I'm delighted that my response to an article by James Marriott has been published by the Scottish Union for Education.
Summary
Last month I attended a book event at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow. Two authors, Kat Hill and Kristie De Garis, were there to discuss their new nature writing books. The event followed the usual format—interview, reading, Q&A—except for one thing: neither author read from their work. Instead, they talked about representation: how few female nature writers there are, how few black nature writers, how few working-class writers. The words themselves seemed almost incidental.
This got me thinking about James Marriott's recent essay arguing we're living through a post-literate revolution. Smartphones have destroyed our attention spans; students can't read Dickens anymore; democracy itself is at risk. It's a frightening diagnosis. But here's the thing: Scottish book festivals are reporting record attendance. People are still turning up for books. So what's really going on?
I think there are two types of post-literacy emerging. The first is technological—people who can't sustain attention, whose cognitive architecture has been rewired by screens. The second is ideological—people who can read perfectly well but won't engage with anything that might "trigger" them or doesn't announce its political credentials upfront. At Blackwell's in Oxford, I watched a student reject book after book: "racist," "homophobic," "fascist." Finally, she found one "without trouble."
Both rob us of our inheritance, but the second may be more insidious because it's self-inflicted. We're not the barbarians at the gates; we're the librarians trashing our own collections. The question before us is not whether we can read; but whether we dare to.
I've written about this at length for the Scottish Union for Education. You can read the full piece here: [The Death of the Reader? - Scottish Union for Education Newsletter](https://open.substack.com/pub/scottishunionforeducation/p/scottish-union-for-education-newsletter-dde)
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 myth that getting to university is the apogee of school is crumbling. Across the Atlantic, Americans are realizing that their country won't be made great again by a surfeit of university students.
A young man I spoke to recently—successful, full-time employed, and genuinely happy with his career—made a simple, fascinating statement: 'I'm glad I didn't go to university'.
He wasn't proud or defiant; he was simply content and deeply satisfied with the tangible, skilled work he does. He loves his job, he is good at it, and he holds a quiet confidence that comes from being a competent individual providing a valuable service to our community. For a generation that was relentlessly told a degree was the only ticket to success, his casual confidence felt monumental.
It turns out his personal choice is part of a massive, trans-Atlantic movement. The data shows that the wider public is finally pushing back against the outdated four-year degree machine.
In the U.S., a Workforce Monitor survey from the American Staffing Association found a shocking inversion of advice: 33% of adults would advise graduating high school seniors to attend a vocational or trade school, compared to just 28% who would encourage them to attend a four-year university.
The reasons for this shift are twofold: what I'm calling on one hand "the negative push" and on the other hand, "the positive pull".
* An astounding 62% of white-collar workers would happily switch to trade jobs for better stability and pay.
* 55% of workers felt that their training programmes or university degrees didn’t actually prepare them for their roles.
That’s the core problem with the university myth: it's failing to deliver on the promise of career relevance.
But the real story is the Positive Pull—the draw toward working with your hands. These careers offer a constant sense of physical and personal accomplishment. Whether you’re fixing an engine, wiring a house, or laying perfect pipework, the completion of the job is a self-evident success. It's the satisfaction of a job well done and the personal fulfilment that comes from seeing and touching the tangible results of your skill.
Richard Wahlquist, CEO at ASA, summed up the need for change:
"Americans are clearly concerned that colleges and universities are failing to equip students with the workplace-relevant skills that employers need."
Even the US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell recognises the skills gap.
The message is clear: parents, educators, and policymakers need to stop clinging to outdated notions of success and start supporting paths designed for real competence, stability, and the genuine satisfaction of the 'jobs of today and the future world of work".
Sources
One in Three Americans Recommend Trade School Over College for High School Grads, American Staffing Association, 5th June 2025, https://americanstaffing.net/posts/2025/06/05/trade-school-over-college/
(retrieved 2nd October 2025)
Eleanor Pringle, 'The blue-collar revolution isn’t just for Gen Z. Six in 10 white-collar professionals say they’d switch for the right trades job', Fortune (30th September 2025), https://fortune.com/2025/09/30/white-collar-work-gen-z-blue-collar-revolution-career-change-flexjobs/,
(retrieved 2nd October 2025)
Image Credits
Crumbling brick pillars of the corridor at Mission San Antonio de Padua, California, ca.1906 (CHS-4378), picryl.com, http://digitallibrary.usc.edu, public domain, (retrieved 2nd October 2025)
Mason at Work, Stockcake.com, Public Domain, https://stockcake.com/i/mason-at-work_832285_1089245, (retrieved 2nd October 2025)
High Places Phenomenon (HPP), or more commonly, "l'appel du vide," (the call of the void) is the sudden, inexplicable urge to jump from a high place, even when you have no intention of harming yourself.
I've never heard that call: never felt that urge. But my wife has. She isn't scared of heights. She'll happily climb to the top of an enclosed rooftop terrace.
But without that balustrade, she'd surely have felt the urge to sprint towards the edge and hurl herself off. She does not however, unless you're inclined towards Freudian psychology, have a secret death wish. It is more commonly understood that l'appel du vide is a cognitive glitch; a misreading of the self-preserving signal to back away from the edge. A bit like misreading the red stop light as a signal to go. Perhaps, not unsurprisingly, it's experienced as an unpleasant feeling of uncanniness. A feeling better avoided than overcome.
From Heights to Hazards: Expanding the Concept
Callum Robinson, in ‘A Brief Note On: Health and Safety’ in his excellent book Ingrained, feels the urge from the top of a tree: the urge to. He gets it. That uncanny urge. But Robinson, a furniture maker and a wood worker, takes it a step further, imagining himself impulsively sprinting towards a bandsaw and then leaping to meet the blade head first.
