The obvious thing to do is to ask three (non-English) educationists from London, Keith Ajegbo, Dina Kirwan and Seema Sharma, what English children should be taught. Not Scottish, Northern Irish or Welsh children, you note. They can be taught about their distinct national heritage and culture. But the English must be British (after all, someone's got to be), taught the British values so ably articulated by Gordon Brown. They cannot be English.
Sir Keith said: "Britain is committed to the values of free speech, the rule of law, mutual tolerance and respect for equal rights. They are things that are fundamental to our society."
He suggested that schools should be prepared to tackle controversial topics in the news such as the debate over immigration, and the UK's place in the European Union as well as the legacy of the British Empire.
He said: "It is the duty of all schools to address issues of `how we live together' and `dealing with difference', however difficult or controversial they may seem".
(you might want to look at the map - then read the last few paragraphs of this post)I think this translates as "an intensive course of political indoctrination". Doubtless we'll be taught about the "nation of immigrants", recent genetic work will be misused to support a political agenda - the usual stuff, only more of it. What was once only for the BBC and Guardian to propagate will be force-fed to the children. They're being prepared - broken in, as it were - for a world in which England will have fewer and fewer English in it. Note the figures on the map, which comes from the report.
I quote from the report :
As migration and technological change gather pace, governments – and societies – are faced with the challenge of engaging effectively with increasingly high profile issues regarding immigration and the issues that surround multiculturalism, diversity and difference. Yet the wider picture shows us that it was ever thus: the United Kingdom has historically been a multination state, and as a polyethnic state; the UK’s population has for centuries been periodically in a state of flux, with a large number of different ethnic and religious groups, particularly since the mass immigration after the Second World War. What’s more, many UK inhabitants have roots elsewhere in the world – even though they may not be aware of them.
The changing nature of the UK and potential for tension to arise now makes it ever more pressing for us to work towards community cohesion, fostering mutual understanding within schools so that valuing difference and understanding what binds us together become part of the way pupils think and behave.
Well, you can't say clearer than that.
(I do like the contradictions of 'it's always been like this, nation of immigrants, multiethnic Britain' with 'changing nature ... potential for tension to arise'. If it's always been like this, why are they so worried ?)
What we see here is a government who are aware that there are strange noises coming from the bowels of the ship, the odd rat making its way to the top deck - and they've decided on giving the crew a series of lectures on how ships always make strange noises and the importance of not giving way to panic.
Lets look back for a moment to the bad old days of the 1950s and the lost English heritage. When the black Marxist historian, cultural conservative and cricket-lover CLR James wrote this in 1962 he could not have foreseen the cultural wasteland that lay ahead for English children.
West Indians crowding to Tests bring with them the whole past history and future hopes of the islands. English people, for example, have a conception of themselves breathed from birth. Drake and mighty Nelson, Shakespeare, Waterloo, the Charge of the Light Brigade, the few who did so much for so many, the success of parliamentary democracy, those and such as those constitute a national tradition. Underdeveloped countries have to go back centuries to rebuild one. We of the West Indies have none at all, none that we know of. To such people the three W's, Ram and Val wrecking English batting, help to fill a huge gap in their consciousness and their needs.
We of the English have none at all now that we know of, either. And if Alan Johnson has anything to do with it we'll stay that way.
33 comments:
Nick Griffin should welcome this approach. I somehow don't see children as being responsive to being force-fed mantras.
Usually it is counter-productive and the resistance to teachers becomes very tempting.
This is the same regime that wants to lock children up in schools until they are 18...my these are going to be vibrant establishments !!
To add to my earlier post..do you remember those books by Richard Cobham on France & The Ancien Regime ?
I suspect historians will see this as just one more failed initiative by the Ancien Regime in Britain
Laban,
It is utterly reprehensible that such 'lessons' are not to be taught in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland; in fact, beneath contempt.
If Sir Keith thinks that Britain is committed to 'values of free speech, the rule of law, mutual tolerance and respect for equal rights' I would invite him to come up to Glasgow to watch the Grand Order Lodge's annual march,or attend any Old Firm game. Unfortunately, the people on one side waving cod Irish flags which celebrate the deaths of the Maze hunger strikers or shouting that they're up to their knees in Fenian blood are as British as the respectable, church-going, hard-working older generation of West Indians - the old ladies who I'm sure can still be seen heading out to church on Sunday mornings in their best.
If he said,
"It is the duty of all schools to address issues of `how we live together' and `dealing with difference', however difficult or controversial they may seem".
then he's talking nonsense. The duty of the school is to teach. Ask Philip Lawrence.
