Humphrey Carpenter's biography might well remain the definitive account of that remarkable group of Oxford friends, including C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Williams. But reading it today reveals something its 1978 audience couldn't fully appreciate: just how prophetic Lewis's concerns really were.
One of the most challenging aspects of this biography is Carpenter's portrait of Lewis as argumentatively aggressive, even "bullying" in debate. At first glance, it's easy to dismiss Lewis as an academic pugilist. But as I worked through this book (switching between the excellent Bernard Mayes audiobook and the paperback, a highly recommended approach as it mirrors how the Inklings themselves first heard each other's work read aloud), I began to see something else.
Lewis's forceful style, particularly around his 1943 book *The Abolition of Man*, wasn't just academic egotism. For Lewis, arguments about subjectivism and moral relativism weren't merely intellectual exercises. They were battles with real spiritual stakes. If he believed a line of reasoning led toward moral disaster, his intensity transforms from "harangue" (as Carpenter perhaps unfairly describes it) into something closer to desperately trying to save a friend from a grave error.
Reading this in 2025, it's striking how prophetic Lewis was. The radical consequences of subjectivism that seemed merely theoretical in the 1970s are questions we grapple with constantly today. Carpenter couldn't see this coming, but Lewis did.
My main disappointment is that Carpenter focuses heavily on biography at the expense of historical context. The Inklings weren't unique and were instead continuing a vital English tradition. They were essentially performing the same cultural service for 20th-century Oxford that Samuel Johnson's Club had performed for 18th-century London: weekly gatherings of brilliant minds at a pub, sharpening ideas through vigorous (often combative) conversation. This parallel would have enriched our understanding of what made the Inklings significant beyond their individual literary achievements.
Should You Read It? Yes, if. It's definitely worth a read, or a listen, if you're interested in Lewis, Tolkien, or mid-20th-century literary history and want to understand the friendship dynamics and intellectual context behind some of the century's most influential Christian fantasy literature. But be aware: This is biography-focused rather than literary criticism. If you're looking for a deep analysis of Lord of the Rings or the Narnia books, look elsewhere. But for understanding the men and their friendships, this is indispensable.
Despite its limitations, this remains essential reading for anyone seriously studying Lewis, Tolkien, or the intellectual history of the 20th century. Carpenter gives us the biographical foundation we need, even if we have to supply some of the broader context ourselves.
Pro tip: The audiobook (narrated by Bernard Mayes) adds wonderful immediacy. Alternating between reading and listening became part of my experience of the book itself.
Should apprentice electricians be assessed using the HSE's model Risk Assessment form in its exact, unmodified format?
It might seem obvious that we should. How no’? as the question might be answered in Glasgow.
But this question, or at least what underpins this question, sits at the heart of a debate taking place not just in vocational education, but in school and university education across Scotland, the UK and beyond. And the debate is this: are we to teach transferable skills or should we build deep, domain-specific knowledge? The distinction matters because the answer determines whether we're producing apprentices who can fill in one specific form, or electricians who understand safety well enough to adapt to any assessment format or technological medium that they'll encounter in, hopefully, their long careers.
The HSE Risk Assessment template is valuable precisely because it's "a model" - a real-world document rooted in real-world practice. But there's a risk in treating any model as prescriptive; to regard or at worst mistake the conditional for an imperative. When we use the form unchanged in high-stakes assessment, we may inadvertently find ourselves testing an apprentice's ability to navigate ambiguous language rather than their knowledge of electrical hazards and injuries.
When a health and safety incident occurs in the workplace it is advisable to review your Risk Assessment to ensure that it correctly records the hazards and the controls that are required to avoid further errors. If this post has any practical impact, I hope it might persuade the HSE to review the language of their template.
This post examines one specific question, on the HSE's model form to illustrate a broader principle: that skills are knowledge in action, not something separate from it. Drawing on Daisy Christodoulou's Seven Myths About Education and Lindsay Paterson and Bruce Robertson's recent work on knowledge-based curricula, I'll argue that clarity in assessment language isn't pedantry but essential for ensuring apprentices have the schemas they need to keep themselves and others safe.
