The enemy within British education

david skinner

The present zeitgeist defines everything according to, as Neil Saunders put it in a previous thread, “qualifying adjectives” that carry a heavy evolutionary humanist moral value and not according to objective categories such as parent, marriage sex, speech etc.
Sexual behaviour is no longer defined as that small but vital component of marriage. Instead it is now either ‘safe’ or ‘unprotected’ . Truth is now no longer ‘true’ but ‘temperate’ or ‘hateful’ . Parents are now no longer defined as man and wife but by being ‘committed’ or ‘caring‘. In so doing we render such categories as meaningless and thus can dispense with them altogether.
Thus quoting from Professor John White: “The aims include fostering a model pupil who values personal relationships, is a responsible and caring citizen, is entrepreneurial, able to manage risk and committed to sustainable development, " even these category words ‘pupil,’ ’relationship,’ ‘citizen’ and ‘development’ will disappear, as we are left with only the relativistic and qualifying words placed before them that have to be interpreted through the mesh of anarchist ideology.

Charles Smith

I wouldn't be too sure that it's the conspiracy to destroy British society that you imply, Ms Phillips.

The problem is this. Absolute equality of opportunity is needed for a perfectly meritocratic society; but such a society is inherently stratified and unequal: it has a large underclass and a smaller upper class, the meritocracy.

Absolute equality of outcome, by contrast, produces a society that is not at all unequal; but it is one that dehumanizes its members.

Finding the middle ground, whereby people can reach their potential, but not at the expense of social cohesion, is obviously not easy. The problem with comments such as those of Professor White is that they push society too far in the direction of equality of outcome, and in the process they do indeed undermine those aspects of British society that have, rightly, encouraged people to reach their potential, and that have resulted in progress. Two works of satirical fiction are worth reading with regard to this dichotomy.

The first is Michael Young's "The RIse of the Meritocracy, 1870-2033." Published in the late 1950s, it sets out the problems of a purely meritocratic society. Young coined the word "meritocracy" in this book, but he saw the meritocracy as an upper class that would replace the aristocracy, in a massively divided society.

The second, Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron," is a short story that envisages a society that has absolute equality of outcome, in an Orwellian society that was actually totalitarian (such absolute equality must be forced on people - it does not arise naturally). Both are satirical works of fiction looking into the near future, and together they argue that, taken to extremes, either absolute equality of outcome or absolute equality of opportunity would produce hellish dystopias.

Professor White's comments are certainly misguided: But why infer conspiracy when stupidity will do?

Miranda Rose Smith

What is wrong with "mere(?) steppingstones to wealth?" Malcolm X, a radical, said "Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to those who prepare for it today."

David

More state interference, eh? It should be up to parents to decide what sort of schooling they want for their children, and for the schools to have the freedom to offer what those parents want.

jose Garcia

Melanie

why dont you put a " rating system" and a "page visited number" in the website?
so we can see how many people agrees and watches this space?

i am very curious as how many people actually reads/agrees with all this

Charles

With two children going through the A level & GCSE modular exams / year-end exams / continual coursework cycle, I despair at the thought that some universities may want to add another set of exams to this grinding treadmill of angst. Spare a thought for the kids. These should be amongst their happiest, most carefree years. Teachers may appreciate this but many parents certainly do not, which impacts on the rest of us. In North London the phenomenon of teenage nervous breakdowns due to academic pressures at certain schools is no secret. Do we really want more of this?

As regards the mentality of educationalists, my own insights are based on the rate at which subject syllabi change. In some cases this seems to be almost an annual event. How necessary can that be? One suspects that a veritable army of 'educationalists' out there spend their days constantly fiddling with the curriculum for no better reason than that they are well paid to do so.

Grumble over. Feel better for that!

Neil Saunders

To David Skinner

The words you quote are not actually mine. I am not at all hostile to the Neo-Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection (which is, I think, far and away the best explanation of the observable facts), and I am an atheist. I think it is just plain wrong to derive, as you appear to, a politically-correct social morality from an objective and value-neutral body of scientific theory. (Indeed, the sociocultural Marxists who now police and set the terms of our social, cultural and moral discourse would - on the basis of postmodernist relativism - explicitly deny such objectivity as obtains within the natural sciences. There is, as their intellectual forefather Nietzsche once remarked, no truths, only perspectives.)

Still, I share your and Melanie's concerns about the destruction of the English education system by Marxist ideologues, and I am in broad agreement with your social beliefs. (BTW, I specify "English" advisedly; it is significant, in the Celt-heavy New Labour administration, that Scotland's educational system remains far more rigorous, and that the Welsh - through the alternative medium of the Welsh language - also have access to a more rigorous education.)

I have long felt that an updated edition of All Must Have Prizes is an urgent necessity. It is clear, in the light of subsequent developments, that powerful as it seemed in the context of its time, the original edition was, if anything, far too moderate. The message will never, of course, get through to the entrenched ideologues, but the general public need to be kept informed of what is being perpetrated against them in their name.

