John Walker, Sounds-Write

I’ve always backed England if Scotland not involved. I hate the anti-English nonsense of too many Scots. So yes, WE. Do you have a problem with that?

NEW FREE POST Australia's natural education experiment The case of South Australia Link 👇 👇 👇

Link: fillingthepail.substack.com/p/australias-n…

Thank goodness we don't design hospitals with the low level of regard for end users displayed in school design.

My interview yesterday with @irish_news. Good to talk to @hannahpattJ (nb: sadly I'm still not a Tsar, no matter how hard people try to make it true !) Northern Ireland school behaviour Tsar labels mobile phones ‘weapons of mass distraction’ irishnews.com/news/northern-…

I’m blocked by @3dancingfeet b/c of previous efforts to set the record straight on some of her posts so cannot reply to this directly (shared with me by a PG student). It’s important that current and future teachers know that this idea is not supported by empirical evidence. It’s also unfortunately sometimes promoted by OTs. @speechwoman and I address it in @EBPRoadmap

@greg_ashman Actually, forget the King Alfred stuff, we need now to appeal to St Jude (the good one), venerated for being the saint of ‘hopeless causes’ and ‘desperate situations’ 😂😂

@greg_ashman What? The semi-decent football team, you mean? That bit?

It won’t last

Thanks folks! Can’t believe this still keeps going .. 7 years already 🙏🙏🙏

Very honoured to have been selected as #20 in Education Business magazine in their list of Top 50. More than I deserve, I am sure of it. educationbusinessuk.net/eb50/2025-2026…

@tombennett71 Well deserved, Tom 💐

His lighthouse stood for 123 years. And in the end it was not the tower that failed. It was the rock underneath it. 🇬🇧 Two lighthouses stood on the Eddystone Rocks before him, 14 miles south of Plymouth, and the sea destroyed them both. The first, built of wood, vanished without trace in the Great Storm of 1703, taking its builder and 5 other men with it. The second stood for 47 years, then burned one December night in 1755, down to the rock it stood on. 🔥 So Britain faced a question: how do you build on a rock the sea owns? The Royal Society's answer was not a lighthouse man. It was John Smeaton, an Englishman from Austhorpe near Leeds, a maker of scientific instruments who had turned his mind to engineering. He started with a question nobody had thought to ask. Why does an oak tree survive a storm? Wide at the root, narrow at the top. So he shaped his tower like the trunk of an oak. Wood had washed away and wood had burned, so he built in granite, every block dovetailed into its neighbours like a carpenter's joint in stone, pinned with dowels of marble. For the mortar he ran experiment after experiment until he proved which limestone sets hard even underwater, a lime the Romans had used whose science had been lost. He worked out why and brought it back. 3 years, 1756 to 1759, 14 miles out in the open sea. Then the lamp was lit, and the sea came to test it, winter after winter. It did not move. He went on to build bridges, harbours, canals and mills across Britain, and because the only engineers Britain named were soldiers, he called himself a civil engineer, the first man in Britain to do it. In 1771 he and 6 others met in a London tavern and founded the first engineering society anywhere in the world. It still exists. 🏛️ His light burned for 123 years. When engineers finally found a fault in 1877, it was in the reef, not the tower. The sea was wearing away the rock beneath it. His tower had outlasted the rock it stood on. In 1882 the lamp went out for the last time. But nobody scrapped his tower. The top came down stone by stone and went back up on Plymouth Hoe, where it stands today in its red and white bands. You can climb it. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Look at any lighthouse standing on a British rock. That curve is his oak, still holding. We are the home of British heroes. There is a place for you in it. 👉 proudofus.co.uk/support 👈 Be part of us. ☝️🇬🇧 Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧

Sherlock Holmes and Covert Thieves of Attention - The Effortful Educator Nice blog by Blake! theeffortfuleducator.com/2025/03/03/she…

You have a birthday. So does England. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 And it’s today. The 12th of July. Almost 1,100 years ago, on this exact day, England became a country. Almost no one knows it. The island was old long before it had a name. Farmers. Romans. Saxons. Then out of the sea came the Danes. ⚔️ They came to raid. They stayed to farm. And one hard question hung over the whole land. Two peoples, Saxon and Dane, one small island. Whose country was it now? Alfred of Wessex held the last corner and turned the tide. But he wanted more than a truce. One country. For both peoples. One England. He died before he could build it. 🔥 So his family finished it. His son took back town after town. His daughter Æthelflæd led the armies herself. A woman commanding armies more than 1,000 years ago. But it was Alfred’s grandson who ended the work. Æthelstan. In 927 he rode north and took York, the last Viking crown in England. One man now held every English kingdom. Then he did something stranger. He called the other kings of Britain to a bridge in the north. A quiet place called Eamont. 📜 Scots. Welsh. The kings of the north. There, by the river, they bent the knee. And that morning he took a new title. Not king of Wessex. Not king of the Saxons. King of the English. All of them. That bridge, on this day in 927, is the closest thing we have to the morning a country began. ⚖️ He made it real. One law, coast to coast. One coin, struck the same everywhere. On it he wears a crown, not a war helmet. Then in 937 they came to destroy it. Vikings, Scots, the men of the north. The largest army the island had ever seen. They met him at Brunanburh. Dawn to dark. Five kings fell. And when the sun went down, Æthelstan was still standing. 🏛️ England had been tested. And England had held. He left no son. He died in 939 and chose a quiet abbey at Malmesbury. Alone, in the country he had made. But it never came apart. Every king and queen of England since has sat on the throne he built. More than 1,000 years. Unbroken. You were taught 1066. The Tudors. The wars. But not this. Not the king who made the country. Not the bridge. Not the 12th of July. Æthelstan. The first king of England. And the one we forgot. Next year it turns 1,100. England has a birthday. And now you know when it is. 🇬🇧 You did not choose to be born here. But you inherited a country with a beginning. A name won on a bridge, 1,100 years ago. That is yours. No one can take it from you. Help us remember the king who made us. Help us remember who we are. 👇🙏 👉 proudofus.co.uk/support 👈 Be part of us. ☝️🇬🇧 Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧

@ProudofusUK @patcondell It’s all in David Hume’s History of England, Vol 1. Recommended!

Another very important post from @PCSnow1604 with some uncomfortable truths for many in the field of education research. pamelasnow.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-do…

@greg_ashman Anyway, that’s not MT you can hear. If you listen carefully, you’ll hear the voice of Alfred declaring victory at the battle of Edington 878.

@greg_ashman Tuchel has put her on the bench for this game 😁

No, I am not ‘looking forward’ to the England game. I am deeply troubled by it.

@greg_ashman You may have more than you expected. 'Tis to be hoped 😊 Ever the optimist 😁

@SWLiteracy I’m holding out for a hero