Global citizenship: WTF? 2

And we've already slagged off the speaker's comprehensive school as 'an academy for Essex girl training' with some limited pseudo-left justification - claims that this comprehensive limited working-class students to menial intellectual labour. We're into post-Marxist revisionism of the kind beloved by the RCP and Spiked/Institute of Ideas, I suspect.

Rejects class analysis as overly reductive and 'romanticised' in its attitude towards the working class - ironic given that Eton and the landed gentry now run the place.

I'd rather romanticise the working class than dismiss them as Essex girls, especially from the privileged position of a professor, the 'one who got away', as we're being covertly invited to see her… to me, her presence is proof that the comprehensive system works.

This sociologist is now saying that 'fiction is more truthful than facts'. In its place, true - but we're being asked to teach according to untheorised ideas. However, Clifford Geertz and 'thick description' (popular in 1980s literary theory) have been mentioned, so it's not all bad.

By the way, 'complexify' isn't a word. 'Complicate' is.

She's just said that 'oppressive teaching' might be 'familiar to a lot of you'. Given that the audience consists of her teaching colleagues, I can't help thinking that's a dig.

Anne Frank's been presented on 'the violence of classification', along with Fanon. Does this breach Godwin's Law or is Frank OK? We're not very far in.

Frank's quote is 'the time will come when we'll be people again and not just Jews', to illustrate the negative side of classification. What about self-classification: Jews do that, as much as anyone. Should we ignore it?

We're being exhorted not to 'classify' students in groups. Evidence that we do? The idea is that classifications are cultural constructions - not a revelation. She does concede that some classifications are OK. Now physiognomy is being cited - a very relevant reference given that Lombroso died - already discredited - in 1909.  He developed the 'science' of identifying criminals based on physical measurement.