I think that the ideological capture of our institutions (with the significant exception of financial ones) by the sociocultural left is so comprehensive that they need to be completely purged and rebuilt from the ground up. They are incapable, in their present condition, of being reformed piecemeal. It is quite clear, incidentally, that this is not going to occur under the watch of the Blair-Apparent, who has completely bought into the pseudo-liberal consensus of academe, the mass media and the Westminster village.

Although I disagree with Peter Hitchens on some issues (for example capital punishment) I think that he is right to reiterate the message that the Conservative Party is so in name only, and that an entirely new movement needs to be created.

As I have said elsewhere on this forum, the present political dispensation is a fusion of political correctness in the sociocultural sphere and free-market fundamentalism in economic sphere. (Nick Kaplan - who, I suspect, is covertly one of them - has sought strenuously to deny that there is any such fusion.) I am at 180 degrees to this; I am a moderate sociocultural conservative, but I would also like to see a far more interventionist economic policy to protect ordinary people against the depredations of and exploitation by over-mighty private corporations.

Paul

Skinner: "....as we are left with only the relativistic and qualifying words placed before them that have to be interpreted through the mesh of anarchist ideology."

He's off again. Good Lord man, where do you live? Do you actually engage, at all, with the real world?

Yes, Melanie's right (again), but that doesn't necessarily mean that we're in the grip of the apocalyptic anarchist nightmare that you seem to believe we are. I think you should calm down a bit and go for a walk in the park. You never know, you may discover that this country of ours - and its people - are still mainly okay.

madhumati

In a rare moment of disagreement with the delightful , scintillating and extraordinarily lucid Ms Phillips I must say that education has to evolve to meet up with the changing needs of society.

The most important aspect ( in my humble opinion) of education today is to teach the child the powers of thinking and reasoning/ And to make this expereince so meaningful and rewarding that the child is imbued with the love of learning and learning for life( especially in this time of contnuing professional development).

To educate citizens to be workers at a time when paid and salaried and organizational jobs are fast disappearing is to do society a disservice.

Yes White is right -when the family has all but disintegrated and relationships are viewed as economic transactions children have to be taught how to relate and the importance of relating as well as eternal human values. They need to develop social awareness and entrepreunurial skills so as to be able to survive financially and to support their families ( if they do decide to take on that responsibility).

Using valuable educational time in teaching children just facts will produce uncreative and robotic creatures -a dangerous beast that in times of economic and religious upheaval can turn into a terrifying phenomenon.

Henry's Cat

Great, so we can have more rigged web polls with people voting multiple times.

This isn't the Ant and Dec Show.

TD

Funny, my uncle is a multi-millionaire and left school at 15. He now sends his kids to schools that are well known for a focus on traditional education and discipline. He wants them to go to University and prosper.

Yet another reason to ditch A-levels and opt for the International BAC system.

Henry's Cat

It is a conspiracy, Charles.

Education used to be something in and of itself - picking up knowledge. It is only since the sixties it became a tool for social engineering. The Left flail about, not knowing quite how to go about this, but that's their aim with everything - not raising standards in and of themselves, but seeing if education can be used to move people in this direction or that direction - and stuff the basics.

The better grasp you have of the basics, the better your life chances - no wonder people moved up the social ladder with a good education. That is Professor John White is so implacably opposed to because it doesn't fit his Marxist fantasies. His idea is to just shove everyone into the gutter. Great.

Where does all this happy clappy nonsense lead? It leads to huge numbers of functionally illiterate and innumerate young people with no grasp of how to organise their lives. Look how many of them are drowning in debt unable to understand a basic household budget.

Welcome to the gutter, kids, Professor White will now give you a gold star for doing what you were told. Now drown for the rest of your lives.

field

It's more of a mixed picture that Melanie says. Let's not forget that IQ tests have had to be recalibrated over the last 60 years by about 100% because people have become more "intelligent" (i.e. better able to do the tests which have NOT been dumbed down).

The fact is that whereas in the past the education system had to
emphasise memory, the growth in information sources and the internet make basic memory far less valuable. Organisations have all sorts of ways using computers now to get what they want out of people without people having to internalise all the procedures.

That said, I agree there is a "dumbing down" in the sense that the true ideals of academia are
being eroded.

I think there are a number of approaches we need to look at:

1. School discipline. Nothing is going to flourish without a culture of discipline in schools. We cannot expect teachers to undertake that role anymore. We need specialist discipline officers who will maintain discipline in corridors, classrooms, and on routes to and from school. They need specific legal powers to back them up in their role.

2. We need to look at developing more boarding schools. The average child now has access to so many exciting distractions that we can't expect them to concentrate on academic work in the home environment - and that environment intrudes on schools as well.

3. We need a single exam board to stop the nonsense of competitive dumbing down.

Lance Grundy

“…children should no longer be taught traditional subjects at school because they are ‘middle-class’ creations and ‘mere stepping stones to wealth’…lessons should teach ‘personal skills’ instead.”