He once made the mistake of assuming it was a universal feeling asking a colleague if they'd ever considered running into a cutting machine. Robinson conveys the awkward silence that follows so well that the reader feels the uncanniness of it all.
Andrew Klavan tells the story of a Romantic poet's fascination with electricity. At the the beginning of the nineteenth century, long before the invention of the Regs Book, the poet Percy Shelley would while away his college days at Oxford by collecting pieces of electrical equipment. He was fascinated by the subject. His friend T.J. Hogg would help him attach wires to his hands and body, and then shock him until 'his long, wild locks bristled and stood on end'.
Like Shelley, I wanted to know what an electric shock felt like. I imagine most, if not all first year apprentice electricians, wonder what it feels like. An old lecturer advised me that there were only two possible outcomes: you'll either still be alive, or you won't. A nice, straightforward binary outcome. After I found out, I stopped wondering. I've never felt the urge to put my hands on three-phase busbars out of curiosity. It's not fear; it's just respect for the amoral phenomenon of electricity. Perhaps it was this amorality that appealed to Shelley.
Robinson's piece prompted some questions about accidents in the workplace. Was it possible, I wondered, whether those individuals who hear l'appel du vide were more likely to have accidents because they inadvertently listened too closely to the call? Think of that French verb, S'appeler, to name oneself. Are accidents an identification with the void, as if the void knows your name?
Etymologically inaccurate as that reading is, it's possibly also the wrong way around. What if sufferers of l'appel du vide aren't more prone to throwing themselves from high places but less likely to do so precisely because they're experiencing an urge without an attendant desire? Someone who experiences l'appel du vide is actually receiving a very strong safety alert from their brain. They are keenly aware of the danger. The feeling is unsettling, but it serves as a powerful reminder of the "void" and the need for caution.
What if it's people like me, people who don't get it, who are oblivious to the danger who are more likely to injure themselves? Someone who doesn't experience the call might lack this specific, visceral safety alert and therefore might not have the same immediate, physical sense of danger that the "call" provides. This could make me more susceptible to accidents because I might not fully register the presence of the void and the risks associated with it. The silence leading to a false sense of security.
But it's not just Robinson fils. Robinson père too. He even has a name for it: "Machine Tool Vertigo". And with just that word it's impossible not to have Bernard Hermann’s chords sound in your head. And although l'appel du vide isn't acrophobia it's equally impossible not to picture James Stewart on the very edge of the mission's bell tower.
P Company
"P Company," is a gruelling 5-day selection course for the British Army's Parachute Regiment. It's a physically and mentally demanding test designed to identify individuals with the required grit and resilience to become airborne warriors. Passing 'P Company' earns you the right to wear the red beret. As a case study, it helps illuminate some possible answers to those questions.
The Trainasium, a core component of P Company selection, is an elevated assault course set at 30 to 60 feet above the ground. The most challenging part, the "shuffle bars", involves walking across two parallel scaffolding poles. This scenario is a deliberate test of a soldier's ability to function under the physiological and psychological stress that this height and lack of a protective barrier creates.
The shuffle bars are actually not that high off the upper platform. But because the whole trainasium structure takes you above the treetops, standing on the bars is designed to make it feel a great deal higher than it is. It's a clever psychological trick: make the candidate feel fear without putting them in any real danger.
One other feature of the shuffle bars which makes them scarier than they actually are, is the absence of any barriers. One could, you're made to feel, fall a great distance. But P Company isn't designed to identify people who aren't scared. Instead its designed to identify those recruits who can still perform effectively under fear's influence. Not to not hear the call of the void, but to hear it, and still do your duty.
Physical and Metaphysical Barriers: The Urge Without a Desire
When my wife and I climbed out onto the roof terrace of The Music Room, the balustrade acted as a physical barrier. To answer the call she'd have to do something more than just run and jump . She would have to climb over the barrier and that's not what l'appel du vide prompts.
But more significantly, she didn't hear l'appel du vide. That was odd to learn. At a tautologically obvious level, physical barriers act as physical barriers but they also act as a sound barrier blocking off, or silencing, the call of the void. And so, on another level, since there is no objective call to hear, they also act as a psychological barrier. There was no immediate sense of danger and therefore no signal to misread.
Conclusion
Barriers in a distribution board are crucial for safety. They are designed to enclose or shield live parts, providing a physical barrier that primarily prevents accidental contact with live electrical parts. These barriers typically offer at least IPXXB or IP2X protection, meaning they prevent access by small objects like fingers.
But, remember, next time you fit one: it's not just a physical barrier; you're silencing l'appel du vide.
Sources & Credits
Robinson, C. (2024) Ingrained: The Making of a Craftsman, London, Penguin
The Institute of Engineering and Technology, (2022) BS 7671 2018 + A2, Requirements for Electrical Installations, Eighteenth Edition, London, IET
Klavan, A. (2022) The Truth and Beauty: How the Lives and Works of England's Greatest Poet's Point the Way to a Deeper Understanding of the Words of Jesus, Michigan, Zondervan Books, (quoted from pp.72-73)
Image Credits
Bruce Robinson in The Pirn Inn as part of Balfron Book Festival, 6th September 2025. Photo taken by Donna Nicholson-Arnott
A Rooftop Terrace With A View, (2nd August 2025) taken at the Landmark Trust's Music Room in Lancaster. Photo taken by Donna Nicholson-Arnott
Trainasium, The Parachute Regiment Training Company, (17 April 2019), X, https://x.com/Para_Training/status/1118585166467932161, (retrieved 19th September 2025)
File:Shelley Memorial, University College, Oxford (5178754841).jpg, Wikimedia Commons, https://share.google/cOQU4iUTDhwstb3aJ, CC 2.0, (retrieved 19th September 2025)
I recently telephoned a Glasgow branch of Waterstones to have a copy of Callum Robinson's book Ingrained : The Making of A Craftsman set aside. The bookseller put me on hold whilst he checked that they had a copy and then, on his return, asked in a slightly uncertain tone; "is it a sort of DIY book?"