God Bless England and the English. After 10 years of one Britain hating Scot and the the prospect of a mad globalising Scot on the horizon, they need all the help they can get.
I somehow don't see children as being responsive to being force-fed mantras. Usually it is counter-productive and the resistance to teachers becomes very tempting.
I hope you are right, but I'm not confident that you are. The indoctrination of the young with eco-doomsterism has been very successful.
Presumably, the Scottish, Welsh and Irish are not, and should not be, committed to Sir Keith's vapid bromides of 'values of free speech, the rule of law, mutual tolerance and respect for equal rights'. Not so sure why we the English should define ourselves via a set of criteria so limited, but that's the way the penny falls sometimes, as my very unBritish school chum (he never really went for that tolerance shtick) used to say.
But really, Laban, I appreciate that this is rather like getting blood from a rock, but this rank bit of kulturkampf against the English by the powers that be of the Union, can one come to any conclusions about the events of 1707 based on this?
As whites, the West Indians give us a mighty problem. The fact is we are entirely guilty of the fact that they have no culture - because we tore them away from their culture during the days of slavery. What culture they have left is the culture we gave them - a predominantly Christian one. One that doesn't clash violently with the predominant culture in the UK.
We invited them to come here, told them they should be proud to be part of such a wonderful culture - and then spat on them in the street. They have every reason to feel totally betrayed. And yet as a culture they have shown by their willingness to inter-marry with whites their propensity for full integration. We have helped put a massive chip on the shoulder of West Indians that has no business being there in 2007.
The West Indian community has social problems of epic proportions - social problems caused by our ancestors. But the West Indian community now refuses our help. They claim that the only problem they have is white racism. It is going to be a hell of a job to convince them otherwise.
However, the West Indian community has been the most forthright in expressing its fears for the cultural direction of Britain since mass immigration from Asia has grown. They are powerful allies, because they demonstrate that these fears are not based on something as superficial as skin colour, but based on something as fundamental as values and beliefs.
We need to welcome the West Indian community to our culture in a way we have omitted to do in the past. By doing so we not only demonstrate that we are not racist to those that claim we are - but we drive away those whites who really are racist and poison everything we would like to achieve in the name of the indigenous culture.
Ryan - blacks in the west seem to suffer similar problems wherever they are (Im including South Africa in there btw). Whether or not the they brought against their will or voluntarily.
The indoctrination of the young with eco-doomsterism has been very successful.
Really ? In 1973 we were encouraged to switch off lights, save energy, and saw empty German Autobahns each Sunday. This generation mouths the words but consumes electricity voraciously, expects to be transported by car, fly on vacation, and has no regard for energy saving rather for conspicuous consumption.
I doubt any one of them has any plans to cut back on aspirations, and the media has a vested interested in propagating a message.
In 1992 everything was "Euro" because the great Single Market was going to bring Everlasting Joy and Happiness to Europe....after 14 years of the Single Market I tire of all the street parties and sponaneous outbursts of joy
I think 'Voyager' has got it. Kids are easy to indoctrinate with ecoloonacy cause the shoe doesn't pinch. Just as soon as they grow to an age where, say, they need to get around, all that anti-Car guff goes out the window.
On the other hand, it's the kids who suffer most from multiculturalism. The Wiltshire hammer attack is an extreme case, but not that extreme. It'll take more than Indoctrination 101 to convince kids that it's right that when the Jihad Boys beat someone unconscious at lunch time, that proves that they're the real victims.
Keith Ajegbo was born in London in 1946. Even if his report is crap I think he's pretty English.
Even if his report is crap I think he's pretty English.
Really ? That remains to be seen... English is a cultural identity not a Citizenship....quite a few Labour politicians do not seem to be culturally English even if born in London
paulw I think you are confusing ownership of a passport with nationality. Perhaps you were filled with relief when all our fellow 'British', 'American' & 'Canadian' passport holders were evacuated from Lebanon last year.
Ryan said:
"We need to welcome the West Indian community to our culture in a way we have omitted to do in the past. By doing so we not only demonstrate that we are not racist to those that claim we are - but we drive away those whites who really are racist and poison everything we would like to achieve in the name of the indigenous culture."
This just sounds like the kind of empty multiculturalist rhetoric that our political masters come out with on a daily basis. How, precisely, do we "welcome the West Indian community to our culture"? They are not part of our cultural tradition, and, for the most part, they regard us as an evil oppressor race of whose culture they want no part.
And I don't see that we have a duty to take steps to "demonstrate that we are not racist". I'm sick of this kind of white liberal guilt idea that it's quite reasonable for others to assume that we are all evil racists, and that the onus is then on us to disprove this, preferably by destroying our own culture in order to make immigrants feel "included". The liberal establishment's been acting according to this theory for thirty years, and this has been one of the primary causes of the mess we're in today.