Fine. So let poorer countries give their children a ‘middle-class’ education that will act as a ‘stepping stone’ to wealth while we teach our children “personal skills” that will consign them - and the British economy, to the dustbin.

Neil Saunders

To Paul

You're in denial; things are very bad indeed, and "a walk in the park" isn't going to solve anything.

To madhumati and field

In your very different ways you both subscribe to an essentially utilitarian concept of education. This is both shallow and limited. (I am reminded of Charles Clarke's remark that the idea of education for its own sake was "a bit dodgy" - a philistine thought expressed in semi-literate language.)

madhumati, you are wildly wrong in supporting White's aspiration (if that is quite the word) to equip children with the wherewithal (unspecified, of course) to cope with family breakdown; rather, the dire problem of family breakdown itself (encouraged by PC social policy) needs to be urgently addressed.

It is all very well trying to teach children to reason AFTER they have been taught the basic skills of reading, writing and numeracy, and furthermore have some actual KNOWLEDGE to reason about. The fact is that reasoning doesn't float free of content in some abstract cognitive realm.

field's notion that it is not necessary to inculcate knowledge because it exists OUTSIDE the child in "information sources" should be seen for the dangerous nonsense that it is. Properly developed human beings need to carry knowledge WITHIN them (i.e. to possess mental furniture), otherwise they are the mercy of others who do possess (or otherwise have access to) such knowledge. Furthermore, they remain undeveloped and dull as people.

Very little knowledge is simply the technical knowledge (more accurately, know-how) of "procedures", whose function can be usurped by e.g. computers. A basic knowledge of mathematics, history, literature, etc., benefits from SOME rote-learning and memorisation. This inner knowledge should not be farmed out to pocket calculators, spell-checkers and Wikipedia or we shall be a nation of technology-dependent semi-barbarians.

Schools are not JUST places where children are prepared for the workplace (although obviously some of the curriculum must be devoted to making children employable as adults). The idea of (some) education for its own sake is not only NOT "dodgy"; in order to create fully-rounded human beings (and not merely robotic wage-slaves) it is essential.

Paul

Saunders: "You're in denial; things are very bad indeed, and "a walk in the park" isn't going to solve anything."

To Neil - Did you not notice the part where I very specifically addressed Skinner?

Even so, as a doom-monger yourself, perhaps you might also want to consider a walk in the park? I'm not saying that it will necessarily solve anything, just that it might help you to calm down a bit. And no, I'm not some hippy-dippy type - it's just that indulging in Skinner-like hysteria never really achieves anything.

Yes, things are bad. But really, we're not at the precipice just yet - however much you loudly tell yourself (and others) we are.

In a nutshell: get a grip.

Neil Saunders

Paul

"Did you not notice the part where I very specifically addressed Skinner?"

Yes, of course I did, but this is a PUBLIC forum and not your own private domain.

In a nutshell: learn some manners.

Peter

In other words, attempts at teaching children have failed and so they're institutionalising "can't win, don't try" in place of a curriculum.

Verity

2:22 p.m. Melanie was right to identify this problem in 1996 and she is right to draw attention to it again today as the state education crumbles (ably assisted by the wrecking balls and jack hammers of virulent socialism) and pillars of learning lie strewn around British cities and towns.

I also agree with David Skinner, and would add that one important means to destroying the integrity of the family has been the state's fanatical usurpation of the parents' rights to decide when their children are ready to learn about sex and at what speed.

Some of the lessons forced on young children by the state are nothing more than formalised and institutionalised paedophilia. Were any person outside the school system to be forcing young children to discuss sex and be showing them illustrations, they would be arrested for paedophilia.

And obviously, the obsessive conentration on sex has led to our teenagers being the biggest sluts in the world. I read yesterday of some 15 year old slapper who was pregnant with her second child. I also read that some local councils are spending money on sending pregnant girls and "nursing mothers" to school by taxi.

It doesn't get any crazier. Well, yes it does, actually. That the British allowed this to be beaten, bullied and berated into accepting this abnormal state of affairs is perhaps the worst.

Chris

Melanie is spot on - as she so often IS. I worked in education for 20 years and in Examination bodies too. I can tell you that the grade inflation, the micro management, the constant effort to make things look 'as though...' were among the factors which helped me to decide to leave. I worked in a so-called 'Beacon School' which Mr Blair once visited. Under Labour it was like working in pre 1990 East Berlin. Things were at times bad under Kenneth Baker and Kenneth Clark - but it was as nothing to the Labour misrule which followed and continues apace.

Paul

"I read yesterday of some 15 year old slapper who was pregnant with her second child."

And that means what, exactly? That the country's going down the toilet? That we're all doomed? Or does it just mean that some kid - as kids have done since even you can remember - has got herself into trouble? As I said to Saunders, get a grip.