At that moment, that split-second of potential before answering I thought of pontificating in a faux Glasgow University accent, “Well, actually, it's a profound meditation on man's relationship with the world through the making of objects”. But I didn't. I just resigned myself and said “Aye, that's what it is”.
When I relate this story I play it for laughs. That at least is what I did at the recent Balfron Book Festival, when I told it to Callum Robinson. After all, it is funny. Or rather, it's, “quite” funny. Or, more accurately, I play it for laughs because it's not funny. Because as I hung up, happy that the book was waiting for me, I was genuinely disconcerted. Why did the exchange feel so unsatisfactory, so ... odd?
In this post, I want to try to work towards understanding that feeling. Because the bookseller’s question isn't one that would be asked of a master chef's memoirs. I can't imagine the same bookseller inquiring about Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential: "is it a sort of cook book”? And that begs the obvious question, what was it about Ingrained that prompted the question?
There are a number of ways to go about this. We could consider the relationship between craft or making and the activity of DIY; we could consider the fact that the exchange took place during a phone call rather than face-to-face. It's highly likely that the phone call enabled the bookseller's question. A phone call is a more transactional and less personal form of communication than a face-to-face interaction. The absence of visual cues and social context allows for a more direct, sometimes blunt, way of inquiring. And if I had been present in the store, he might simply have held the book up and asked “is this the right one?”
But what I want to do is consider the first part of the bookseller's question: the “a sort of” part which functions in the question as a discourse marker; a word or phrase that helps to structure and organize what someone is saying. Discourse markers often signal a speaker's attitude or their relationship to the topic, rather than contributing to the literal meaning of the sentence.
The most obvious signal that “a sort of” sends is one of uncertainty; but it serves a few other functions as well, such as hedging, approximation and signalling the unfamiliar. Let's take each of these in turn.
By saying "is it a sort of DIY book?" the bookseller softens their meaning by creating a polite distance from their own question. He's not making a definitive classification, which avoids the risk of being completely wrong or directly offending me. This is a common way people navigate social interactions when they lack full knowledge.
And “a sort of DIY book” doesn't mean “a DIY book”. The discourse marker here suggests that "DIY book" is the closest category he can think of, but perhaps isn't a perfect fit. It's a way of saying "I don't know the exact term, but taking an educated guess I'm guessing it falls into this general category”.
On one hand then, the hedging and the taxonomical approximation highlight the bookseller's unfamiliarity with the subject matter. All that is to his credit and he's certainly earned marks for effort.
On the other hand however, the discourse marker highlights the implicit assumption that a book on woodworking must be a practical, instructional manual rather than a personal memoir or a philosophical exploration of man's tool-use in order to make objects and meaning.
This assumption left me wondering why it was hard to believe that a book about a manual craft could be more than just instructions. There is, in “is it a sort of”, an incredulity, an incredulity that someone could write about woodworking, and perhaps an even greater incredulity that that someone would want to read it. Who on earth would want to read “a sort of DIY” book without wanting to know how to make things? And with those ideas, I think we start to get a little closer to what was so disconcerting about the whole exchange.
Navigating the Cultural Divide
The bookseller’s question signals unfamiliarity: not just an understandable and excusable unfamiliarity with that particular book, but an unfamiliarity with the very idea of that particular book. The bookseller's language reveals more about his knowledge or worldview—by revealing a broader societal bias against working with your hands. It's subtle, unspoken — and it's more effective than a more direct statement ever could.
The bookseller's language, specifically the use of "a sort of," acts as a linguistic barrier. It's a way of saying, "This doesn't fit into my worldview, and because it's unfamiliar, I have to categorize it in the closest, most pragmatic way I know how”.
But the bookseller's question didn't just signal his unfamiliarity; it transferred it onto me. He was confronted with something outside his realm of reference—a book on woodworking that wasn't a DIY manual. But rather than admit his own lack of knowledge, his question reframed the situation so that the unfamiliarity became mine.
Though he didn't say it, the question signaled a subtle transfer of unfamiliarity. It was as if his lack of understanding of the book was recast as a statement about me and my reading choices, suggesting I was a different 'sort of' Waterstones reader/customer than he was used to.
It’s a subtle but powerful act of othering. His verbal uncertainty, represented by "a sort of," became a label of uncertainty applied to me. The burden of explaining my reading choice was placed onto me, not on him to understand the book. This is precisely why the interaction felt so disconcerting, despite the lack of any overt malice.
For the bookseller, a book about a manual craft could only be an instructional guide—a DIY book. This I think demonstrates, not just “a” cultural bias where the hands-on, tangible world is seen as separate from the intellectual, narrative world of memoirs and literature, but "the” actual cultural bias that exists in present day Scotland; one enhanced and intensified by the massive rise in school pupils going to university. And though recognition of this situation/problem is gaining traction there remains a number of questions that need to be asked and answered.
What happens to a society when hands-on trades are not given the same academic or cultural respect as other fields?
What happens to people, mostly white working-class men, when their society tells them that working with your hands is something you do if you fail at school?
What is the impact on the mental health of people, hand-workers, who are made to think that their work is of lesser value than “the life of the mind”?