Well said sir!
Re: Fulham Reactionary said...
Hear hear.
@Fulham Reactionary
I am a white Tory voter, married to an Asian (Christian). As far as I am concerned your retoric sounds like racism. Unless you can explain to me why a West Indian cannot be "part of our culture" in a reasoned coherent way then I don't see why I or any other intelligent person should spare the time to listen to you. Bear in mind that a Mancunian aetheist is as much a part of British culture as a devout Catholic from Cheltenham, so any definition of "British culture" must be broad enough to include these.
Voyager, I never claimed that children indoctrinated with ecodoomsterism would behave consistently. Eco-indoctrination has been very successful in changing the attitudes, if not behaviour - in making people receptive to retrospective rises in ADP, for instance. Similarly, I fear that the diversity/cultural inclusion indoctrination programmes in schools have done and will do a lot of damage, if only at the attitudinal level. Some children will resist; but most, I fear, will not.
Well in an area of enormous "diversity" such as Bradford the city centre is home to a large Mirpuri and Bangladeshi population who despise each other; there are turf wars with the small West Indian population.
Around the city centre are the White Council House Estates where "diversity" is restricted to shades of White and again a deep loathing exists of the other Heinz varieties.
The Poles and Slovaks currently moving in will no doubt get on splendidly with their new friends from the Indian Subcontinent.
The schools tend to follow a similar pattern with White parents desperate to avoid Carlton-Bolling School where their children could learn Urdu and the sources and uses of opium poppies.
If you want a thrill look at any School League Tables and chart Bradford's course after 30 years of multi-culti and "diversity" and comparative religious indoctrination and then ask why walls in Keighley used to have the brandname Osama sprayed on them - though I have no idea what product this was advertising in a "community" of racial harmony and esteemed joyfulness
'Alison Johnston, from the Professional Association of Teachers, said: "It would not be appropriate to promote an imperial British myth by teaching that values such as democracy, justice and fair play are exclusively British or implying that Britain is superior to other countries." '
It is better than most other countries. If it wasn't, we wouldn't have so many immigrants from inferior countries and the discussion on 'Britishness' wouldn't be needed. An appraisal of just how good this country is could start by looking at facts and figures from the UN, before examining why British culture was able to achieve this eminent position.
"..As far as I am concerned your retoric sounds like racism."
Oh, so no need for any evidence then? As long as Ryan feels it, it must be so...
"If it wasn't, we wouldn't have so many immigrants from inferior countries and..."
Gasp! Inferior countries....?!
Ooh, Ryan, sounds like racism to me... ;)
@juliam
Nationality has little to do with race. Italy and Britain are two different nations, but the predominant race is the same in both nations. Whether one is inferior to the other is something you could argue, but race would be irrelevant to such a discussion. Culture might very well be relevant, however.
Perhaps "fulham reactionary" is not a racist - in which case he would need to explain this statement "They are not part of our cultural tradition, and, for the most part, they regard us as an evil oppressor race of whose culture they want no part" in terms which do not involve their race.
Jamaica was part of the British empire for 300 years and is 80% Christian. The black population of Jamaica are entirely descended from the slaves the British took to the island until the British abolished slavery. The education system is similar to the UK.
Ryan
As JuliaM says, do you actually have any evidence (beyond your own feelings) with which to substantiate your accusations of racism? I did not say that a West Indian cannot be part of our culture, I said that they tend to choose not to be. Of course some integrate very well into British life. But the majority do not, as you seem to acknowledge.
I said that they are not part of our cultural tradition. That is a fact. Their ancestry and heritage is based in a different continent and a very different way of life from ours. They may have a cultural tradition of their own, but it is not the same as ours.
I also said that the notion of "welcoming the West Indian community to our culture" was pure rhetoric. I challenged you to explain what you meant by saying it. I pointed out that the failure of immigrants to integrate tends to come from their conscious rejection of British culture, rather than us shutting them out, and that we should not be held responsible for the problems that ensue. You did not respond constructively, but simply resorted to juvenile name-calling.
In your own words, unless you can debate "in a reasoned coherent way then I don't see why I or any other intelligent person should spare the time to listen to you".
"Perhaps "fulham reactionary" is not a racist..."
Ooh, I hear the sound of furious back-pedalling.... :)
So much for "the death of multiculturalism". It sounds as robustly destructive of British culture as it ever was.
ryan says: "Italy and Britain are two different nations, but the predominant race is the same in both nations"
You sound like one of those people who has simply divided up the world into white, brown and black.