Oh, and that's a nice use of hateful language there Verity to describe a fifteen year old kid. In that sentence alone you revealed yourself as bigoted, snobbish and utterly mean-spirited. Which, in my book, makes you much more of a problem than the girl you chose to point your judgmental finger at.

Nick Kaplan

Neil; on this thread I couldn’t agree with you more. Education is the most vital public good there is and is the key to solving so many problems. But as you say, the assumption that one can reason abstractly without knowledge is philosophical nonsense and should be condemned as such. Whether the undermining of our education system has been entirely deliberate or a result of misguided people taking advice from those with sinister aims I am not sure, but on the whole, well said.

david skinner

Well said Verity. The government are grooming our children. Something for which only a few decades ago they would have been hauled into court. It's time we reached for anything to hand in order to protect our children.

Verity

Paul writes: "As I said to Saunders, get a grip." I don't care what you said to Saunders. I doubt whether Saunders does, either.

Your reasoning, if such it can be styled, is flawed. We have the highest rate of teenage and under-teen pregnancies in the world. These children are deliberately encouraged to behave thusly as part of the deconstruction of the family and the unweaving of the fabric of our society.

That this is deliberate policy is evidenced by the fact that none of these fathers is ever arrested for having sex with under-aged girls. And no one would dream of insisting that the families (if they even know who they are) take care of the babies these girls have. These infants are instant dependents on the state for life, which is how this government orders things.

Adam B.

When I was sitting my GCSE's, our teacher gave us an old 'O' level paper from 20 years before, as a practice paper. The whole class was completely stumped. When I went to University, we had to sit a separate exam paper, along with an interview. These have both been dropped since. In addition, there were twenty undergraduates in my year(there had been twelve the previous year). The year after me, there were thirty. Now this department takes around seventy, with the same facilities and staff. How on earth can anyone argue that education is improving?

dearieme

With Imperial having gone public, Oxford and Cambridge can now be a bit less shy about the variety of "tests" that they have applicants undertake.

Paul

Skinner: "The government are grooming our children."

Verity: "That this is deliberate policy is evidenced by the fact that none of these fathers is ever arrested for having sex with under-aged girls. And no one would dream of insisting that the families (if they even know who they are) take care of the babies these girls have. These infants are instant dependents on the state for life, which is how this government orders things."

Skinner is always hysterical, so no surprise there. Verity, you are not just hateful, snobbish and bigoted - you're also, I think, slightly unhinged.

You and Skinner both display those attitudes that left-wing critics of Melanie Phillips seize upon. That is, you both come across as deeply unpleasant, frothing-at-the-mouth, right-wingers. Something that Melanie most assuredly isn't.

David Lindsay

Good for Imperial. This is no way devalues A-levels, which were never supposed to be, and did not used to be, merely entrance exams for universities. Rather, it restores A-levels as qualifications in their own right.

After all, there is absolutely no relationship (and I really do mean absolutely none whatever) between A-level results and classes of degree. Universities have admitted on A-level grades only because they had given up setting their own entrance exams, to the detriment both of the A-level system and of universities.

Now we need to restore O-levels for the most academic pupils. And above all, we need to restore grammar schools, but on the German Gymnasium model, thereby avoiding the crudity of the 11-plus.

Alongside the grammar schools would be the technical schools, of which there were never anything like as many as there should have been; the special schools, horrendously Beechingised by that ridiculous Warnock woman; and the Secondary Modern schools, delivering exactly as much academic and technical education as most people really need and can take in, and vastly better than that which has so very often replaced them.

Paydirt

So Paul thinks it's all OK for the country to have the some of the world's worst statistics on teenage pregnancies? He ain't going to do anything about it.

Verity

Paydirt - I think we actually have the highest rate of young teenage pregnancies in the world. Certainly the worst in Europe, and the rest of the world is considerably more conservative than EU countries.

Adrian Camp

I went to Imperial over 40 years ago, and there was an exam then, or at least a test, partly of IQ and partly, well, something else. There were questions where there could be no answer. To get it right you had to say, not enough data, or whatever the problem was. Good test. Shame I dropped out, really.

Nowadays I can't stand parents' evenings. ALL the teachers seem like Hazel Blears or Jacquie Smith. You know the kind I mean. Most of the learning isn't done in the classroom anyway, never was.

Kevyn Bodman

Nick Kaplan at 3.16 has written the comment that I wanted to write, and better than I could have done. (It's VERY rare for me to recognise that.)

Neil Saunders

To Paul Kaplan

Thank you very much for your support on this vital issue. It is greatly appreciated.

Eddie Pratt

I agree with Field that school discipline is paramount. The ideal scenario is, of course, self-discipline, but this needs be taught.

