will now need to go back to handwritten exams and oral tests only. If you can’t handwrite or speak, it’ll have to be done on a non-networked dumb machine. Maybe just a typewriter
“Massive numbers of students are going to emerge from university with degrees, and into the workforce, who are essentially illiterate…Both in the literal sense and in the sense of being historically illiterate and having no knowledge of their own culture, much less anyone else’s.”
May 7, 2025 at 1:25 PM
The current system of assessment in schools and unis is untenable. But it’s not just one of assessment and grading, it’s also a crisis of learning, of intellectual development. What can be done?
Reposted by Barbara Davidson
🧵 Yesterday Govt published an evaluation of the use of force - including PAVA spray - in adult prisons from 2018 to 2023
It shows - starkly - the fact that you are significantly more likely to have force used against you in prison if you are Black than white
It shows - starkly - the fact that you are significantly more likely to have force used against you in prison if you are Black than white
April 25, 2025 at 10:12 AM
🧵 Yesterday Govt published an evaluation of the use of force - including PAVA spray - in adult prisons from 2018 to 2023
It shows - starkly - the fact that you are significantly more likely to have force used against you in prison if you are Black than white
It shows - starkly - the fact that you are significantly more likely to have force used against you in prison if you are Black than white