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BLAIR’S LEGACY a DECADE of TEACHERS and SCHOOL LEAVERS with
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KNOWLEDGE of [ENGLISH]BRITISH CONSTITUTION - IDENTITY and VALUES. * LESSONS in being GOOD CITIZENS? NO! –Propaganda that undermines [ENGLISH] British Values. By Melanie Phillips * Daily Mail Friday, September 29, 2006. THE REPORT card handed out by Ofsted this week to those who teach citizenship in our schools makes devastating reading – But in ways that are far deeper and even more alarming than might at first appear. Citizen lessons say the school inspectors, are unsatisfactory in a quarter of schools, with only a minority of lesson scoring better than adequate. This they say, is often because the teachers themselves don’t have a clue about the topics they are supposed to be teaching under the umbrella of ‘Citizenship’, nor indeed, what these lessons are supposed to achieve in the first place. The result is a lot of dull or irrelevant classes, whose standards are sometimes so execrable it makes you want to weep. One lesson on the principles of decision-making in society for example, drifted into a discussion of the bodily needs of people stranded on a desert island. Dismal indeed. Some people, though, might think this isn’t worth getting worked up about. Citizenship hardly seems as important a subject as maths, English or Science. And others think all that’s needed is better training. Such complacency would be misguided. For the whole citizenship saga encapsulated in microcosm the calamity that has befallen education as and serves as a parable of this country’s loss of national nerve. Years ago, we weren’t taught anything called ‘citizenship’. It was in civics, or in history or geography lessons, that we learned about the: INSTITUTIONS of CENTRAL and LOCAL GOVERNMENT and how they worked about ELECTIONS VOTING LAW and JUSTICE. Imperialist That was when education was understood to be all about transmitting the country’s NATIONAL STORY
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to successive generations, in order to pass on an understanding of BRITISH [ENGLISH] IDENTITY
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and instil a
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COMMON FEELING of BELONGING. Citizenship arose from the knowledge and consequent LOVE of the NATION to which you belonged. Above all, it was based upon a sense of obligation to YOUR COUNTRY. To be LOYAL to it – to subscribe to its VALUES and, if necessary DIE in its DEFENCE. IT WAS A BOND OF SHARED DUTY WHICH BOUND US TOGETHER AS A NATION. * [For an example of the above we recommend you search for a copy of Professor J.M.D.MEIKLEJOHN, M.A. The ENGLISH LANGUAGE GRAMMER, HISTORY, (1898) A few minutes looking through its pages will change many children’s present conception of what it meant to be BRITISH in a then UNITED KINGDOM though in general usage was always the word barely now spoken for many decades To continue: For more than three decades, however, all has been thrown up in the air. The idea that the schools should perpetuate a NATIONAL IDENTITY
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based on a 1,000 years of history was decried as imperialist and zenophobic, and transmitting national values was held to be akin to brainwashing children into a racist cult. The RESULT was that generations of children were no longer taught the POLITICAL HISTORY OF [ ITS INSTITUTIONS and VALUES. Instead, they were served up a multicultural mish-mash and a make-it-up-as-you-go-along, irresponsible free-for-all in values. This not only left children ignorant, but contributed to a dangerous fragmentation and even alienation as generations grew up not understanding the NATION to which they were supposed to BELONG. Without such a sense of attachment, there can be no civic obligations or meaningful SENSE of NATIONHOOD. The Government eventually became so alarmed about all this that it started to talk up CITIZENSHIP
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as a kind of talisman against social fragmentation and extremism. But instead of addressing MULTICULTURALISM and all other dotty shibboleths which had so badly undermined both EDUCATION and NATIONAL IDENTITY
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it came up instead with citizenship education under the tutelage of the former politics don Lord Crick