Secondly, I believe our education system needs to offer a broad choice, probably by the end of 9th grade, maybe earlier. In overly-simple terms, the choice should be between a more traditional academic route on the on hand, and a more "hands-on" or skills-based curriculum on the other. Both forms of knowing are equally valid in a truly egalitarian and meritocratic society. No student should be turned away from the opportunity to learn more traditional academic knowledge, but, equally, there is little point in forcing reluctant (or ill-equipped) students through a system they detest.

I should know, I was a teacher for nine years.

Graeme

To say that the Education System is dominated by Leftwing interlectuals is quite true. The present Governmentis using schools as vehicles for social change and does not view them as institutes of academic learning for young people. An old university friend of mine now teaches at our Alma Mater in the very History Department were we studied and says that most of the undergraduates are little better than GCSE Grade and that the quality of students has declined enormously since we were at university together. This Government is shambolic on Education and everything esle.

Commondog

madhumati

"To educate citizens to be workers at a time when paid and salaried and organizational jobs are fast disappearing is to do society a disservice."

And society's meal of the future, is going to be provided by.......non-workers?

Can you explain how this might work? And when I might be able to join in?

david skinner

Leaving aside the accusation of my being hysterical, I think it is time to present a compilation of evidence that should make us not froth at the mouth but weep for our children. I would advise, if folks haven‘t the time plough through this, to go straight to last link.

The fact of the matter is that vast majority of parents have no idea of what their children are being taught with regards to sex education in school, in spite of the claim by the Department of Children Schools and Families that parents, governors and all interested parties are carefully kept in informed as to what material is being used.

As a supply teacher, a few years back, I was asked to distribute glossy booklets published by an outfit that calls itself the Family Planning Association ( this is funded by the government to the tune of millions) to a group of thirteen year olds, in a large Church of England School. The booklets were encouraging safe promiscuity. Even the lady responsible for running the Personal Social and Health Education throughout the school, had not even checked the material for herself. And what parent is going to be brave enough to go along to their school to ask pointed questions about sex education?

The womb has become the most dangerous place of a baby and the school has become the most dangerous place for a child.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=511209&in_page_id=1766&ito=1490 (Teachers directed not to use words, “Mum” and “Dad.”)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/07/31/nwrong31.xml
(Teachers to stop teaching children right from wrong)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=438621&in_page_id=1770&in_page_id=1770&expand=true (Outcry over explicit sex education video shown to five-year-olds)

http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=373 ( Trojan Horse of Sex Education)

http://www.fpa.org.uk/attachments/published/735/PDF%20Is%20everybody%20doing%20it%20June%202007%20non%20printing.pdf ( Evil influence of Family Planning Association)

http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,5500,1215653,00.html (Girls having abortions without parental knowledge)

http://www.christian.org.uk/issues/2008/family/aocni_30apr08.htm (Public opinion ignored as NI
age of consent lowered to 16)

http://www.christian.org.uk/pressreleases/2006/october_10_2006.htm (Plans to make sex 'legal'
at 13 in Northern Ireland)

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23427447-details/More+than+half+of+all+British+babies+%27are+born+out+of+marriage%27/article.do (More than half of all British babies 'are born out of marriage')

http://www.christian.org.uk/issues/2007/family/pregnancies_03jan08.htm ( Twenty school girls becoming pregnant EACH DAY )

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=499305&in_page_id=1770&ct=5 ( girls as young as 12 to be given morning after pill)

http://www.stonewall.org.uk/education_for_all/ (Stonewall@s document on schools' polcy

http://www.christian.org.uk/soregs/sor_booklet_sept06.pdf
( children being corrupted in school)

http://www.lgbthistorymonth.org.uk/aboutus/schools.htm

http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,1393102,00.html
( indoctrination of the Lesbian, gay, trans sexual and bisexual History Month to be run in school)

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-2037.html
(largest Teachers' Union interfering with very young children)

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2031223,00.html (brainwashing of small children)

http://www.nooutsiders.sunderland.ac.uk/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=373183&in_page_id=1770 (Forget the tudors... and teach transvestism)

http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1279655/now_primary_pupils_face_lessons_about_transsexuals/index.html?source=r_health (cross dressing).

http://www.massresistance.org/media/video/brainwashing.html (brainwashing small children)

Verity

Graeme writes: "This Government is shambolic on Education and everything esle."

No, they're not. It's working.

Thinkster

Yo Peeps, Sister Melz once again on da tops wid dis one! Seriously Bruvvers 'n' Beetches, gud on ya da House of Imperial for standing up against da forces of mee-dee-okra-tee. For as you all noez, da harder you work, da luckier you get! Init?