Of course, no lanyarded member of the educational elite is openly going to disparage the trade's or manual work. They don't have to. The whole educational system is geared towards the only real measure of success being entry to university.
By asking "is it a sort of DIY book?", the bookseller was not just classifying a product; they were inadvertently revealing a deeper cultural assumption. They were signaling that the world of craft is "other" to the world of literature. And when my interest in a book by a woodworker made me a part of that "other" world, it felt like a moment of being seen as an outsider—someone whose reading habits didn't align with the expected norm for someone seeking a book in a place like Waterstones.
Confronting Myself As “The Other”
When I was in Primary 4, I won a book token. I went with my dad to Grant's bookshop on Union Street. I came away with The World of History, and I still have it. I've been buying books ever since. They are part of my identity. A way that I define myself. And, if I'm honest, others. If I see someone reading a book, I'll try to see what they're reading. Young or old; black or white; male or female, I've found readers to always be interested in what other readers are reading. My discomfort was then in part that I was mistaken.
The reason that I found the interaction with the bookseller so disconcerting was a sudden worry that I didn't belong. Waterstones might make money by selling Ingrained, but it might not value Ingrained. And by extension, not value readers of Ingrained, readers like me.
Conclusion
I wouldn't like you to think that I was offended. I wasn't. And there's every possibility that my call was answered by a novice bookseller who tried their best to explain the unfamiliar thing that they held in their hand.
And I accept those possibilities. Even so, and coming back to the point made at the start of this post, it's hard to imagine another type of book that might provoke that “is it a sort of” question. So it seems legitimate to ask what these subtle interactions reveal about how society values certain types of work and knowledge.
In this post, I've argued that the bookseller's discourse marker is symptomatic of the disdain with which hand-workers are held in certain sections of Scottish society. The bookseller doesn't, personally, have to share in that disdain. And that is to an extent, the point. The disdain is so embedded in the public consciousness that it can be manifested without really trying.
The Scottish education system is failing. I would say that it was failing right, left and centre but it would be more accurate to say that it's the left and centre that are failing it. “It”, that's such an anonymous way to put it. Failing the pupils, their parents, the teachers, the support-workers, the employers, the people of this country.
Our universities are dependent on foreign fee-paying students with their concomitant effect on urban land use, housing and social coherence. Our schools lack discipline, our teachers lack the respect they should deserve, and far too many of the pupils lack the motivation to even bother turning up. And our colleges struggle on numerous levels, in part, because of the relentless drive to get as many pupils as possible into "free" university places. The list could go on and on and on. There is failure at every level and in every sector. And every single one of these failures can be traced back to, at best, liberal educational policies, and at worst, progressive ones.
As Mr. McEnaney knows full well, arguing that political parties should be kept out of education is itself a deeply political act. It pretends neutrality where there is bias. In fakes disinterest to the advantage of interested activists. It seeks to maintain power for an elitist left-of-centre agenda to the exclusion of the concerns of ordinary people. And it demonstrates the extent of the cosy left-wing consensus in Holyrood which ranges from the Scottish Conservatives to the Greens, the mostly left to the loony left.
It's this leftist consensus, that for all his criticisms, Mr. McEnaney wishes to preserve. Unfortunately for him though, his missive communicates more than it intends. It communicates fear. Fear that for the first time in the devolution period, there is an opportunity to make the Scottish education great again. Fear that the education system will put the priorities of ordinary people first. Fear that the ordinary people who’ve had a belly full of the mendacity, the incompetence, the anybody-but-them-attitude that takes their taxes, treats them as scum and when the find their voice derogates them as white supremacists, the far-right, or whatever the clichéd slur du jour happens to be have an entirely different set of educational priorities from the luxury beliefs of the Scottish educational establishment.
So I was delighted to read Mr. McEnaney's article. It made my day. It indicates, perhaps even proves, that the progressive/liberal educational establishment with their over-inflated salaries, their mickey-mouse courses and their divisive diversity agendas are worried. They have every right to be. With success, this won't be the start of an educational revolt; it'll be the start of a revolution.
The question seems ridiculous. Ridiculous to the point of absurdity. So absurd that it doesn't really deserve a response. And yet.
As I read through the characteristics of each level in the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework, that's precisely the question that came to mind..
Let me explain. Firstly, the background.
For the last dozen or so weeks, much of my time has been spent taking part in the Cambridge Assessment Network's course on the Fundamental Principles of Assessment. As part of our week studying the assessment principle of ‘comparability’, I compared the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) and the Scottish Credit & Qualifications Framework (SCQF).
The EQF has eight levels (Level 1 up to Level 8) in which each level sets out the associated learning outcomes of skill, knowledge, and responsibility and autonomy. Level 2 doesn't have a great deal of skills and knowledge but it does allow the learner a small degree of autonomy.
The SCQF is Scotland's national framework for comparing different qualifications. It compares a different element from the EQF (qualifications v. learning outcomes) but it's still possible to put the two frameworks side-by-side and look at the similarities and the differences.
The SCQF has twelve levels, rising “up” from 1 to 12. The Scottish Vocational Qualification (SVQ) Modern Apprenticeship for electricians, in Scotland, is a Level 7 qualification. Each level has five characteristics, one of which is titled 'Autonomy, accountability and working with others.' However, when you look at the description for levels 1-7, the word 'autonomy' doesn't explicitly appear. It only explicitly appears at Level 8.
Level 8 is the beginning of what might be termed “Higher Education”; the upper level of college qualifications, such as an HND. The level below a university undergraduate degree.
And I found that odd. More than odd. I found it baffling. And it immediately raised a number of questions. And admittedly it also raised my hackles.