The English are certainly distinct from Italians. They come from a North European Germanic tribe mixed with Vikings and the previous inhabitants of England, Italians come from Southern Europe with Slavic, Greek and other mediterranean influences.
A geneticist can tell the difference.
The problem with race in the modern west is that people seem to think evolution takes hundreds of thousands of years and therefore we must all be the same. When in reality it can happen much much faster than that, even isolated native tribes living in close proximity in Africa (and South America) have been shown to be distinct.
Ryan: "Nationality has little to do with race" almost entirely the opposite of reality.
There you go again invoking the passport argument. For most of the world today and for just about everywhere 50-100 years ago nationality had everything to do with race. Your assertion has only come into its own within living memory, largely in the west and especially in the english speaking countries. The fact we are even discussing it means that liberal/left mantra still hasnt rooted properly.
100 yearrs ago or so there were no passports. You were British because you were British (even if you were Australian, Canadian etc). You didnt need a piece of paper to tell you that.
To some extent the rot set in when passports started getting issued. Now there was a piece of paper that said what you were. Then you start handing them out to people and the next thing you know folk are claiming that there is no connection between nationality and race beacuse look there is a piece of paper saying so, so it must be true.
You might say there is no connection between ethnicity & nationality. Europeans have migrated around Europe and generally settled with few problems.
Celebrate perversity,
venerate insanity.
Europeans have migrated around Europe and generally settled with few problems.
Except for the Balkans, Sudetenland, Huguenots, Gypsies, Polish refugees, Russian emigres.................... Normans, Saxons, Danes, Celts, ........
and for just about everywhere 50-100 years ago nationality had everything to do with race.
Germany did not have a Citizenship Law until 1913 and then it was defined on the basis of Bloodlines simply because Berlin like Vienna was the magnet for Central Europeans.
It was this Bloodlines View of Citizenship which allowed Ethnic Germans to be imported from Kazakhstan in the 1990s and which made it impossible for Turks born in Germany to be German Citizens or Medics qualified to treat German patients, or to travel to Britain without a Visa which had to be obtained in Istanbul.
The EU required changes and the Schroeder Govt brought in a new Citizenship Law which the Turks abused by first revoking Turkish Citizenship to get it and then resuming Turkish Citizenship secretly to guarantee inheritance rights under Turkish Law
Actually the Second world war was caused by the position of ethnic Germans across Central and Eastern Europe marooned in new nation states which treated them as alien to the predominant culture...so the whole of the area covered by the 1914 German Reich, Austro-Hungarian Reich, and Russian and Ottoman Empires can be seen to have been in essence the same problem on a grand scale that Yugoslavia in the 1990s was.
Too many people think yesterdays problems are gone lubricated with consumerist materialism - but in fact with the UN irritating Russia with attempts to give Kosovo independence which will inevitably lead to a Greater Albania as a Muslim state - the whole turmoil will start again as borders start to break down in Europe and national identity seeks new expression
Community cohesion is developing well in happy multicultural London, where the BBC reports that a young black man was beaten to death yesterday "by several men described as being of Asian or Arabic appearance".
Presumably these men picked up their violent behaviour from the evil white people. We must "welcome them to our culture" - that'll solve all the problems.
It's also very noticeable that the BBC has tucked this story away in the 'England' page. Imagine the noise that would have been made had the attackers been white.
that a young black man was beaten to death yesterday "by several men described as being of Asian or Arabic appearance".
Guess he didn't want to be a slave.....
Ryan, Juliam, Fulham Reactionary
Perhaps the reason why British Caribbeans have not fully integrated (although I must say I'm fairly anglicized) into British culture and adopted its values and mores is that some of us have been indoctrinated by the race-industry apparatniks (the usual suspects Ken Livingstone, Linda Bellos, Lee Jasper...) into a mindset of victimology. However, many West Indians Brits are alarmed at the numbers of immigrants from all parts of the globe entering the country and the impact that it is having on health, education and the transport system, all of which are struggling to cope. The vast majority of the recent immigration has not been to the advantage of this nation and incomers do not even have a concept of what Britishness is. This can be seen in the enclaves of different peoples collecting in several inner cities, who live in separate ethnic units. In some parts of London the white English have been ethnically cleansed and have fled. Why is anyone surprised that droves of the monied classes are fleeing to the South West? I'd decamp myself if I had the financial means!! Englishness is being systmatically destroyed and the majority of Caribbeans are saddened by this. But recognising that it is a taboo subject and afraid of accusations of "wanting to pull up the drawbridge,"it's something that we only discuss among ourselves.
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