david smith

I find it interesting that nobody has mentioned that not so very long ago to be a skilled or semi skilled craftsman was a worthwhile ambition,particularly for a young man.He would measure his worth by the approval of his peers and his elders and would learn that he himself should be his own harshest critic.Two of my sons are skilled cabinet makers and I know this is how they measure their work.They are also,in the oldfashioned way,educated men as generations have understood it.That is they have a wide knowledge of the world,of literature and history etc.This is part of their birthright as free men.The literature and history of a people is not some optional school subject but part of their rightful inheritance.This I have tried to make sure my children have and now I will try to make sure my grandchildren also have.When I was a young man I learnt so much from older men who took the time to talk about the world and their lives.I have never forgotten them and I felt part of a continuity that went on from generation to generation.
Perhaps we have too readily destroyed this world in the name of what?Rootless young men and women who are taught that this is year zero.That everything is relative,that no criticism or self criticism is valid.That they are to be trained,if trained at all, to be units in an all encompassing,perhaps benevolent state and business machine and if they fail to measure up to be supplied with just enough to stop them destroying the system.
I am not naive.I know that the last 40 odd years have seen an experiment in social engineering.I also know that my family and many others like mine have to be broken for it to succeed.We cannot be bought off.
Wealth means little but independence of thought and freedom mean everything.This above all else I will teach to my grandson and granddaughter.
Sadly I fear my children might leave their country as they fear for the future and I cannot blame them.They know that those who control and direct our society will need to break them to achieve their goals.
This is the struggle I believe we now face-to drive from power those whose beliefs can never be acceptable to a freeman before it is too late.

Marin

Professor John White is not original. Pol Pot has expounded the same ideas long before him and the consequences are still with us. He'll undoubtably agree that this country still needs scientists, doctors, journalists etc. If so, where are they going to come from? As far as I'm aware (although Professor White may disagree)life has not yet discovered on Mars (this,as I was taught at school, is a planet in our solar system, but I wonder if this bit of knowledge was really necessary for me to make a living).

Ann

"To educate citizens to be workers at a time when paid and salaried and organizational jobs are fast disappearing" -

Really? So who are those tens of millions of people out there doing perfectly normal jobs that I haven't seen disappearing at all, from bus drivers to surgeons, from shop assistants to lawyers? Perhaps they are really shape-shifting lizards? ;-)
The good professor is talking through the back of his neck. No doubt it makes him feel important. Classifying and categorising knowledge is a natural human thing to do, indeed a necessary one for making sense of the world and for developing one's skills for work also, and it was not invented in the 19th century by middle class Brits. The Greeks were doing it in classical Athens. But perhaps White failed his History O-levels and has never managed to catch up.

Paul, leave Skinner in peace to spout this bizarre stuff. It keeps him happy and out of trouble, and you wouldn't want to deny him that, do you?

Ann

Verity, what on earth are you on? This government couldn't organise a ... well ... run a whelk stall. Nothing they touch works, and when they meddle with it things just get worse.

Ann

Paul, I am sorry to say that you are wrong. Teenage pregnancies and teenage binge drinking are the worst in western Europe and among the worst in the world. And now we see a level of teen-on-teen violence that even 10 years ago we would not have believed possible in Britain. The level of state dependency is horrendous. I am not saying it's deliberate (although it does help the government - if you can call it that - massage the employment figures), but it's a catastrophic route for British society to take.
You can't have analytical skills without knowledge; was it you who said that? Knowledge is being gradually, drip after drip, removed from schools under this pernicious and ignorant philosophy of White and his mates.

Joe Strummer

I have no grand theories to expound on this issue but only the personal experience of speaking to nephews of mine who are recent successful A Graders from last term and who are currently University students.

No harm to them but to say they are what we used to call "educated", which they are in comparison to others of the same age nowadays I suppose, would be telling a fib at best and an enormous lie at worst.

Their ignorance of basic general knowledge and awareness of cultural reference points is shockingly poor, particularly the history of their own country and how we as a nation gradually evolved to where we are today.

Themes and subjects which we would all before have taken for granted as knowing from even the most elementary schooling are practically non-existent, which I must admit greatly disturbs me.

Being brutally blunt, they would never have been accepted into any University or Poly in the 1970's or even the early 1980's.

These are good young people with a lot to offer and maybe I'm wrong all along and they've been taught exactly what they need to survive in the 21st Century, and I wish them all the best.

Verity

Ann - I always enjoy your posts and support them, but this statement: Verity, what on earth are you on? This government couldn't organise a ... well ... run a whelk stall. Nothing they touch works, and when they meddle with it things just get worse. is wrong, wrong, wrong.

They've run it very well. It's meant to look shambolic and hopelessly inept, as they inch their toxic slime trail through one more inch. The Trots aren't incompetent, Ann. Destructive, yes. Malicious, yes. But they can run a whelk stall. They can run a country down the drain.

Minekiller

The enemy within British education, is the socio-feminised PC teaching body. Liberal self-loathing, anti-white anti-male and anti-British. Simple really.

david skinner

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this, but the most powerful educator is the mass media that falls on us and our children like black atomic dust . Without any fixed, absolute point of reference, human nature has a way of accommodating and becoming comfortable over a period of time with a state of hell. It can gradually sleep walk into becoming hardened, desensitised to cruelty, barbarism and evil, until what was considered abnormal or deviant becomes the acceptable norm, as happened in Nazi Germany, Russia, China, Cambodia and now- even Britain.

