Censored 2013

If you wondered where Michael Gove and Tony Blair before him ever got their ideas about replacing failing schools with corporate-sponsored academies and suchlike, look no further.

The US template, in which education no longer has anything to do with creativity, critical thinking or expressive ability, is detailed in this book.

Teachers and pupils alike must submit to a corporate testing regime in a race towards standardisation and conformity.

It is easy to see how in the case of education the "American way" has been imported to these shores. But there are many more sinister similarities and the 25 censored stories under scrutiny in the book reveal how power is concentrated in the hands of the few and how this is done.

In particular it documents how government officials have worked to disconnect the US public from the realities of war and how language abuse leads to physical abuse.

It shows too how a general media-induced attention deficit has resulted in no questions being asked as to the legality of the state assassination of the US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki.

One contributor writes that "if you are reading this book you must be a rebel." If this is a glimpse of our future, then we had all better become rebels - and quick.