Chalk this one up to Gramsci (again)

Huw Thornton

Absolutely, Melanie, but then how many Telegraph readers would have even "moderate levels of agreement" with, say, speeding laws?

But, joking apart, if citizenship isn't put across as involving duties as well as rights, it's bad education quite apart from anything else. Given all the other cock-ups in education, I think to invoke Gramsci is an over-explanation.

oldandrew

Citizenship, school councils, and the like are all nonsense, brought about by well meaning but naive people who hoped to "enlighten" the next generation to think like them, without realising that they didn't think very much at all and now implemented by people who don't even believe in it. I can't see any connection between school democracy and the workings of an actual democracy.

I did write a blog entry explaining what is actually involved in a school's efforts to promote democracy:

http://oldandrew.edublogs.org/2007/08/24/political-education-goes-down-the-toilet/

ThomasR

I don't it's possible to teach values in schools, good or bad.

During all golden ages of reason and progress the values which prevail are implicit. If anybody, say a Church, tries to teach and sustain those values, they will likely not know what they are, let alone know how to persuade any listeners.

Btw, schools themselves are one reason why people don't trust authority figures. Parents and teachers spend more time trying to control children than listening to them and helping them.

Caliphate Blues

Has the buzz around two words ever fallen apart more quickly than it has for the two holiest of holies, 'multiculturalism' and 'globalisation'?

The first seems to be downright oxymoronic. Cultures are not interchangable and do not have a moral equivalence, that's why we call them cultures. They are idiosyncratic.

But what do we do when we realise that cultures are not interchangable in Britain? Why, we just pretend they are, which means that the culture that is most unyielding goes unchallenged because it uses the cloak of multiculturalism to pretend it actually has exactly the same agenda in mind as our free culture, even though the places it has originated from don't have our freedoms. Funny that.

This is how the Caliphate is stealthily asserting itself.

The second concept is just as ludicrous. Brown still rolls the word 'global' around his tongue as if he is talking about the second coming. There he was last week: 'this is the world's first truly global financial crisis'.

Truly. Truly, madly, deeply. Holy, holy, holy. Trouble is, global doesn't equate to good, does it? Because if you all swim together, you all sink together too.

This is true of culture and economics. Some countries in the eurozone should by now by deep in recession, but the single currency means their governments can't alter interest rates and speed up their recovery. Good? No, because all it does is delay the inevitable.

If you cannot control your own economy, the poison cannot be lanced and the recovery made quicker. Now the whole eurozone is infected and no-one can go for a lie down. They're all shackled together for the duration of what's slowly bleeding them white.

And as for global 'community', where once you could put a tournique around the dodgy parts of the world and keep bad elements together until they'd sorted themselves out, now malcontents can hop from place to place with impunity.

This is where the poisonous Gramsci has led us. We operate in total vacuum while those who despise us laugh at us for tying our own hands behind our back.

They don't do Gramsci in the Middle East,so all they need to do is watch us fall on our Gramscian sword. What useful idiots we are.

There is much more to say on all this and people are waking up to it. For now, though, check out Charles Moore's essay last week in the Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/09/20/do2001.xml

He is concerned mainly with the global economy that is wreaking havoc on such a grand scale because it was designed on such a grand scale, but he touches on culture too.

Just as our fantasy world capitalism is reshaping itself to harsh reality so must our culture.

Just as we have had enough diced and sliced dodgy debt that because no-one understood it, it led to disaster, so we must do away slicing and dicing the values of our culture thinking that one day the tolerance we show will be returned with interest. It won't. Far too much has been allowed to go on with the concept of our tolerance and freedoms used as the security on it.

Sub-prime thinkers such as Gramsci have bankrupted our cultural values to devastating effect - they are now so ineffectual as to be worthless.

David McAdam

As with PC's infestation of the population in general,children being taught how to think has seamlessly changed to being told WHAT to think. Credit for this successful feat of social engineering should also go to Foucault.

Miranda

Well isn't it time we of the'common sense', real community/society values got together changed a few laws ourselves and fought back????