Paterson & Robertson: The Blueprint for a Content-Rich Trade
In How a Knowledge-Based Curriculum Could Transform Scottish Education by Lindsay Paterson and Bruce Robertson, and published by Enlighten/ Reform Scotland in January 2025, the authors propose that a knowledge-based and content-rich curriculum is essential for improving Scottish education, citing alarmingly low pupil performance data like PISA figures.
Paterson and Robertson argue that skills are merely “knowledge in action” and that the current Curriculum for Excellence lacks the necessary content clarity, which negatively impacts pedagogy and learning.
The paper uses the successful curriculum reform at Berwickshire High School, led by Bruce Robertson, as a practical illustration of how explicitly defining content—using concepts like schemas and meticulous detail across macro, meso, and micro levels—has led to significant improvements in attainment and inspection outcomes. Ultimately, the paper calls for national leadership to implement standardized, content-rich Programmes of Teaching and Learning to ensure educational consistency across Scotland.
In this post I will consider an example relevant to the skills/knowledge debate to argue that not only are Paterson and Robertson correct, but that a skills-based curriculum leaves apprentices, ostensibly future electricians, ill-prepared to face the dangers of their trade.
Seven Myths: The Educational Foundation of Our Assessment Failure
There probably isn't anything new to say about Daisy Christodoulou’s book Seven Myths About Education. It was described at the time of its 2014 publication by Dylan Williams as possibly the most important education book published that year. In seven chapters Christodoulou examines and debunks seven widely-held beliefs in modern education which hold back both pupils/learners and teachers. Drawing on her own experience as a teacher as well as up-to-date cognitive science research, Christodoulou argues for a knowledge-rich curriculum and direct instruction. Just the sort of thing we had in Scotland before we started nosediving down international tables and trashing our once great reputation.
For this post I'm going to make specific use of:-
Myth 5: We should teach transferable skills. This myth promotes the idea that generic "skills" (like critical thinking or problem-solving) can be taught in isolation from specific subject knowledge. Christodoulou argues that skills are inherently linked to a knowledge base and cannot be effectively transferred across vastly different domains without it.
and
Myth 3: The 21st century fundamentally changes everything. Christodoulou contends that the core principles of how humans learn remain unchanged, despite technological advancements. Educational ideas based purely on "21st-century skills" often repeat outdated theories.
Assessment and The HSE’s Model Form
Using a Risk Assessment for a given scenario is a useful way to assess an apprentice's learning about relevant health and safety matters (the specific trade doesn't matter and I'm using apprentice electricians because that's whose assessment I am familiar with. By “apprentice's learning” in the previous sentence I specifically mean that we are assessing that the information learned in college and on-site has been sent to the long-term memory and that it can be retrieved, (Paterson and Robertson, p.5).
In addition to that all important factor, using the HSE's Risk Assessment template also allows us to simultaneously assess two different kinds of knowledge: Declarative Knowledge (knowledge of something that is the case) and Procedural Knowledge (knowledge of how to do something), (Paterson and Robertson, p.5).
For those unfamiliar with it, the HSE model Risk Assessment form is effectively just like a spreadsheet. Each row is a different hazard and once the hazard is identified, there are six questions to answer
Who might be harmed and how?
What are you already doing to control the risks?
What further actions do you need to take to control the risks?
Who needs to carry out the action?
When is the action needed by?
At a guess the questions are compounded, or doubled-up, for graphical reasons to avoid adding another column.
The Pragmatics of “How?”
This post is specifically concerned about the ambiguity of the second part of the aforementioned compound question: ‘how might you/they be harmed’? It's a question that's easily missed, and sometimes that's exactly what happens.