Roy

This is not only a British problem, these people who are dismantling the old education systems are world wide. The left have a lot to answer for. It is odd that the fall of the USSR hasn't stopped the centrifugal force of it's Marxist-Leninist indoctrination and propaganda campaigns continuing on their merry way. That is subverting the culture and veracity of it's enemies...the free world.

Verity

1:23 pm Minekiller - Yes the socio-feminist arm is another section of their artillery.

This arm is in the process of demasculising boys and neutering the aggressive instincts that drive civilisation forward. It started with their being far too many female teachers. Next, taking out the rows of seats and desks and giving them tables to work around - "co-operating", replacing the saner system of all desks and seats facing the teacher and the blackboard.

None of this happened without careful planning. It's all part of keeping the population passive, and it's working. There should have been riots in the street about two-thirds of the way though Tony Blair's regime, but there was hardly a peep, except on the blogs.

Kiffa

To support David Skinner's remarks about what is taught to your children, at a governor's meeting the child protection officer specifically mentioned that parents are not shown what is taught to their children during these 'devolopment' lessons. We were also given the pretty strong inference that we governors weren't going to see it either.
Thank you, God, that we can afford school fees. The State failing of children makes me apoplectic with rage and despair... the difference between independenct schools and state schools is simply not fair. As usual the left blames the wrong 'culprit'.

All will be revealed.

I may be wrong but having scrolled fairly quickly down the thread I did not see mentioned something called the New World Order.

To place in context what you are all on about here, I suggest you take a break and Google a simple search 'New World Order'.

Everything will then dovetail neatly into place.

Thinkster

Verity: You are absolutely spot on! It is when I read postings like yours that I wonder if we should all stop blogging / commenting and, well, draw up an alternative constitution (else we have no right to complain), offer it to the people - and if we are stopped by those who fear loss of power, THEN we take to the streets. And ask level headed Americans who also 'get it' (John Bolton for pres please!) to help get things back to their natural common sense best.

Commondog

If your aim is to steal a nation from its people, a good place to start is to take its history from them so that they have no way of knowing what they have lost.

Do that for a couple of decades, then the blogosphere can become a big bouncy castle in which pimple-arsed know-nothings encourage each other into the belief that all is for the best really and 'hey, this is just today's version of a perennial human fear'.

Chill indeed.

Kiffa

Verity I do think you are slightly overstating the case and in a slightly paranoid way. If not, where is your source knowledge?
I do agree with you, by the way: Lefties have had it their way for far too long. They are too entrenched in the media, judicial and academic systems (and parliament). What is so difficult about them is the siren call of their social vision, their conviction of their superior moral state and their absolute dismissal of all empirical evidence to the contrary - that the world is NOT improving the way they so confidently predicted.
It is up to us to stop being so silent, to stop being cowed by their personal rebuttals (to say such things immediately proves racism, selfishness, lack of caring, etc) and to hammer at the foolishness of their cherished ideals: understanding criminals (crime has exploded since 1960), sex education (pregnancy rates up) social justice (poverty has increased), 'fairness' (standards down), blah blah blah. If we got serious, could we do it?????
An excellent book on this is Thomas Sewell: The Vision of the Anointed. He takes every precious lefty assumption and statistically proves its disastrous consequences in society. He says the West is sleepwalking to disaster...

Al Ramy

Have you looked at the stories about Education Expert/Terrorist Bonnie & Clyde of the Chicago Commentariat, Ayers/Dohrn and their associates, who are at the forefront of dumbing down American Education?

Many stories about these two, their history and their educational activities have been featured by by dedicated journalists who hardly get credit for their good work because the Media loves Obama and will never explain any issue in which his buddies, may have gone off the handle...The situation in G.B and the U.S is identical, "Professor " Ward Churchill, Boulder, Finkelstein-DuPaul, Makdisi- L.A, Khalidi - Colombia, etc....recall what they did to Larry Summers, the rector of Harvard several years ago...?

david skinner

Around December 16th 1989 I clearly remember how the fall of communism in Eastern Europe was getting closer and closer to Ceauºescu, the Romanian tyrant . At the time I said to someone who prided themselves on world, politics, about which I still know nothing, that it would be wise for him (the tyrant) to be thinking of getting an airplane ticket. My superior colleague rubbished the idea saying that Ceausescu’s power was unbreakable.
But precisely on December 16th a protest broke out in the Romanian town of Timisoara in response to an attempt by the government to evict a dissident pastor, Laszlo Tokes. He had recently made critical comments toward the regime in the international media, and the government alleged that he was inciting ethnic hatred ( sound familiar). At the behest of the government, his bishop removed him from his post, thereby depriving him of the right to use the apartment he was entitled to as a pastor. For some time, his parishioners gathered around his home to protect him from harassment and eviction. Many passers-by, including religious Romanian students, unaware of the details and having been told by the pastor's supporters that this was yet another attempt of the communist regime to restrict religious freedom, spontaneously joined in. As we recall the protest became a mass protest that within nine days ended with Ceausescu and his wife being executed, on Christmas day.