Hasn't Daniel Hannan come up with some kind of 'plan'. Shouldn't we start getting off our backsides and getting involved locally, and doing someting. The blogsphere is ruled by the the right-wing they say, well lets start using it to make changes then.

I'm fed up with these woe is us articles - we know what is wrong. What we need now is to cheer each other on to actually DOING someting.

Start with talking to people, espcially the young. Let's get our stories straight and start promoting them everywhere at every opportunity. Everywhere I go I start a political discussion - it's amazing what comes out. Let's see the same discussions at the dinner tables, in the workplace and on the blogs.

Are we powerless wimps, or do we believe in truth and fairness and civilized values of citizenship???

Ronnie

Well, join the dots indeed.

I'm sure the current publishers of Gramsci's works, and his estate, will be very pleased with this continued raising of his profile by Melanie. I imagine hundreds, nay thousands of curious readers rushing to the book shops to find just how Antonio's Prison Notebooks led directly to the bizarre creation and delivery of citizenship lessons in our schools.

Gramsci has been mentioned rather a lot here recently. I wonder what the book sales figures for the third quarter look like?

Jack R

It's good to see that Tory shadow Home Secretary, Dominic Grieve, has criticised the ideology of 'multiculturalism':
(from BBC News website, today):
'Tory warning on multiculturalism':

"Mr Grieve said Britain had failed in creating a cultural 'melting pot'
British multiculturalism has left a 'terrible' legacy which has allowed extremists to flourish, shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve has warned.

"A type of 'cultural despair' has led 'long-term inhabitants' and newer arrivals to feel alienated and unsure of UK values, he told the Guardian.

"Mr Grieve, speaking on the eve of the Conservative Party conference, argued this had led to support for extremism."

elixelx

The Purpose of Education, intoned my cutting-edge facilitators at the cutting-edge Teachers' Training facility in Greenwich, is to Change Behaviour!
When I asked the obvious question "from what to what"? I was givena failing grade and shown the door!

Dee Ranged

Spot on Melanie!

david skinner

Our laws were once based upon the Ten commandments; this was the grid through which we took our bearings with regard to existence, morality and truth. And though people today might believe that they have thrown off, not only the authority of the Bible, but all authority - they think they live in absolute freedom- they are sadly deceived. No one can live for long in a “gravity free” environment, just as no one can live in a sensory deprivation chamber for long without going mad. We all need a grid, frame, world view against which to judge our thoughts, feelings, desires, intentions and finally actions. The vacuum left by a loss of belief in the Bible has been replaced by another - that of evolutionary humanism. Without realising it, society has become conditioned en mass by this philosophy which, having trickled down over a period of several hundred years, has finally, monolithically and almost uniformly, permeated into every recess of life- from the university to the check -out counter, to the school nursery.

Man’s rebellion and shaking his fist at God is literally as old as Adam. Children come out of the mothers wombs shouting and yelling . To oppose any kind of authority is as natural as breathing . The Telegraph ran this article in 2006:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1525244/Teachers-to-stop-teaching-children-right-from-wrong.html

Ronnie

Bravo Miranda, I agree 100% with you. This blogoshere thing merely allows people to sit at home and whine to each other. Over time they loose touch with the reality beyond and the imagination and motivation to take any action.

David McAdam, I agree with you too but I would be grateful if you could expand on why you think that Foucault is partly to blame.

david skinner

elixelx. One of the purposes of education is to encourage children to reason. Thought and reason have become a criminal offence and instead been replaced by indoctination. Miranda, you are so right; but this will require moral and physical courage. Let us pray that there remains still enough in the British people to fight the evolutionary humanist infection that is daily taking its toll. People are not born atheists and humanists but are infected . Homosexual death is one of its symptoms.