Some obvious questions
+ Why is autonomy present in Level 2 of the EQF but not present until Level 8 of the SCQF?
+ What happens at Level 8 that makes autonomy present in a way that it's not present in Levels 1 - 7?
+ Where does autonomy lie at Level 8 and “above”? Is it in the individual? The course materials? The interaction between the two? The way that the individual uses their learning in the workplace?
Or is it a case that people who “work with their head” are regarded as having autonomy, but people who “work with their hands”, don't? Is the SCQF yet another example of white-collar supremacy?
The Electrician's Paradox: Why True Freedom Is Found in the Rules
We wanna be free, to do what we wanna do, we wanna be free. And we want to get loaded.
When we think about being "autonomous," we can easily imagine it in terms of Primal Scream’s Loaded—total freedom; being able to do whatever we want; unconstrained by external rules or limits. But if that's the definition, (and it is a dictionary’s definition), how can we possibly talk about autonomy for someone in a highly regulated profession, like an electrician? After all, unfettered freedom on an electrical system would lead to chaos rather than competence.
This question highlights a major issue about how the SCQF thinks about skilled trades. The absence of "autonomy" until Level 8, suggests that the framework has an incomplete understanding of what autonomy means for apprentice and qualified electricians.
So, what is a more accurate way to understand autonomy in a skilled trade?
From Following Rules to True Agency
When an apprentice electrician learns a critical safety task like "Safe Isolation" (making sure an electrical system is dead before working on it), they start by simply following instructions such as Select's ‘10 Steps’. Their actions are driven by what they're told to do and maybe even by the fear of making a mistake. This, in the language of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, is a state of "heteronomy"—acting from external instruction rather than internal reason. The journey of an apprenticeship is, or can be considered as the transition from heteronomous actions to autonomous ones. A qualified electrician performs the same task, but they act from a place of deep knowledge and reason. They understand the dangers, their responsibilities, and the necessary safety measures. At this point, in Kantian terms, they are an autonomous agent. But this is only part of the story.
Freedom Within Limits
An electrician's work is governed by a huge number of standards and regulations, such as the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 and BS 7671. At first, it might seem like these rules restrict their freedom, forcing us to slavishly follow the rules.
Paradoxically though, these standards are precisely what enable autonomy. BS 7671, for example, isn't just a list of prescriptions; it’s a historical framework of dynamic embedded knowledge, experience, and expertise of the historical electrical trade. It's a living tradition that has been refined and developed over time.
When an electrician works "within the frame," their actions are given meaning and value by these standards. Their job isn’t just to follow the rules; it's to use their sophisticated judgement and deep understanding to navigate this complex set of regulations, client specifications, and the constraints of the physical world. Working within the frame is one way that we produce "good workmanship".
Contrast this with a DIY enthusiast. They might do safe and functional work, but their actions lack the deeper ethical, interpretive engagement of a professional. They are unconfined by the limits of the frame, which means their work is just an outcome, not a meaningful act that validates the worth of the trade's tradition.
As the philosopher Roger Scruton put it, freedom is "a very good horse to ride, but to ride somewhere". The electrician's autonomy is the horse, and the industry’s standards are the "somewhere" it needs to ride to—the safe, responsible, and skilled work that is only possible because of those rules.
Why This Matters
By not explicitly acknowledging autonomy below Level 8, the SCQF misunderstands this "situated autonomy". It fails to recognize the "intellectual demands and professional development" required of a trade qualification. If frameworks like the SCQF are to effectively compare the worth of a trade qualification to a university degree, they must recognize that professional autonomy in skilled trades is not about being unconstrained. Instead, it is a sophisticated form of agency that gives meaning, dignity, and respect to a skilled worker's labor.
I was recently asked for my opinion about on-site, situated assessment—the type of assessment its disciples call "authentic".
This post argues that the concept of "authentic" assessment is a philosophical contradiction, a contradiction that becomes clear when we understand that any assessment, simulated or otherwise, can have no reality beyond its own constructed text. I'll explore how this fundamental insight, rooted in the work of Jacques Derrida, reveals a deep flaw in the "authentic" assessment approach to educational evaluation, a flaw that is both philosophical and profoundly human.
Derrida's famous aphorism, ‘il n'y a pas de hors-texte’, (‘there is nothing outside the text’) is usually applied to questions in literature and philosophy. I argue that educational assessments operate in this way. The moment we bring in a third-party observer into the workplace, the work is immediately reframed. A rubric is set, a time limit is imposed, and a specific task is assigned; in that moment, the real world ceases to be the subject. The subject becomes a constructed simulation, a text to be read and evaluated.
This dynamic creates a profound identity crisis for the apprentice, whose professional being is destabilized by a new, spectral identity as a “candidate”. Derrida's philosophy, in the reading of Dooley and Kavanagh, is fundamentally concerned with the related questions of memory and identity. It is a philosophical landscape haunted by ghosts and spectres, traces, ashes and mourning.
The destabilization of the apprentice's identity, this haunting, rooted in Derrida's concept of hauntology, is summoned by the assessor’s gaze. It is a presence that problematizes the apprentice’s being, ensuring that the individual is no longer a single, coherent being but a paradoxical blend of two conflicting identities, the candidate/apprentice. While the assessor's gaze reads a performance, the master electrician's gaze, in complete contrast, is a pedagogical one, and this distinction is where we find the true essence of authenticity—not in a test, but in a tradition.
