Saturday 14 January 2012

Insidious education

"The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality."
H.L. Mencken
"Whenever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to ensure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery." Benjamin Disraeli, 1874

Presently education is the exclusive competence of each Member State, yet only last November, the 11th to be precise, a conference took place at RAF Museum, Cosford, Shifnal, Shropshire, TF11 8UP entitled: "All About EU : Raising Awareness of the European Union across the Curriculum and Whole School Community". Funded by the European Union, it covered raising awareness of the EU in the primary and in the secondary curriculum.


So children attending schools in this country will be educated indoctrinated with 'the EU is good', which probably explains why governments have steadily deleted British history from the curriculum. I wonder how many parents were aware of this conference or are aware of just what their children are taught? If education is an exclusive competence of Member States, just what were the government and education authorities doing allowing such a conference with that agenda? That this was held in association with a Conservative-run council is not really that surprising, especially now their leader has admitted that it is a party only moderately eurosceptic.


10 comments:

Oldrightie said...

Cosford is a superb museum highlighting all that used to be great about Great Britain. To hold such a conference at this venue is a deliberate insult.

john in cheshire said...

WfW, I posted the following on the Luikkerland blog, yesterday. But since your posting is on the same subject, I thought you might be interested in what I had to say :

My youngest nephew is in the process of choosing his optional subjects for GCSE and he is considering History for one of them. I’ve read the brief summary of the syllabus and I am astonished that it will cover only three topics : the history of medicine, Germany from 1918-1945, and a local history project about a mill. I spoke to the head of the upper school about the narrowness and even inappropriateness of the syllabus for an English child (Germany, for goodness’ sake, not the UK) and his reply was, that if the child wants to learn about English history, he can do that by himself, any time he wants to. I’m lost as to how to address this matter, not just for my nephew but for the rest of the children who are being taught in our education system. If this doesn’t illustrate how endemic is marxist/communist dogma in the teaching profession, then I don’t know what does. I suggested that unless we know who we are and how we got here, then we can never understand where we might be going. He disagreed that being taught English history was necessary. So, that’s the Head of the upper school; he no doubt sets the policy for the other teachers and they will follow it, if they want to keep their jobs. Though they probably also agree with him.

Dave H said...

Those who have chosen to opt out of the state education system know how much the state hates that there are children not in the system. Home education faced a serious threat from the previous government, who attempted to regulate it out of existence.

At the moment central government is taking a back seat, presumably knowing the amount of resources they'd have to employ to fight a similar battle, plus the fact that they made plenty of statements supporting home education when on the other side of the house. However, local government has decided that despite the fact that the law was not changed, they are going to try to impose changes as if it had, so home educators are subjected to lies and threats for not doing what they're told. Lancashire, Doncaster and Kent are names that spring to mind as examples of this misguided policy.

The European court upheld the right of Germany to require all children to go to school, so it's obvious what the Eurocrats would like to see. In the UK, from the start of compulsory education, it was to be achieved 'by attendance and school or otherwise', where the 'otherwise' option was presumably there so the uppler classes could engage a governess and avoid sending their child to school to associate with the riff-raff. However, it is an increasingly popular option in the UK as parents become disillusioned with the mess that is state education, so at some point there will be more attempts to regulate it back under state control.

GoodnightVienna said...

Too true. I've also blogged about this but the Day of The Blogs has yet to come. The msm is lousy at reporting the truth: they're torn between being a news personality, eg Robinson, Peston, Snow, Maitlis and so on, and keeping their press passes for Parliament. Nowhere does 'truth' enter their thoughts.

State education used to be good and actually benefited the children but now it's just a waste of space with skewed facts & figures (eu, environment, history). At the moment, state education is bordering on criminal and child abuse.

@storris said...

This has to be the single most important reason for supporting the free-schools programme.

Getting government out of education and leaving the Curriculum to be set by teachers and parents is a democratic imperative.

Failing to cry at the death of an EU President is likely to be a criminal offence within a generation or two if this corruption is allowed to continue.

Oldrightie said...

"Failing to cry at the death of an EU President is likely to be a criminal offence within a generation or two if this corruption is allowed to continue."

More like a requirement now.

Ian Hills said...

Very good post wfw, and some telling comments. The Disraeli quote was a real eye-opener. Soon teachers will be asking children to rat on their parents, as in nazi Germany.

TomTom said...

Part 3

Education

WitteringsfromWitney said...

Or: True and true!

jic: well said that man!

DH: Nice comment!

GV: Our day will come (as someone once said) Totally agree with your comment!

s: Agreed!

TT: Thanks as ever for the links - interesting indeed!

WitteringsfromWitney said...

IH: Thanks!