TomTom

The irony for dear dead Gramsci is that he is making Europe ripe for a revival of Fascism

Augustus

The first citizenship lesson that should be taught in Britain to its immigrants and their children is that in return for the protection that the government will give its citizens, islamic or any other tribal traditions of religion, family and culture will only be tolerated if they remain secondary to the traditions, culture and laws of the host nation.

mac

It's not just in schools and it's not just Gramsci:3 years ago I took an MA in International Relations at a 'provincial' university. Kissinger was beyond the pale to the two principal lecturers running the course, Kennan was ignored and Dean Acheson and Ernest Bevin were fleetingly discussed only because I mentioned them. My fellow course members unquestioningly accepted that the parameters for our seminar discussions - on international relations, remember - should be framed almost exclusively by Gramsci, Foucault, Derrida and, as you will guessed, Chomsky. (And yes, I still got my MA!)

Ronnie

So Mac, you didn't read the Prospectus before you registered for the course?

Michael B

"Hollowing out of citizenship" is as succinct a description of the Multi-culti Parasite as any I've read. It reflects Phase I only, subsequent phases of the genus reflect yet more adaptive parasitic forms, at times graduating further still to predatory forms, narcissistic forms, oafish and beclowning forms, sophistical forms - and variants and combinations thereof.

Latin, parasitus - one who lives by amusing wealthy clients; Greek, parasitos - one who eats at the table of others

mac

Ronnie, Pertinent question. Yes, I read the prospectus. What I didn't do was look carefully at the staff bios. But tell me, in this day and age - and aged naif that am I - would it have been much different with any humanities/law faculty courses in any university?

Neil Saunders

It would be interesting to know whether Professor Crick has any affiliation to the "educational charity" Common Purpose, and, if so, to what extent.

David McAdam

RONNIE.
It's to do with power and control of society e.g. Weber advocated top down power from a known heirarchy, whereas Foucault advocated a drip drip from of control from an unknown source that permeates the collective social conscience to the point where it - the population - internalises then normalises the information dispensed. This imparting of power - e.g. 'politically correct decrees'- is covert in nature. In other words, no personalised authority imposes a'PC' lexicon or creed upon us, instead it enters our psyche through various communication agencies both visible and invisible (not supernatural). Foucault claimed that the potency of this power lay in its covert even subliminal nature. Without actually being told directly, people come to accept particular views as common knowledge, what is right and wrong and what is normal and deviant. Thoughts, words and deeds that were once considered normal become unthinkable. 'PC' decrees become the new "truths" that re-define our way of seeing the world. I believe today's generation have steadily been primed by this form of control from infancy. The information is there internalised waiting for the teacher of civic behaviour to stir, normalise and activate its precepts.

Neil Saunders

This may be far from conclusive, but, having now conducted a little bit of Internet research, I have discovered that Professor Bernard Crick was the "keynote speaker" at the 2003 conference of COTASS (Co-Ordinators' Training and Support Scheme).

COTASS is one of four organisations either set up or supported by the Evelyn Oldfield Unit (according to its 10-year report), a body that campaigns on behalf of refugees and asylum seekers. (Its report is available on the Internet as a PDF file. Just google "Evelyn Oldfield Unit" to find it.)

In addition to its involvement with COTASS, the Evelyn Oldfield Unit (which has an immense number of citations in Google for such a little-known organisation) proudly trumpets its collaboration with - you guessed it! - Common Purpose.

Brita

Ronnie & Mac: I had that filth forced on me as 'requirements' when I studied English Lit! Mac's list is right, though as additions I can include: Nietszche, Benjamin, Freud, Lacan, Bakhtin, Zizek, Graff, Freire - and that prize whiner, Said.

I know the stuff crops up across the disciplines - psychology, social sciences, international studies, political science, etc. Students must often 'underpin' their essays with it. Who has time to fish around for a university where it's not so? Who can find one?

In the end, I processed it on a 'need to know' basis. We should understand our enemies; after all, they mean no good!!! The difference between me and most students? Age, and experience in freedom of thought and expression; and it didn't always go down well! (I think someone once told me that Jesuits liked to begin education before children were 7..?)

So Miranda and everyone who supports her - well said.
I think Melanie is doing wonders to raise awareness, amid cries of: "Conspiracy Theorist!" etc. And I hope blogging is just a start [And Americans seem not to recognize what's happened to the UK...]. Steps beyond that are as you suggest. For now, I also have 'Fry the [EU]Flag' T-Shirts...strange looks I get, too!

