An important contribution to the thinking behind this paper came during a recent discussion of government policies called ‘personalisation’. When asked ‘what is the problem to which personalized learning is a solution?’, one delegate at a deputy heads’ conference replied ‘depersonalised learning’. This simple but powerful point struck a chord and helped me to think further about the way that trends in recent decades have downgraded the focus on human qualities in the field formerly known as education. For this reflection I have chosen three aspects: the political, the moral, and the personal. There could be more – perhaps it is time to coin the word ‘desocialisation’ to describe the way that consideration of social qualities and social processes can be downgraded