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[And as a result it is all up the proverbial creek as to be expected in Blairland] This was, to put it mildly, an own goal for our beleaguered culture. For Lord Crick promptly turned the concept of citizenship inside out. Instead of revitalising the core values of this country and restoring a sense of obligation to it., he inserted into the curriculum under the camouflage of citizenship education soggy Left-wing propaganda about MULTICULTURALISM HUMAN RIGHTS GLOBALISATION -and other fashionable concepts which have systematically ERODED BRITISH [ENGLISH] VALUES Far from being taught about THEIR obligations to Instead of being taught : ‘What can I do for my country?’ children were now taught to ask ‘What can my country do for me?’ Even worse, Lord Crick’s version of citizenship amounted to encouraging children to pursue a kind of permanent rolling revolution. As he has said in comments quoted in the Osted report, pupils must be taught to be ‘active citizens, able to change thing’. As a result, although the first obligation of citizenship is surely the duty to obey the law, citizenship education embodies a horror of what it calls ‘compliance’, which it seems to regard as a kind of slavery. Yet complying with the law is the very basis of citizen’s compact with the state. Indeed , Lord Crick openly boasts that his approach breaks with the previous emphasise on the importance of ‘the rule of law’. In the Ofsted report he is quoted as saying: ‘But being taught to respect the law without learning how bad laws can be changed and better one’s promoted tends to create apathetic subjects rather than active citizens.’ * [This is a typical quote from a Blairite who with his fellow destroyers has since 1997 put 3000 new laws on the statute book many of which will in time need major amendments or even repealed or shelved and great damage to the public trust in the law and the only beneficiaries will as usual be the lawyers . And our famous lexicographer and author Samuel Johnson was of the opinion that: ‘To embarrass justice by a multiplicity of laws, or to hazard it by confidence in judges are the opposite rocks on which all civil institutions have been wrecked, and between which legislative wisdom has never yet found an open passage And a warning to those who spend their nights laboriously creating new laws to burden us with we turn to a great 18th century parliamentarian Edmund Burke ‘In effect, to follow, not to force, the public inclination, to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislation.’ * To conclude our quotations we cross our ‘We should never create by law what can be accomplished by morality’ Montesquieu. A multitude of laws of laws in a country is like a great number of physicians, a sign of weakness and malady. Voltaire. Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation: and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people .- De Tocqueville. * To continue: [In answer to the dangerous and unstable supposition of Up-the Creek! –Lord Crick] BUT this active citizenship is a formula for permanent antagonism to authority and to the state. It derives from the notion that the country has to be remade, that its identity and constitutional settlement and frame work of values have all failed. Instead of binding society together, it threatens finally to fragment it. Far from creating a shared sense of belonging, it threatens to set people at each other’s throats as they compete to demand their ‘ rights’ or recreate society in their own image. Ofsted itself is no better. For behind its strictures about the state of citizenship education lies its belief that it should be taught better in order to challenge society better. In other words, far from providing a remedy for degraded teaching and education values, the education inspectorate is itself signed up to them. Intelligence This is because what has never been acknowledged, let alone addressed , is that our woeful educational standards derive from nothing less than a wholesale collapse of the idea of education itself as a transmission Of knowledge and values. And that’s because of the systematic attack on -the very basis of CITIZENSHIP. It is hardly surprising that teachers don’t know enough to teach the rudiments of PROPER CITIZENSHIP when they themselves are the product of an education system that has totally lost its way. This has led to generations of school leavers becoming teachers who know so little they descend to activities which are an insult to the intelligence. For example, under the rubric of citizenship education, children are being invited to practise solving global conflicts before they are taught what the ‘RULE of LAW ‘ means in [ Since many teachers themselves have not even taught the basics of the [ENGLISH] BRITISH CONSTITUTION -let alone have any experience of tackling the most intractable problems on the planet, is it surprising that this fatuous exercise promptly descends to the maudlin mush of discussions on friendships and relationships? British citizenship is in difficulty because NATIONAL MALAISE. * * * EDUCATION First, we shall want the pupil to understand, speak, read, and write his mother tongue well.