The Apprentice Electrician as Assessor's "Text"
When assessing a candidate in a simulated environment, say, on their ability to test a lighting system, the specific test results don't matter in the same way that the results matter on-site. What matters in the assessment are the procedures and actions that the candidate performs. The candidate, in the simulated assessment, is not testing the circuit, but is instead performing through their actions that they know how to test the circuit. And in this regard, their actions are as much a simulation of testing as the environment is itself simulated. Their performance is judged on criteria like the settings of the test meter, and whether the test is carried out from the correct part of the circuit. They are, in other words, assessed according to the assessment rubric, and not on whether the installation wiring is up to scratch. The entire scenario is a contrived representation of reality, designed for the sole purpose of evaluation.
This arrangement ensures that the environment is safe for the candidate to perform and more importantly make mistakes without putting either themselves or the assessor at risk of danger. The assessment can reliably be taken at any centre with any assessor because the simulation is reproducible. The assessment takes place in a controlled environment free from the noise and distractions of a construction site. All the real-world messiness of an electrical installation on a site is cleared away to ensure that the simulated assessment only assesses the candidate's performance ensuring that the assessment has validity. Taking place in a test centre, the assessment is practicable and manageable in terms of bookings and staffing levels. And with all those controls in place, the assessor can concentrate on reading the candidate's actions as if they were reading a text. The candidate's actions are not real work but are instead signs to be interpreted by the assessor. There is no reality to the candidate's performance outside the text of the assessment rubric.
This philosophical error is somewhat paradoxical because the flaw in the “authentic” assessment is that it lacks genuine authenticity. The candidate still has to meet a constructed assessment criteria and it is the assessor’s reading of what is observed, and not the electrician's, that decides how the candidate has performed. It is, in other words, no more "authentic" than the simulation.
Perhaps even more than that, because there is a profound irony here. By its very nature, a situated, so-called "authentic" assessment takes place in the workplace. It is a disruption to the quotidian, the ordinary, the expected. It is a pre-planned, pre-scribed event that interrupts the flow of the workplace and imposes an external frame of scrutiny onto an organic process. To quote Derrida's friend, Emmanuel Lévinas, the workplace suffers 'an abrupt invasion' such that the space the assessor enters ceases to be: the workplace ceases to be a workplace. And, in this respect, there is nothing more inauthentic in the workplace than an "authentic" assessment.
The Haunted Identity of the Apprentice
Why summon hauntology to discuss authenticity in assessment? By melding haunting with ontology Derrida reconceptualises ghosts as spectres who disturb notions of time and history, blurring distinctions between the present, past, and future. Spectres also problematize being and non-being—they are paradoxically present but absent, unsettling conventional categories of what is real and what is not.
Thus begins Carmen Vallis’ paper which uses Derrida's concept of hauntology to trouble the idea of "authentic" assessment, framing it as a ‘spectre of lost futures’.
The apprentice is a professional-in-training. On-site, they are what they seem to be; their identity set in a practical, day-to-day sense; a shared, recognized identity within the community of practice. But the moment they enter an assessment, their identity as an apprentice is joined by a new, paradoxical identity that of the “candidate”.
This new identity is a kind of spectre; present, but not fully real, one that, as Vallis' paper points out, "problematises being and non-being". The apprentice is still an apprentice, but their professional being is now haunted by this other non-being of candidate, both, as Dooley and Kavanagh put it, ‘belonging and non-belonging, reducible to neither one nor the other’. We can formulate this dyad as the candidate/apprentice. The single word "apprentice" unable to exist without the trace of “candidate”. Both in a state of constant deferral.
In this haunting, the identity of the individual becomes fundamentally non-coherent. The apprentice's being is defined by their work, their relationship with the master electrician, their place within the grading structure. The candidate's identity, however, is inseparable from the assessment's rubric, the assessor's gaze, and the need to perform for a grade. These two identities exist simultaneously but can never truly merge or cohere into a unified whole.
Denial of the Spectre
This is where a more profound philosophical error lies. The advocates of "authentic"assessment seek to deny the existence of this spectral identity altogether. Like Hamlet asking Horatio, "Do you see it?" the answer that advocates of "authentic"assessment want to hear is "no," because that denial allows them to claim that the assessment is a pure, unmediated reflection of the apprentice's true being.
This haunting occurs irrespective of the simulated or situated nature of the assessment. The assessor's gaze is what summons this spectre. The assessor isn't just observing the candidate/apprentice's actions; they are reading them through the lens of an educational text. This gaze transforms the apprentice's professional identity into an academic one, a paradox that exists only within the contrived space of the assessment. Derrida's theory of hauntology lifts the visor of this ghostly presence to reveal that the "authentic" assessment is no more real than a simulated one.
It is the same with "authentic" assessment advocates who try to solve the problem of non-coherence with a separate, flawed act of coherence: equating the "authentic" with the real. A critical point to understand here is that a simulated assessment cannot be said to lack authenticity because it can never possess it. It is not a poor imitation of the real world; it is an entirely separate system with its own logic and its own text. A simulation's purpose is not to replicate reality but to create a controlled environment where a specific, pre-determined set of skills can be observed and evaluated against a specific rubric. The simulation is what it is—a text of a test—and pretending it is anything other than what it is in order to criticize what it cannot have is an act of bad educational faith.
But "authentic" assessment does more than simply deny the presence of the spectre. It seeks to magic its paradoxes away using the power of words. Its very name an incantation, a prayer, a spell. By calling itself "authentic”, the term attempts a deliberate act of concealment. The name itself is a kind of declarative magic, seeking to make real what is only an illusion. It is a linguistic sleight of hand that tries to erase the very spectre it summoned. By naming the assessment as authentic, we are led to believe that its reality is a given and that it has an outside to which it can be compared. But this is a flawed premise. The name is not a description of a quality; it is a declaration of a belief, an attempt to make a phantom cohere through an act of language.
