Teaching Sociology

Maybe we don’t need Emily Maitliss to tell us this, but it is worth saying and it’s true of sociology as well as English Lit. Good teaching should be about teaching students - whatever the subject - to be sceptical. You can’t do that by formula, by rote, or by government prescription. And how good to hear Maitliss say that her A level English teacher was better than any university teacher. Being an academic, being a teacher - they are completely different tasks. And while I’m at it, why am I writing about English? Because it seems such a sad situation we have in schools today, where so-called ‘competition’ leads some teachers - I witnessed a fair bit of it anyway - to become narrow minded partisans. Study, but don’t fall into the trap of thinking that any one subject has all the answers, or even all the questions.