Liberals Shocked By Whole 'Consequences' Thing

Yes, it's a mystery alright. Liberals have spent years denouncing anyone with a real job as a dupe or a fascist (depending on how high up the ladder they are), and now they're shocked! to find that the yoof are lost in Fantasyland.

Hmmmm.... does this mean those of who talk about a 'culture war' are still fascists or not?

I only ask because some of us would say that we got here in large part because schools decided to get involved in the 'personal development' business in the first place. Also significant: a government who's response to cultural collapse is to talk about setting up goofy programs in primary schools. That should do it!

Capitalism Vs Socialism

I thought this story was a cute example of courage under fire, but it also shows a big difference between a functioning country and modern Britain - over here, they'd probably have got marks for it.

Spare The Rod, Spoil The Teacher

As a hater of all forms of government, I'd normally have sympathy with a group of professionals forced to deal with prescriptive diktats from distant civil servants, but there's two things stopping me where teachers are concerned.

Firstly, I was educated during the supposed Golden Age of the 1980s, back before the national curriculum and SATS, when teachers were at liberty to, like, do some stuff about... y'know, other stuff. Or something. Secondly, I have noticed that no matter how grindingly grinding the treadmill gets, there's always time for garbage like this or this.

Today's 'Benefit Of Open Borders Story'

They're taking the school places the British just won't take!

Hmmmm.... any chance the open borders lobby will include the cost of thousands of extra school places in their calculations ? Any chance at all ?

Liberals' Other Solution For Education: More Dancing!

Of course, the other problem with central planning in education, aside from insulting the producers from the disciplines of the market, is that it allows schools to be distracted from their central mission by the demands of political posturing. Again, referring to the story linked below, check this out:

The twinning method initially involves the good school bringing in senior teachers to "saturate" the other and impose order.

Behaviour, discipline and uniform are among the first areas to be tackled, alongside lesson planning and homework in what author Robert Hill describes as this saturation phase.

Behaviour, discipline and uniform are key areas ? Who knew ? Oh yeah... that's right: everyone outside the fever swamps of the education establishment. For forty years they've been yammering about individuality, self-expression and all the other excuses for letting schools turn into cess pits, so they can't hardly expect any credit now for belatedly realising that us fascists were right all along.

More to the point, these people are unstoppable. No sooner do they reluctantly let go one idiotic idea than they're off again, exploring whole, new vistas of stupidity. Consider this, for example.

I guess we'll have to wait another twenty years before the libs denounce the feminisation of education.

Is That 'Teamwork' Like Mugging Is 'Sharing Resources' ?

Liberals claim to have found a way to turn round failing schools, the only problem is that it requires increased effort from staff at successful schools.

Nope - that isn't a mistake. Liberal's latest variation on bussing is to force staff from successful schools to work in Titanic High. It's great that the left finally acknowledges that the success of a school may, in some small way, be influenced by the skills of the staff, and it's amazing that they'll even concede that some teachers are hopeless, after all, but they still won't follow their logic through to its conclusion.

There is another, more direct, way we could give kids in awful schools the chance to benefit from being taught by teachers in successful schools. To put it another way, how much of a minefield would eating out be if the government suddenly decided that no restaurant could ever go to the wall ? But no, liberals think competition allows us to buy excellent Thai, Indian and Italian food all within the same postcode, but education requires the type of high kwality state planning that gave us the Millennium Dome.

New Evidence For 'Liberalism = Disaster' Hypothesis

Don't be shocked, but it looks like anyone who can get free of the state education system is doing so.

Yes, I was shocked too. Here's a profession where liberalism runs rampant and yet somehow it's collapsed into chaos. Say, is anyone else seeing a pattern here ?

On the plus side, there are signs that some folks in the industry are finally geting to grips with their problems.

No, just kidding!

John Trickett, the Labour MP for Hemsworth, said Mr Blair had "failed in his objective".

"What we need to do now is set firm targets to achieve the equivalent funding for private and state schools."

Yes, clearly, more funding is the answer:

Total education spending in England was £29bn in 1997 and is £60bn this year. Of the £74.4bn total promised for 2010, £10.2bn is capital spending.

Spending per pupil, which was £2,500 in 1997, would from now to 2010 rise by a further 10% in real terms to £6,600, Mr Brown said.

Hence why standards have improved so much over the last ten years.

Then there's this:

Mick Brookes, of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: "We have to consider what parents are buying when they opt for the independent sector.

"They are buying smaller class sizes and quite often enhanced resources. Some parents are buying the fact that their children are not going to be quite as pressured by the tables, targets and tests regime in the state sector.

Yes, they've fled the high-achieving culture of the public sector for the chilled-out vibe of the private sector. Also, you can run a car on water, providing you boil it first.

Besides, it turns out that if you're reluctant to have Junior sitting next to the keynoter speaker of Crackfest 2020, you're a Nazi:

In parts of inner London the figures are even more stark, fuelling fears of an emerging educational "apartheid" in the biggest cities.

