Anseo.net #22 Newsletter

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I have two podcast episodes for you this week. 

The final part of Access Undone: The Collapse of Special Education offers suggestions to fix the NCSE.

I release my own Election Manifesto.

In this newsletter:

📻 In the Media

🎙 Latest episodes of the podcast

💭 Education Stories over the last few weeks

𝕏 Moving slowly from X to ?

Don’t forget, you can read all of my previous newsletters on Anseo.net. Please pass on this newsletter to your friends and please encourage them to subscribe so it comes to their inbox every 2 weeks.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve been in the media but with the General Election around the corner, I expected to be asked to cover the big issues.

Instead I got to talk about phasing out homework (Green Party Manifesto) and should schools be used as polling stations (“Working Parent” Manifesto)

Latest Podcast Episode

In the final episode of Access Undone, I try to come up with solutions to Special Education in Ireland. While it’s not too late, some big changes are going to be needed in order to rescue the NCSE from being part of the cause of the biggest education scandal of the 21st century, so far.

With the General Election campaign in full swing, you’d think the politicians would be making sure they watched their p’s and q’s but Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil seemed determined to trip themselves up. First Peter Burke (FG) decided to ask Michael O’Leary to launch his campaign which resulted in him losing whatever teacher vote he might have had. One could describe that as a crisis, but thankfully Norma Foley believes that all crises are opportunities.

Norma’s display in the education debate, which was streamed on the INTO’s platform was about the only place to hear politicians talking about education, which has been woefully neglected in the main debates. I was particularly interested in the question on patronage where none of the panel knew how many multi-denominational schools there were and Minister Patrick O’Donovan decided that he wants his kids to go to a Catholic school because he wants to outsource sacrament preparation to teachers. If Fine Gael had an iota of a chance of a number on my ballot form, that was the end of my support.

Thankfully the topic of patronage finally looks like it’s going to be an election issue. However, in case it isn’t I came up with my own manifesto! Don’t worry I’m not going to run in any election any time soon. You already put up with enough of me.

It’s coming to a time where I am going to spend less time on the platform formerly known as Twitter, the platform where I formerly was able to have good conversations. 

While I’ve been sharing posts on the X platform, exceptional posts have become the exception. The platform is now awash with videos of people fighting with each other and DMs full of spam. It’s getting tiresome getting told to go back to my own country and doomscrolling through spammy short videos.

Like most people, I’m trying out other places for size. I’m trying out Instagram, Threads and Bluesky for now. You can find me in all three places. On Instagram and Threads, I’m on as AnseoDotNet, and on Bluesky, I’m simonmlewis for now. 

Next week, I’ll be publishing an AI-generated video short every day with a Christmas theme.

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