The Electrician's Gaze: A Pedagogical Act
The gaze of “the other” signifies an ethical and existential encounter with a perspective beyond one's own. While the educational assessor's gaze haunts the apprentice by transforming them into a candidate, the master electrician's gaze does different work.
When I was an apprentice, I remember wanting to see my journeyman smile, acknowledge my work and realize that I respected him and his teaching enough to want to reproduce it. I wanted to see him see that I was learning and doing well. But the smile that I wanted to see wasn't just a mark of approval; it was a confirmation that I was becoming successfully initiated into a community of practice. The apprentice wants to see the journeyman's smile because that acknowledgment is a two-way sign of respect, and a confirmation that they are successfully learning to reproduce the master's craft.
This gaze is part of a shared text—the tradition of the trade itself. It is not there to judge against a rubric, but to guide, teach, and provide a model. This pedagogical gaze is a gaze of mentorship and acknowledgment. The apprentice is not performing for a grade; they are participating in a conversation that has been going on for generations. This is the un-haunted form of assessment, where the performance is not judged against a pre-written text, but is becoming part of a living one. And whilst all assessment is a form of reading, the master electrician's gaze is one of mentorship and tradition, whilst the educational assessor's is one of cold, bureaucratic scrutiny. What the assessor sees, all that the assessor sees, is the performance of the haunted candidate/apprentice. It is disingenuous to regard these identities, these differences, to be coherent or reconcilable.
Conclusion
As soon as an assessment rubric is in play the apprentice is haunted by the spectre of being a candidate. This happens irrespective of whether the apprentice is in a college classroom, an assessment centre, or if an assessor assesses them on-site. There is no escaping the fact that all assessments are essentially inauthentic. We cannot escape the reality that any assessment, simulated or otherwise, is a constructed system. The frame is inseparable from the assessor's gaze. When that frame is established, there is no outside of it—and huis clos, no way out. An assessment is not merely an observation; it is a complex, closed system of evaluation. To argue otherwise is at best naive and, at worst, dishonest.
References
Mark Dooley, 'The Surprising Conservatism of Jacques Derrida', The European Conservative, https://europeanconservative.com/articles/essay/the-surprising-conservatism-of-jacques-derrida/, accessed 20th August 2025
Mark Dooley and Liam Kavanagh, (2007) The Philosophy of Derrida, Abingdon , Routledge
Carmen Vallis (2025) ‘Authentic assessment in higher education: the spectre of lost futures’, Teaching in Higher Education, 30:3, 744-751, DOI: 10.1080/13562517.2024.2362217
Episode #190 (26 December 2022) - Deconstructing Derrida: A Dialogue with Peter Salmon by Converging Dialogues on Audible. https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/B0BR4CTH5Q?source_code=ORGOR69210072400FU, accessed 21st August 2025
Peter Salmon (2021) An Event, Perhaps: A Biography of Jacques Derrida, London, Verso
Image Credits
Gisela Giardino, Derrida at Jorge Luis Borges´ home in Buenos Aires, 1995, uploaded to Wikimedia Commons on 12th October 2004, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jaques_Derrida_(cropped).jpg, CC-A-SA 2.0 Generic, (accessed 25th August 2025)
Hamlet, Horatio, Marcellus and the Ghost (Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 4), print, Robert Thew, after Henry Fuseli, uploaded to Wikimedia Commons on 11th July 2017, This file was donated to Wikimedia Commons as part of a project by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0 1.0, https://share.google/WTpf9JyXlEcycvQQq, accessed 26th August 2024
What are the barriers to greater adoption of online and on-screen assessment in high-stake, sessional qualifications in England?
That's the question Ofqual sought to address in its December 2020 report into the issue. The report separates the most significant barriers into three groups: those associated with IT provision in schools and colleges; implementation challenges; and challenges maintaining fairness.
This post is focused on a feature of the implementation challenges, and in particular, the concern in stakeholder groups essential to the success of any deployment and in broader public opinion.
As part of its attempt to answer the question at the top of this post, Ofqual convened a workshop in January 2020, bringing together a cross section of well-informed stakeholders. These stakeholders represented teachers, school and college leaders, technology providers, awarding organisations, industry bodies, government, and Ofqual. Each of these groups undeniably holds valuable perspectives on the practicalities and challenges of online assessment. All of those representatives were rightly invited, included, listened to, and valued. But there's a glaring omission. An exclusion from the list of the invited participants: parents.
Ofqual
Despite the profound impact online assessment might have on their children's educational practices and their own role in supporting learning, parents or parent group representatives were conspicuously absent from this crucial discussion. This wasn't merely an oversight; it was an exclusionary choice, symptomatic of a deeper, systemic distrust of parents within the wider educational system. Indeed, while other stakeholders were invited to a direct, interactive workshop, Ofqual's approach to understanding parental perception instead relied on a YouGov survey, the 'Perceptions Survey Wave 18'.
This represents a clear two-tier approach to information gathering: on one hand, a networked, collaborative discussion among educational professionals; on the other, a third party's arm's-length survey for parents, effectively avoiding any direct engagement with the wider public. This isn't just about the absence of any specific 'parent group'; rather, it indicates how Ofqual utilized its established network to exert power over the discussion surrounding online assessment, instead of seeking to establish its authority on the issue via genuine dialogue with all affected stakeholders. There's reassurance for the institution in being able to say that they have consulted the "experts," but this very claim undermines its own validity, as it hasn't taken the crucial parental opinion into account. Indeed, there's a profound irony here: the very act of using these selected "experts" to establish the boundaries of the problem and its solutions becomes a technique for presenting the solution as a fait accompli. Once the limits have been set by this inner circle, any further involvement—perhaps, even with parents at a later time—is reduced to merely tweaking an already decided-upon solution. In their attempt to solidify their authority through a narrow consensus, these "experts" unwittingly undermine the broader legitimacy that genuine, inclusive dialogue would have provided. This approach goes further than just an oversight; it presents an ethical concern.