Let's use the hazard of ‘Working with Electricity’. The question's intent is to find out: "What specific electrical injuries (e.g., electric shock, arc flash, thermal burn) might be sustained?” These injuries help the person completing the Risk Assessment, moving from left to right, to identify specific control measures that will help avoid those very injuries. In this case, safe isolation, insulated tools, rubber-soled safety footwear. However, there's another answer to “how” someone might be injured by working with electricity which is if the power inadvertently comes on. Or, if the hazard were Manual Handling, the “how” a person might be injured is if they drop the load on their toes.
When the apprentice hears "How might X happen?", they are not just interpreting it as a request for a generic mechanism; they can and do interpret it as a demand for the cause or reason for failure, or the circumstance that would enable the harm:
Fire Hazard: "If I don't get out quickly enough."
Confined Space: "If I got trapped."
Electrical Hazard: "If someone turns the power on."
These answers are linguistically and culturally correct because they describe the mechanism or circumstance that allows harm to occur. However they are professionally useless because they fail to retrieve the critical safety information that is required to pass the assessment. In other words, it would be possible to fail the assessment by answering the questions correctly, just not the way the assessment designer and the HSE intended the question to be asked.
This linguistic vagueness in the HSE form mirrors precisely the kind of problem Paterson and Robertson identify in Curriculum for Excellence: a lack of content clarity that negatively impacts pedagogy and learning. Just as CfE's broad, skills-focused outcomes can leave teachers uncertain about what specific knowledge to teach, the HSE form's ambiguous phrasing leaves apprentices uncertain about what specific knowledge to demonstrate. In both cases, the appearance of a progressive, flexible framework actually obscures whether genuine learning has occurred. In other words, they successfully demonstrate their procedural knowledge and fail to demonstrate their declarative knowledge.
Where CfE might ask students to "develop critical thinking skills," the HSE form asks apprentices to explain "how" someone might be harmed. Both appear to assess higher-order thinking whilst actually creating conditions where surface-level responses can pass muster. The parallel is striking: in both cases, lack of precise language about content allows assessment to drift from measuring deep knowledge toward measuring compliance with a format, (cf. Paterson and Robertson, p.16).
When using the HSE Model Form the assessor is using "How" as a rhetorical stand-in for a demand for Consequence and Effect. We are not asking for a process; we are prompting the apprentice to retrieve their Declarative Knowledge of specific injuries (e.g., "Asphyxiation," "Ventricular Fibrillation"). However the vague language, the ambiguity of the model form's question, invites and inevitably means that some apprentices will interpret the question in a way that is contrary to the question’s intent.
Start with "How"
If that weren't enough, the question's ambiguity is compounded by local language use, enabling apprentices to inadvertently interpret the “how” question using a common pattern of English discourse (pragmatics) that is perfectly valid in everyday life but fails the specific demands of safety expertise.
The linguistic barrier is often a matter of dialect. In working-class Glaswegian, the word "how" often functions as a demand for "why". A number of years ago I was trying to explain something to an apprentice. I could see that he looked puzzled and he asked me “How”? That, in turn, baffled me. I started going back over what I’d already said but he just shook his head. And then I realised that he wasn't asking for a description of the procedure but the reason for the procedure. ‘Do you mean “why”? to which he replied in broad Glaswegian 'Are they no’ the same thing?’ As comedian Kevin Bridges observes, "In Glasgow, we don't ponder 'why', we demand 'how'".
The Solution
Cornell University's Center for Teaching Innovation has a number of resources online to help educators write engaging assessment questions.
“Questions can do more than measure what students know. Appropriately challenging, engaging, and effective questions stimulate peer discussion and encourage students to explore and refine their understanding of key concepts.”
Good questions engage, spark discussion, make students think. Basic questions find out what students know. The HSE's poorly written question sends students down the wrong path and doesn't find out what they know. Or rather, and I think this is more accurate, what it does is find out what they know with regard to a question that they think they've been asked but haven't. And it might not seem like very much but it might, in the context of the apprentice's end point assessment, just make the difference between passing or failing. It is a poor question with potentially profound professional consequences. It's not good enough.