BTW: I'll be interested to see if this week's Tory Conference turns up any responses to our concerns...

Anglica

David McAdam and Neil Saunders - THANK YOU.

Ronnie

Mac, I don't know. There are a lot of universities.

Ronnie

David McAdam, are you sure that Foucault advocated this form of power structure in society rather than analysing and describing it?

He started his work from A Marxian perspective but changed completely over time. His work tries understand where power comes from and how it is exercised throughout society but I don't remember him proposing a course of action. The point is that the sources of power and influence over people are many, varied, deeply ingrained and in the end too difficult to control for any length of time. It is possible to manipulate some of them but that is also complex and usually temporary.

But, I could be wrong about that, its been a while...

Roy

Some have said we do no good by whining about things . . . I beg to disagree. The more this question is discussed and the more diverse the intellect and widespread the participants the better. I am sure all who are in agreement with Melanie will put their spoke in when the opportunity arises in their own sphere of influence. It is heartening to find so many in agreement and giving there own learned pitch to it. There is something pleasing to find there are at least a few people around who are of a similar mind to ones own and backs up that self confidents that we all need from time to time. No, we aren’t mad, others think the same!

Bill Corr

There was a lot less of this argy-bargy and Bolshie nonsense when the children of the lower orders received nothing more than a 'dame school' education - IF they were that lucky.

Get the kiddies back to pulling coal carts underground and sell the secondary schools to leisure centre promotors and the nice new gated communities.

Neil Saunders

To Bill Corr

Have you ever heard of a "straw man" argument?

One elementary rule of debating is to challenge opinions that people have actually expressed, NOT to hypothesise about what opinions they MIGHT express.

That said, there is absolutely no evidence from any of the previous posts on this thread that ANYONE is proposing to send children to "dame" schools or have them pulling coal carts, nor is anyone suggesting that school sites be sold off for leisure centres or gated communities. Pure class-war drivel that misses the point.

In a nutshell: grow up!

Caliphate Blues

Brita, you took the words right out of my mouth. I had the same stuff forced on me during an English and drama course. The key synthesiser of all this Marxian/Gramscian guff we were told to go back to again and again was the poisonous figure of Raymond Williams, he was sacrosanct to the lecturers.

Initially, you think this is unique - but it isn't. Speak to other students on other courses and you realise that you and every other student is oh-so subtly being lured to view the world through a Marxian-Gramscian prism as well.

Take, for example, geography and the social engineering you can set about trying to achieve with planning and so on.

I've never spoken to anyone who's done a degree at a British university who hasn't been subjected to subtle attempts at indoctrination in one way or another.

And it appeals, of course. First, because you get marks and second, because you're not likely to be invited to think of the alternatives.

Followers of this blog will remember the student from Aberystwyth University doing a course on terrorism who revealed how that institution's International Politics department had gone beyond merely handing out a reading list of ultra-left authors and escalated the level of bias and into something else altogether.

Ms Phillips' entry can be found in the archive on this site and is headed Terror In Academia, 15th April 2008.

What happened there was that the tutors - via a learning log - were actually able to keep a close eye on what the students were reading and whether they agreed with it.

Added to this was the element that this learning log counted towards 10 per cent of the mark. You would, then, take any comments on your learning log very seriously as it would likely affect your mark.

The student who wrote in noted that those who read only the books on the list and made notes in their log parroting what they'd read, got lots of ticks. And those who diverged from the list or took issue with the authors' views seemed to get negative remarks.

To cap it all, in one seminar, they were actually told not to bother with any books not on the reading list.

From primary school to university the Gramscian ideology has permeated almost all official learning one way or another.

Melanie Phillips inspires such bile, of course, because she is to these Marxian creatures what Sigourney Weaver is to those spiteful sci-fi monsters. Down she delves, below the surface and into the nest wherein these poisonous ideas are hatched and made to multiply and fan outwards.