- H.G Wells. (1866- 1946) Eng .novelist and historian – (1984 and Animal farm…) * ‘Character development is the great, if not the sole, aim of education.’ O.Shea. [1864-?] American educate. * ‘Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will. And you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes from society.’ ‘Knowledge does not comprise all which is contained in the large term of education. The feelings are to be disciplined the passions are to be restrained; true and worthy motives are to be inspired; a profound religious feeling is to be instilled, and pure morality inculcated under all circumstances. All this is comprised in education.’ Daniel Webster (1782-1852) American orator and statesman. ( ‘It is on the sound education of the people that the security and destiny of every nation chiefly rest.- Kossuth (1802-94) Hungarian patriot. ‘Education commences at the mother’s knee, and every word spoken in the hearing of little children tend toward the formation of character.- Let parents always bear this mind.- H.Ballou. (1771-1852) American clergy. ‘He that has found a way to keep a child’s spirit easy, active, and free, and yet at the same time to restrain him from many things he has a mind to, and to draw him to things that are uneasy to him, has in my opinion got the true secret of education.’ John Locke (1632-1704) English philosopher [It is no coincidence that the neglecting of the child to pursue employment during the early years has resulted in much depression and we are now told that mental health of the nation had deteriorated with 1 in 4 people needing some help and we are also told that our lifestyle has increased the incidence of cancer –top of the list for deaths. Our jails are full and tens of thousands of offenders are told there is no room for them in prison and they must wait their turn while the victims are told not to worry the police will deal with their fears when they have finished their politically correct duties and that please no request to go up ladders or climb a roof or walk the narrow streets of a village or anything else against Health and Safety regulations which.are taking the enjoyment out of life in the community whether it be in the schools –in ancient festive events or the Women Institutes cakes or a trip into the countryside or wherever. The only real beneficiaries are the lawyers who under their Lawyer- in- Chief have seen their earnings grow while the kill-joys destroy centuries of tradition and amusement in the community. We are destroying the country around us with our insatiable desire for possessions and our health and our sanity have suffered as a consequence. We need more space around us to breath and play and walk and less people in the most crowded country in the world. And to top it all it is now said that we are one of the unhappy people in the world – have you noticed in your lane- Street or road the change in your neighbourhood with buildings mushrooming out the light around you so that there are more people paying into the Exchequer?] WHY DO WE LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT? * ‘Five great enemies to peace inhabit with us: is., avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride. If those enemies were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.’ Petrarch (1304-74) Italian poet and writer. * * * [ -for which the EDP has fought with others to achieve with the hope in the future of the emergence of a Family of INDEPENDENT Nations of the Island People led on equal terms by A FREE With the world at large her markets and not within a despotic corrupt police state called the UNITED STATES OF * * * [Font altered-bolding &underlining used-comments in brackets] SEPTEMBER /06 8 *
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* [Latest Addition - June07] * * *
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Daniel Hannan - Forming an OPPOSITION to the EU
* GORDON BROWN WANTS TRUST-BUT WHY WON'T HE TRUST YOU? * 67% want powers back from EU-ICM poll-June 21-2007-95% of British people want a REFERENDUM * FOR A REFERENDUM SIGN TODAY ON LINE * July 18-2007
VOTE -2007
WITH THE ONLY PARTY WITH A MANDATE TO SET YOU FREE
THE UK INDEPENDENCE PARTY THE QUESTION THAT THE VOTER MUST ANSWER
‘DO YOU WISH TO BE GOVERNED BY YOUR OWN PEOPLE, LAW AND CUSTOM OR BY THE CORRUPT ,EXPENSIVE UNACCOUNTABLE AND CORRUPT ALIEN BUSYBODY BRUSSELS’
-SIMPLE IS IT NOT?
TO RECLAIM YOUR DEMOCRACY DON'T VOTE FOR THE TRIPARTITE PARTIES IN WESTMINSTER BUT SMALL PARTIES THAT SPEAK THEIR MINDS WITHOUT SPIN AND LIES. *
ONLY WILL BRING DEMOCRACY BACK TO THE ENGLISH PEOPLE *
SCOTLAND -ITS PARLIAMENT -WALES-ITS ASSEMBLY-ENGLAND-STILL AWAITS ITS PARLIAMENT-WHY?
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* [All underlined words have a separate bulletin]
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