My fear at this point of the post is that my proposal for resolving the problem will be profoundly uncharismatic, deeply prosaic, something of an anti-climax. It is a simple solution, a solution rooted in clear discourse, a solution that says what it means. And it's this: ask the specific question that you specifically want answered, (cf. Paterson and Robertson, p.17).
Rather than ask
“How will they be harmed?”
it would be far clearer to be explicit and ask
"What specific injuries might be sustained?"
This would not only do the obvious thing of signalling clearly what was being asked but, and perhaps more importantly, shift the assessment focus away from generic language skills and dialectal interpretations, and toward the deep, structured knowledge that is the true measure of a safe professional.
In practical terms this would mean undoing the single, compound question to form two questions and splitting the single column into two columns. Nothing essential will have changed - no new information is being sought, but the form’s language will be clearer and the assessment more valid.
Knowledge Schemas, Not Skills
The HSE’s model form is exactly that: a “model” form. Treating it as anything other than a template risks fetishising the form at the expense of its content. This fetishisation falls directly into the trap identified by educational reformer Daisy Christodoulou in her influential book, Seven Myths About Education.
Christodoulou’s Myth 5, "We should teach generic skills," perfectly articulates the problem. One of the arguments against teaching knowledge is that knowledge changes so fast that by the time you've learned something it might well be out of date. Better, it's said, to teach transferable skills. This distinction is at the heart of the current “knowledge v. skills” debate. And within it there is a dangerous tendency to equate the skill of completing a specific form with the fundamental knowledge required to think safely.
Christodoulou argues that generic skills like "critical thinking," "problem-solving," or, in this case, "completing a risk assessment form," are not truly generic; they are context-dependent. Using the HSE's model form, not as a model but prescriptively, creates the circumstances for the assessment of Risk Assessment to fall directly into this trap in a particularly ironic way.
Risk assessment is not a generic, transferable skill like "typing" or "filing." It is a highly domain-specific activity that is worthless without the required subject knowledge. You have to know before you use that knowledge. The real skill is the ability to retrieve and apply a comprehensive schema, a mental framework of structured knowledge to the specific scenario/job/context (e.g., "This is a wet environment, so the risk of electric shock is elevated"). An apprentice who has simply been trained to use the "model form" can only complete that specific form. An apprentice who possesses the deep, knowledge-based schema of electrical safety can adapt to any format whether it's a paper form, a digital app, or an on-site discussion because it is their knowledge and not their form-filling skill that is transferable.
There is also, at this point, a technological and pedagogical imperative. Myth 3 tells us that pupils in the twenty-first century require a completely different education from pupils in previous centuries (p.47).
And it's true that our assessment methods must reflect the modern workplace. BS 7671 is regularly updated, reworded, renewed. New technology is always appearing on the market and customers increasingly want smart solutions to their electrical problems. And it's also true that sometimes, on rare occasions, the knowledge learned at the start of the apprenticeship is out of date by the end of the apprenticeship, such as testing a 30mA RCD at x5n, for example, (pp.52-3).
Of course things change. But electric shock has the same physiological effects on the human body that it had when Alfred P. Southwick dreamt up the electric chair as a more humane method of execution in 1881. It's the same with falling from height and handling sharp objects.
Although learning how to complete the model form is important (I'm not for a second denying that) today's electrician is, paradoxically, unlikely to handwrite a risk assessment. They are far more likely to interact with a pre-populated checklist, a mobile device app, or a complex, corporate digital management system. This mode shift to digital media makes the knowledge-based assessment even more crucial. If the apprentice has a strong schema, they can make a half-completed digital form relevant or audit a software-generated plan. If they lack the schema, they become a risk-averse data entry clerk, simply ticking boxes without understanding the potential catastrophic failure that they are signing off on. It is, in fact, their deep knowledge that can be flexibly applied to any form, checklist, or technology they encounter on the job. It is the domain specific knowledge that survives the mode shift, their knowledge, that keeps them and their workmates safe.