As frequently where liberals are involved, the clue is in their own charge. When exactly did it become illegitimate for people not to want their kids to be forced to rub shoulders with the deranged or the depraved ? But no: liberals think education should be like the draft, and the middle classes are trying to cheat the system to get their kids a staff job instead of sending them to the Somme like they're supposed to. The best rebuttal to that lunacy comes from the Telegraph article's comment thread:

I agree with David Welch:

"It`s high time those attending private schools paid for the damage that the creaming-off does to the state system. And the subsequent social divisions."

He's absolutely right to remind us that there's only a certain amount of good education to go round and the private schools are hogging it all. It's time this good-education pie (of eternally fixed size) was shared out more evenly.

I remember when I was a teacher that if another teacher said they'd done a really good lesson we had to make sure this was compensated for by a poor lesson given by someone else in case the pie was put under undue strain and we were all covered in half-digested erudition.
Posted by novelPhenomena on November 10, 2007 12:57 PM

Arsonists Call For Cut In CO2 Emissions

The Guardian is having fun with the British public's appalling grasp of geography. Huh ?

Somebody remind me: what side of the spectrum was it that claimed we shouldn't be teaching the 'kids' actual facts, nope, instead the syllabus should be full of ecolunacy, Third World victimhood and sundry other examples of tomfoolery ?

Even faced with evidence of the damage caused, the Guardian can't step away from the kool aid. The self-same article includes - apparently approvingly - this quote from the chief executive of the Geographical Association:

Geography helps us make sense of the world and face vital issues such as climate change, energy, food production, the 'war on terror', water and poverty. It also touches all our lives every day, from businesses to schools, government to hospitals.

Yep, the 'facing vital issues' thing is covered, it's the whole 'learning stuff' thing that's gone AWOL.

It'll Never Catch On

For a snapshot of where we are in the culture wars, consider the off the wall scheme recently proposed to improve British schools.

Aromatherapy in the classroom is hard science, but firing the incompetent is some wacky, off the wall scheme.

It's Just Their Our Culture

Of all the liberal excuses for bad behaviour, probably the stupidest is the idea schools shouldn't discipline black kids because, hey, acting like a thug is a sign of black authenticity. That's why it's always great to compare garbage like this with stories like this. Apparently, they need more 'more black involvement in the running of schools' in Africa too.

Today's Dhimmitude-In-Education Story

Remember, none of this stuff actually happens, it's all a right-wing myth.

Sally Bloomer, head of Rufford primary school in Lye, West Midlands, insisted: “I have not heard of any complaints.

“It’s all part of a diversity project to promote multi-culturalism.

Philosophical question: is it still multi-culturalism if it's always the same culture again and again ?

Liberalism-Related Incident

Who'd have thunk it ? After all those years of libs campaigning to raise the age of criminal responsibility - and taking out onions for those murderous savages poor unfortunates they couldn't get off the hook - libs have now decided that criminal responsibility starts at age 4.

Ditto, FR rightly points out that that we seem to be missing that other stuff, 'evidence'. Liberals are outraged if anyone suggests airport security should pay special attention to the Bin Laden lookalike just back from six months in Pakistan, but an incident involving a native Briton ? Well, you know what those people are like.

Hey, do you think Mrs Phipps is one of those teachers we're supposed to trust to put Fat Al's sci-fi movie in context ? I mean, it's nice that even a card-carrying libtard finally acknowledges that a complete absence of evidence may indeed be suggestive of innocence, but that does tend to ram home the basic offensiveness of the whole thing. Here's a four-year old child finding himself conscripted into the left's two-minute hate. Just how utterly corrupted do you have to be to do that ?

More On 'Attack of the Killer Capitalists'

There's a nice summary here of the judgement in Stewart Dimmock's lawsuit against the government showing Fat Al's movie in schools. I didn't realise the judge had actually gone as far as pointing out specirfic inaccuracies.

Again, to ram the point home, this is all down to one guy taking on the liberal establishment.

Imagine What We Could Do With Two Lorry Drivers

Latest update on the court case over the government decision to make schools show Fat Al Gore's sci-fi movie 'Attack of the Killer Capitaists': sadly, it appears that combined might of the British state will defeat a lone yorkie eater after all. On the plus side, check out the judge's comments:

Mr Justice Burton is due to deliver a ruling on the case next week, but yesterday he said he would be saying that Gore's Oscar-winning film does promote 'partisan political views'.

This means that teachers will have to warn pupils that there are other opinions on global warming and they should not necessarily accept the views of the film.

He said: 'The result is I will be declaring that, with the guidance as now amended, it will not be unlawful for the film to be shown.'

True, I'm guessing the enhanced guidance will be pretty worthless but the point is still made: Fat Al's movie is not some apolitical recitation of the facts, it's a virulently ideological piece of work and now no one can deny it.

Again, not to hammer the point home, but if you were waiting for the Tories to oppose compulsory indoctrination in schools, you'd have been sadly disappointed. A lone voter has done more damage to indoctrucation than the whole of our main 'right-wing' party. That's why the Nu Tories are deluded when they claim traditional conservatives don't have anywhere else to go. There's a whole flotilla of grass roots bodies fighting their own particular segment of the culture war, and achieving far more than Call Me Dave's increasingly irrelevant party.