As Roger Scruton articulated in a different context, there is a critical difference between using people as a 'means to an end' and genuinely valuing their expertise to serve 'civil society as the end'. By resorting to an arm's-length survey rather than direct, collaborative engagement, Ofqual risked treating parents as mere data points for a pre-determined outcome, rather than as integral partners whose unique expertise could genuinely shape the most effective and trusted path forward for online assessment. Parents are not simply bystanders of educational policy; they are integral partners, offering unique insights into student well-being, home learning environments, and the real-world impact of pedagogical shifts. To exclude them from a direct discussion on 'barriers to online assessment' suggests a fundamental undervaluation of their perspective, treating them as external actors rather than essential contributors.
To exclude parents from a direct discussion on 'barriers to online assessment' suggests a fundamental undervaluation of their perspective, treating them as external actors rather than essential contributors. There's a further irony here: the workshop appears to have sought a purely technocratic understanding of the challenges in introducing online assessment for high-stakes, sessional qualifications. Yet, in their very pursuit of removing these technocratic barriers, Ofqual inadvertently imposed a significant barrier on participation itself, overlooking the crucial human and trust dimensions of implementation. My own experience, having previously highlighted a similar snub given to parents in the Scottish educational sphere, only reinforces the pervasive nature of this institutional reticence to engage directly with parent groups.
Moreover, while the Ofqual report does acknowledge 'public concern' on page 16, it notably fails to delve into, or even acknowledge, a critical aspect of this concern: the widespread public distrust in large-scale IT implementations and solutions. This omission is particularly striking given the recent, devastating public experience with such systems, a distrust that has permeated public consciousness with profound implications for how new technologies are perceived and adopted.
Once you realize that parents had been excluded from this crucial workshop – a direct, collaborative forum – and relegated to an impersonal survey, it's hard to shake the feeling that Ofqual was, perhaps unwittingly, setting themselves up for a repeat of history. This approach carries the distinct risk of mirroring the very cycle of denials, avoidance of responsibility, and disregard for the truth that the Horizon scandal so chillingly epitomises.
Horizon
Nowhere has this erosion of trust been more acutely felt than in the ongoing Post Office Horizon IT scandal. The Post Office, as Nick Wallis notes, was historically "the first Government agency" and, until recently, "the main physical interface between the British state and its citizens". It was more than just a business; it was woven into the fabric of British life, carrying with it deeply romantic associations depicted across poetry, literature, film, and television – from the gentle world of Postman Pat to the profound works of Benjamin Britten and W.H. Auden. These powerful cultural symbols, Wallis explains, represented core "notions of efficiency, stability, security" and, crucially, "trust" [pp. 18-19].
This deep-seated public trust, cultivated over centuries, was catastrophically shattered by the Horizon IT system. Innocent postmasters, whose lives were intrinsically linked to this symbol of stability and trust, found themselves accused of theft and fraud owing to a faulty computer system.
But the breakdown of trust extended even deeper. As Wallis also reveals, the very foundation of the relationship between the Post Office and its subpostmasters was one of profound "trust" [Nick Wallis, p. 27]. Subpostmasters operated with significant autonomy, managing their branches, handling cash, and acting as pillars of their local communities. This professional relationship, built on mutual reliance and good faith, was systematically betrayed by an institution that prioritised a flawed IT system over the integrity of its own people. The enduring lack of justice for these individuals does nothing to mend this fundamental breach, preventing any true closure and hindering the possibility of rebuilding trust from the ground up.
This multi-faceted collapse of trust within the Post Office saga resonates with the earlier example of parental exclusion in educational policy. In both instances, institutions appear to operate from a position of inherent distrust towards those they are meant to serve or collaborate with – whether it's parents in the educational sphere or dedicated subpostmasters on the frontline. This pattern of systemic distrust, and the devastating consequences it brings, is the unseen thread connecting classrooms to courtrooms, underpinning a dialogic breakdown of trust. Institutions, in their perceived need to exert power or control, demonstrate a distrust of the public they serve. This, in turn, fosters public cynicism and a lack of faith, trapping both parties in mutually fulfilling negative feedback loops that undermine genuine progress and societal cohesion. This repeated failure of leadership to take seriously the concerns of ordinary people undermines trust in our institutions and has brought about a national crisis of institutional distrust.
Conclusion
Whilst the two cases are nowhere near morally equivalent in their scale of direct harm, they share a common, worrying thread. Jordan Peterson, in Beyond Order, exhorts us not to denigrate institutions. We should respect them, preserve them, work within them trusting that they will devote themselves to producing something of value beyond the insurance of their own survival. However, as the Post Office's betrayal of its subpostmasters demonstrates, institutions can all too easily undermine their own worth through insularity, an aloof disregard for ordinary people's voices, and an arrogant assumption that they know best. When institutions like Ofqual use an arm's-length survey for parents while hosting networked, collaborative workshops for others to discuss a question of a large-scale IT proposal, they fundamentally betray the moral authority of the people they serve.
Rebuilding trust, then, isn't just about transparency or process; it's about a fundamental recognition of the people's inherent moral right to be heard, respected, and served justly. Only when institutions truly embody the spirit of genuine dialogue and accountability can trust begin to be restored, moving us away from courtrooms and towards a public sphere where all voices, and not just a clique with the correct opinions, are genuinely valued.