So used to getting away with it for so long, using the Marxian acid they have for blood to simply close down any debate whatsoever, usually by invoking political correctness, what gets them so riled is that Ms Phillips walks into the incubation chamber of this mind-controlling filth and with a blast of flamethrower prose illuminates them for what they are - and boy do they shriek when the nest is in peril.

David McAdam

Ronie:
You're right. It was his observation. My choice of words are occasionaly inappropriate.
From the outset I should have referred to Foucault's theory (not advocacy) of how power and control operates in society.
Thanks for the jolt.

Ronnie

David McAdam, Phew! I was going from memory but I didn't want Foucault blamed unfairly. His theories can be unversally applied as power is simply power, whether manipulated by left or right.

Maybe I'll get back down to the library...

Ronnie

Caliphate Blues, 'In space, nobody hears you scream'.

Frank Pulley

Caliphate Blues

Wonderful posts! Erudite, supportive, acclaiming both the message and the messenger. I sometimes wonder how Melanie manages to keep up the relentless output and quality of writing and research whilst suffering the infantile peashooting of trolls such as 'Ronnie' who constantly urge others to 'stop whining and do something', but never tells us what he does himself. I once asked, "What did you do in the Culture War Ronnie?" Needless to say, there was no reply. I think I can guess what he is doing here, but thankfully Melanie is impervious to the barracking of berks. She does however, I know, take heart from messages of support for her sometimes lonely campaign to turn back the effects of the counter cultural hegemony and shine light into the dark corners where the rats are still both feeding on the nation's cultural grain store and poisoning its output. Thank you. Tell your friends of like mind to weigh in. Many of the other supportive comments on this thread are from regular stalwarts whom we have relied upon for years and I am sure will not waver.

Ronnie

Frank, I've not forgotten your question, nor have I forgotten how you apparently like to google the other contributors to these blogs. I don't know whether you can't help it or if you are unable to correspond with people unless you can research and put your rather strange labels on them. Either way I find it rather disturbing.

Let me make it absolutely clear that I will not be providing you with the slghtest biographical tit-bit and I advise others to do the same.

I value my privacy and that does not make me a troll. It may be that a number of my comments seem flippant to you but they are what I regard as an appropriate response to some of the, frankly infantile, contributions we see here.

For the record, I do sometimes agree with you.

raymond joseph douglas

As someone who has had to teach these dire citizenship lessons and their cousins,PSHE,I can agree with melanies thoughts.!Badly taught lessons,rotten material,and kids who know garbage when they see it, make for school hell on earth!Any thing would be better than this!More maths lessons,more P.E,anything but these PC exercises in political manipulation!

Alex du Toit

This seems a poor objection--surely in a democracy, the right to try to change laws that one feels are unjust--by peaceful political means, obviously--is one that must be protected and taught. No-one wants children to be taught blind obedience to the laws, except in dictatorships

Bill Corr

Here - how about this for an idea? When the Tories get in, 'ow about using all of the Speccie's wasta and piston at No. 10 to set up a Free University - i.e. a free-thought liberal-arts university with honest truths and no more of this clockwork-bolshie Gramski and Foocauld nonsense.

Mind you, hoodies on Asbos would benefit greatly from a spell pulling coal carts far underground.

Frank Pulley

Verity

Wonder if you'd mind telling Ronnie that I wasn't writing to him, I was writing about him. I finished my dialogue with him some time ago when the 'moderator' spiked some of my answers to his mini-rants (they were rude, but not that bad). If you're done with him too, don't worry, as I'm sure he will probably eavesdrop this.
One thing that worries me, if, as he states, he sometimes agrees with what I write, I'd better revisit it. My (very) youthful leanings towards Utopian socialism must have spontaneously erupted in my bloodstrean again and be inadvertantly oozing out of my fingertips. I'll have to ask my consultant to up the hydroxycarbamide again. Shit!

BJ

Poor old Gramsci! A perfectly respectable Marxist theoretician of the old school and he ends up with his picture paraded on the Melanie Phillips blog.

Archie Wedderspoon

'A perfectly respectable Marxist theoretician of the old school' - what a thought!