Unique History, In Need Of Some Renovation....

Trevor Philips has rightly been flamed to a crisp for his suggestion that our history is kind of old-fashioned and really needs a makeover. For the 0.0000002% of you who haven't seen it, Laban Tall saw this insania coming two years ago, and neatly debunks the technical details here.

Actually, I see this as a perfect example of history repeating itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. We've gone from Stalin's experiments in air-brushing to the left wanting to rewrite history so a black Francis Drake single-handedly defeats the Armada by personally steering a fireship into the Spanish fleet, then just before it hits he shouts 'Welcome to the hood, M*****f******' and escapes on his jetski.

Hey, these leftists can stop whining about Hollywood right now. Even 'Pearl Harbour' beats the whole 'heroic Turks altruistically destroying the Spanish Armada by attacking some other ships in some other sea' script. Mind you, if we're not supposed to criticise Islamofascism because of the role of Muslims in defeating the Armada, what's the reward for sending millions of troops over here in the 1940s ? That must mean the US has the right to nuke Manchester, right ?

Still, there is a serious side to all this. It's actually being debated whether or not the history curriculum should include bogus stories about heroic Muslims saving England. This is how badly things are going in the culture war.

Meanwhile, as the left unveils its new 'if you don't like our history, just wait a week and we'll have a new one' policy, where exactly is the supposed party of the right ? Where, indeed. Apparently, a strict 'no lying' policy is too much of a hot potato for them. Either that, or they're hoping a bunch of Turks will show up to save the day.

See, this is why the Tories are irrelevant. Whatever millimetric changes they propose to bring in, on these absolutely foundational issues, like whether or not schools should teach ludicrous leftist propaganda, they've surrendered to the liberal agenda. In so far as the Tories have no interest in fighting for conservatives, why on earth should they expect the right to support them ?

'None of the Above' Is A Position Too

Like Theodore Dalrymple, I'm often surprised by how passionate people can be about nothing. Still, I support the idea of people setting up overtly atheistic schools, and not only because I support school choice, but also because I'm a fan of accuracy in labelling.

I think Cranmer calls it right here. Refusing to take a position is a position in itself. Claiming - as, incidentally, the head in question does - that your institution is 'secular' even while you cleanse the curriculum of any trace of religion is just sleazy. Grow a spine, sciencedammit!

Equally, in so far as our society, as currently constituted, is based on Christian principles, the Atheistic agenda is, by definition, a transformative one. An explicitly Godless society would be significantly different from what we have now. Atheistic schools would give us the opportunity to compare and contrast the two systems side by side, so let the rationality run free, and let us compare the products of Dawkins High with those from faith schools. It's the only logical thing to do.

Teachers Complain: Boys Still Not Gay Enough

Yessss, gang violence, guns, thuggery, all very bad but there's still no excuse for this kind of whiny androphobia. Boys think blowing stuff up is cool - deal with it.

Again, it's Libs fumbling with the whole reality/fantasy thing. One more time: writing a story about being a footballer does not make you a footballer (mind you, judging by Wednesday night, playing for England doesn't make you a footballer either).

UPDATE:

The whole 'not gay' craze seems to be an international phenomenon. Down in the comments, JuliaM points out this. As the folks at Free Republic asked: if he'd drawn the school on fire, would they have evacuated the building and charged him with arson ?

Slice Of Life

Thinking about this story, it occurred to me that this must be the 'modern Britain' that The Dave is so anxious for Conservatives to be at ease with.

Dhimmis D'Jour

Ah....and I thought the Libs didn't like faith-based schooling ?

I don't even want to know what they'll be doing in science lessons.

White Guilt 101

Yes, indeed: Liberals have moved on from pushing multiculturalism. Now they believe in assimilation - specifically, that majority population must assimilate with everyone else, all at once.

At least, that's my interpretation of this. Let's leave aside the question of just how many 'all-white' schools there are in Britain, and we'll even ignore the Left's crude equation of race with culture. Just on first principles, there's something truly bananas in the idea that it's the natives that need to adjust to incomer's cultures.

Not to be crude, but with the homies busting caps in each other elbows, and the RoPers stabbing their dishonourable sisters to death, I'm kind of thinking those cultures could do with a little input from the natives, not the other way round. Or, to be less crude, in so far as these folks have come to Britian, that would tend to suggest a desire to get away from heavily-armed yardies and mad mullahs.

For that matter, in which parallel universe are schools hot beds of right-wing extremism ? If the Libs think the average staff room is too right-wing for them, they may as well give up now. Still, after years when schools could get turn out illiterates with no consequences, it's sickening to see the Left threatening to close down schools which don't push the Kool Aid hard enough.

In it's own way though, there's something heroic about the Left's monomania. Back when immigration was vaguely under control, they supported multiculturalism as a way to stop immigrants assimilating into British culture. Now, in the era of open borders, they've moved onto to actively trying to prevent schools teaching British culture. The techniques may change, but the hatred of Britain stays the same.