The Leeds Salon is a discussion group that hosts debates in and around Leeds. All welcome!

Monday 11 October 2010

The Myth of Racist Kids

The Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 led to a requirement on schools to report ‘racist incidents’ to local education authorities, which has resulted in the reporting of an estimated 250,000 incidents. Many of these involved very young children, and included cases of name-calling in the playground and arguments between friends. A growing ‘race relations industry’ has moved into the daily life of schools and even nurseries, with the aim of combating prejudice in children as young as three. But can children so young really be racist in any meaningful sense?

Critics like Adrian Hart, author of The Myth of Racist Kids (Manifesto Club, 2009), argue that anti-racism campaigns in schools can actually create ethnic tensions.

See here for more details about this forthcoming discussion.

Monday 15 November 2010

Ferraris for All: Is unfettered growth possible or desirable?

Journalist and author Daniel Ben-Ami and UK Green Party founder-member and author Clive Lord will discuss the limits and desirability of economic growth.

Since the start of the first Industrial Revolution, economic growth has generally been seen as good and desirable. However, over the last forty years, the growth of the economy and the spread of prosperity have increasingly been seen as problematic rather than positive. While some are still willing to defend economic growth, highlighting the gains to humanity it has brought in terms of material wealth, technological progress, increased life expectancy and personal consumption, others accuse prosperity of encouraging greed, damaging the environment, causing unhappiness and widening social inequalities.

See here for more details about this forthcoming discussion.

Monday 13 December 2010

The 'Two Cultures' Debate

In a famous lecture given over half a century ago, C.P. Snow raised concerns about the increasing alienation of humanist intellectuals from science.

Professor Raymond Tallis will argue that this problem is more complex than Snow thought, and addressing it may be even more challaenging than he imagined.

See here for more details about this forthcoming discussion.