Conclusion
The debate on how to assess a crucial skill like risk assessment often boils down to a fundamental question: are we testing for mere competence or for applied deep knowledge? The difference isn't academic; it's the difference between an apprentice who can fill out a form and an electrician who can genuinely keep a worksite safe.
Using the HSE's Risk Assessment template prescriptively restricts the assessment to a competence skills assessment focused on compliance and the production of an acceptable document rather than an assessment of knowledge. In this post I have argued that the goal should not be to produce compliant form-fillers, but knowledgeable professionals whose skills are a reliable application of deep, expert knowledge, ensuring safety and professionalism in the electrical trade.
If, in answer to the question “How might someone be harmed when working on electricity”, an apprentice writes 'if someone else turns the power on' The apprentice has clearly demonstrated that they have understood a scenario, but they haven't demonstrated that they know that the actual injury risk is ventricular fibrillation requiring immediate CPR and defib response. This knowledge gap matters. Educational assessments need to be valid. Although there are a variety of ways to define validity, the traditional sense, that ‘an assessment measures what it intends to measure’ is itself still valid. (CAN, p.11). Poorly worded questions allow validity to drain away. And there's a danger of that here. But perhaps more importantly this knowledge gap matters when the apprentice becomes the qualified person signing off on safety. For the safety of themselves and those around them, the assessment must shift to test the application of knowledge.
Sources
Bridges, K. (nd) “HOW means WHY in Glasgow. Kevin Bridges on Glasgow Negotiation Tactics, Universal Comedy, YouTube, https://youtu.be/QwELepvBAVY?si=saYXJhjwfPQkIikp, retrieved 18th November 2025
Cambridge Assessment Network (CAN), (2024), Assessment 101 Glossary: 101 words and phrases for assessment professionals, The Assessment Network, Cambridge University Press & Assessment
Cornell University's Center for Teaching Innovation, (nd), ‘Using Effective Questions to Engage Students’, https://teaching.cornell.edu/teaching-resources/engaging-students/using-effective-questions-engage-students, retrieved 20th November 2025
Christodoulou, D. (2014) Seven Myths About Education, Routledge, The Curriculum Centre, London
Paterson, L. and Robertson, B. (January 2025) How A Knowledge-Based Curriculum Could Transform Scottish Education, Reform Scotland/ Enlighten, https://www.enlighten.scot/publication/how-knowledge-based-curriculum-could-transform-scottish-education/, retrieved 20th May 2025
COLLEGE leaders are to be applauded for taking a tough stance against college lecturers who take part in another marking boycott ("Colleges agree plan to dock pay from staff who take part in marking boycott", The Herald, February 10). It's about time somebody in this country stood up to out-of-control trade unions.
Following their long summer holiday last year, FE lecturers mounted a similar resulting boycott. They did so because they were dissatisfied with the arrangement which sees the taxpayer fund them to have 13 weeks' holiday per year. They were further dissatisfied that they earn only £40,000 compared to Scotland's median gross annual salary for full-time workers, which is £33,332. And they were even further dissatisfied with their chalk-face workload of 20-odd hours per week. They were dissatisfied then, and they're dissatisfied still. I've come to the conclusion that they will never be satisfied, and that they will always come back for more.
The consequence of last year's resulting boycott by well-salaried, superannuated lecturers was that young people's lives were put on hold because they couldn't complete their apprenticeships. The boycott similarly stopped first-year construction apprentices, who barely earn £6 per hour, from progressing to their next stage and receiving a £2p/h wage rise for which they'd worked all year. Everything and everyone was to wait until the lecturers got more. In the topsy-turvy world of progressive politics it's Mr Bumble who demands more from Oliver. What is in the interests of apprentices, their families and their employers was simply a means to the lecturers' end. And the end is, more. More, more, more. And when they get it, they still want more.
Now they want to do the same thing again. So it's right that college leaders stand up for the taxpayer as well as their students. But perhaps more radical solutions need to be considered. Perhaps the argument for the development of technical schools could simply do away with the need for a college sector altogether. Perhaps the taxpayer could do more with less.
The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Their Friends by Humphrey Carpenter