One wonders why Romania and all other countries that go under the heal of tyrants have to go through decades of hell before finding the will to break free. Why could they not have resisted at the beginning and saved themselves the trouble?

But perhaps we need to be reminded of Martin Niemoller, a German pastor and Holocaust survivor who paid a heavy price for faith and freedom, who said:

“In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up”.

Two articles back, “Britain’s Slide into Dhimmocracy, Art Cunningham was one of the main subjects of that article who contributed to the posting. This weekend,as someone else usefully pointed out, he, his church and Stephen Green of Christian Voice are going out again onto the streets of Birmingham to share the Good News of Jesus Christ .

http://www.christianvoice.org.uk/Press/press084.html.

Some of you folks are passionately against religion of any kind but may I remind you that probably the only people standing between you and Marxists/ anarchists on one side and Islam on the other is the Christian on whom many of you presently pour contempt.

I only pray that in the coming weeks, months and years that you will stand four square with us and not allow individuals to be isolated and taken away in the middle of night.

James C

About fifteen years ago, I was doing an engineering degree in a respectable red brick university. While I was in my last year, a friend gave me a copy of an engineering exam paper sat by his father in the 1950s as part of a part-time HNC course, theoretically a course a step down from a degree. I have to say I was astonished – It was more difficult, more mathematical, and required far more “lateral thinking” – for want of a less pretentious term - than the papers we were accustomed to sitting. And all this was fifteen years ago. God knows what engineering students do in lectures these days – link hands and sing “We are the world,” probably.

My own explanation is that in those days life was more or less a struggle, for individuals as well as nations. Our culture was tough of necessity. These days, things are different. The principal question is whether we can continue like this in the face of competition from abroad.

MC

To Commondog
June 5th, 2008 5:52pm

Superb quote - I'll have to remember this for other occasions.

"pimple-arsed know-nothings encourage each other into the belief that all is for the best really"

Also applies to GB and his 42 days!!!

Michael B

I'm beginning to feel a persistent tinge of embarrassment for those polities in the U.S. who are so utterly under the thrall of Barack™ (Mr. Change™) Obama™. It's as if it's right on the cusp of becoming comical or patently obvious, yet few seem to notice, or seem to want to notice.

Change™ is the message, Change™ is the chorus, Change™ and Believing™ in Change™ is the constant refrain; yet it's all politics as usual, all of it.

Mark Solomon

Paul, your very tolerant total failure to criticise and take any form of moral or value judgement is the main reason Britain is going down the toilet. Of course a 15 year old can make a mistake experimenting with sex-the story is as old as time itself - but here we were talking about her SECOND child. Once is a mistake, twice is not- that shows either wilfullness, stupidity or a failure to learn, all of which are reprehensible and worthy of criticism.

Until the decent mainstream middle class Britons start to realise that there need to be some standards and some way of holding other people to them, even if that provokes confrontation, is judgemental and 'leads to nastiness', there will be no hope for the country of reversing the inexorable decline.
I live in Spain where thankfully any 15 year old who is stupid enough to get pregnant (given that we live in an age of readily available contraception and legal abortion) is completely and utterly on her own - no benefits no state help of any kind. And not favourably regarded in general either. Surprise surprise, not many of these 'accidents/mistakes' happen here!

Wilf

To Kiffa - I arrived home after work yesterday (June 5th) and found an Amazon package had arrived.

The content? The Vision Of The Anointed, by Thomas Sowell (subtitled, Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy).

Looking forward to it greatly!

Winnie McCrann

Hi Melanie,

It sounds to me like this Professor White has somewhat let the cat out of the bag.

Trumpeter Lanfried

Thought #1
In the eighteenth century students were taught Latin from Monday to Thursday, tested on Friday, and thrashed if they had not learned their lessons. This system produced some of England's finest writers, scientists and thinkers.

Thought #2
It saddens me that my parents' handwriting, punctuation and spelling was far better than my grandchildren's, given that both generations were of equal intelligence.

Henry Kaye

Madhumati sees some logic in Professor John White's theories but surely those theories are only valid because they are what has caused the changes in society to which they have become relevant. Without the social engineering that has taken place now for so many years, society would be a very different one today and the traditional teachings would continue to be very valid.

Neil Saunders

Henry Kaye is right. The so-called social sciences (and their clients in related "disciplines" such as Professor White) are in fact engaged in the production of self-fulfilling prophecies in the service of an ideological agenda.

They misrepresent themselves as the practitioners of an objective and disinterested pursuit of knowledge. What they are actually doing is a variant on the old naturalistic fallacy, whereby they strive to generate an "is" (a state of affairs in the world) to justify a predetermined "ought" (their prior ethical and political commitments).