Majorityrights Central > Category: Education

Here is the scarcely punctuated and poorly expressed blurb to a book titled What Shall We Tell the Children, written by Dr Stuart J. Foster.  It was published in 2006.

The pages of this book illustrate that as instruments of socialization and sites of ideological discourse textbooks are powerful artefacts in introducing young people to a specific historical, cultural and socioeconomic order. Crucially, exploring the social construction of school textbooks and the messages they impart provides an important context from within which to critically investigate the dynamics underlying the cultural politics of education and the social movements that form it and which are formed by it. The school curriculum is essentially the knowledge system of a society incorporating its values and its dominant ideology. The curriculum is not “our knowledge” born of a broad hegemonic consensus, rather it is a battleground in which cultural authority and the right to define what is labelled legitimate knowledge is fought over. As each chapter in this book illustrates curriculum as theory and practice has never been, and can never be, divorced from the ethical, economic, political, and cultural conflicts of society which impact so deeply upon it. We cannot escape the clear implication that questions about what knowledge is of most worth and about how it should be organized and taught are problematic, contentious and very serious.

There is something deeply offensive about the knowledge of the workings of the mind claimed by these educationalist creatures.  Everything is somebody’s myth, they say.  It’s all relative.  It’s all about power ... all about politics.  The only question is whether we are serious about building a better, more tolerant, more equal world.  Etc, etc.

I’m glad I’m not a “senior lecturer in History in Education” like Dr Foster.  I can cling to the fond belief that the point of educating children is to equip them with the capacity to think for themselves all life long.  But Dr Foster very specifically does NOT share that belief.  In his mean little world, students are no more than human blotting-paper - except, of course, those like his own student self who possess the powers to freely discriminate for the marxian concept of Man.  Gods in a postmodern system that makes the rest of us less than human, they are the final word in hypocrisy.

Now I’ve got that off my chest, I will explain.

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By Stanley Womack, ResistingDefamation.org

Ever since Proposition 209, the anti-race-preference initiative, was passed by California voters in 1996, various state and local government agencies have sought a means to save race-based government programs.

The opening, true words of an NRO article written in May 2004 by Lance T. Izumi & Sharon Browne (both energetic opponents of affirmative action and, in Browne’s case, a successful litigant).

Well, all those disappointed state and local government agencies need pine after the old days no more.  The San Jose Mercury News reports:-

Students recruit minorities to UC in ways institution can’t

By Lisa M. Krieger

California law bans the state’s public universities from recruiting students based on race.

But it can’t stop student volunteers.

Call it the outsourcing of affirmative action. Stepping into jobs made off-limits to university officials by Proposition 209 - the 1996 California ballot proposition that prohibited public schools from targeting students based on race, sex, or ethnicity - students are reaching back into their own communities to boost diversity on campus.

“We feel an obligation to help open the door to allow for more of our brothers and sisters to enter,” said Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu, a Tongan student at the University of California-Berkeley who is a member of the student group Pacific Islanders Higher Education Recruitment Program. “It is a labor of love, rooted in creating social change.”

The passage of Proposition 209 hit UC-Berkeley’s racial and ethnic communities hard. The number of incoming freshmen from under-represented minorities groups - African-American, Latino, Native American and Pacific Islander - shrank by half.

The numbers are just now beginning to recover. But the campus is still far from reflecting the state’s diversity. Although about 47 percent of public high school graduates in California are members of underrepresented minorities, they make up just 25 percent of UC’s incoming freshman class. At UC-Berkeley, the system’s most elite campus, there are only 15.7 percent.

Under-represented minorities groups.  That’s a new phrase, even from Lisa Krieger, who we at RD judge to be one of, if not the, most consistent purveyer of anti-white American hate-journalism at San Jose Mercury News.  What it signals is a new wedge for ethnic cleansing.

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“The white majority has rights, damn you.”

That’s my short response to all the activists in academia who are guiding the process of white annihilation, physical and moral.  We know the nature of these creatures, and their politics.  We know their terms: if we do not accept to self-annihilate as “supremacists”, as “the privileged”, as “oppressors” but, instead and simply as the people of the West, insist upon our free life, our nature, our rights, our interests, then, automatically, these “educators”, these human dross, label us “haters”.  They allow no resting place to us.  The venomous, reptilian energy of these people knows no stop, nor anything but the prosecution of its own special hatreds (pdf):-

Definitions and Descriptions of Racism

WHITE SUPREMACY: White supremacy is an historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of oppression of continents, nations and peoples of colour by white peoples and nations of the European continent; for the purpose of maintaining and defending a system of wealth, power and privilege.

WHITE (as in “white people”): The term white, referring to people, was created by Virginia slaveowners and colonial rulers in the 17th century.  It replaced terms like Christian and Englishman (sic) to distinguish European colonists from Africans and indigenous peoples.  European colonial powers established White as a legal concept after Bacon’s rebellion in 1676 during which indentured servants of European and African descent had united against the colonial elite.  The legal basis of white separated the servant class on the basis of skin color and continental origin.  The creation of “white” meant giving privileges to some, while denying them to others with the justification of biological and social inferiority.

WHITE PRIVILEGE: A privilege is a right, favour, advantage, immunity specially granted to one individual or group. and withheld from another

White privilege is an historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of: (1) preferential prejudice for or treatment for white people based solely on the colour of their skin color and/or ancestral origin from Europe; and (2) exemption from racial and/or national oppression based on skin colour and/or ancestral origin from Africa, Asia, the Americas and the Arab world.

And two pages on, to put the knife in:-

A RACIST: A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system.  The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.  By this definition, people of color cannot be racists, because as peoples within the system, they do not have the power to back up their prejudices, hostilities, or acts of discrimination.

REVERSE RACISM: A term created and used by white people to deny their white privilege. Those in denial use the term reverse racism to refer to hostile behavior by people of color toward whites, and to affirmative action policies, which allegedly give ‘preferential treatment’ to people of color over whites. In the U.S., there is no such thing as ‘reverse racism.’

A NON-RACIST: A non-term. The term was created by whites to deny responsibility for systemic racism, to maintain an aura of innocence in the face of racial oppression, and to shift responsibility for that oppression from whites to people of color (called “blaming the victim”). Responsibility for perpetuating and legitimizing a racist system rests both on those who actively maintain it, and on those who refuse to challenge it. Silence is consent.

And on page 8, to close every escape route:-

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From the Daily Mail today:-

Schools with mainly white pupils will be forced to send their children to mix with other races and religions.

A legal duty for schools to promote community relations comes into force in September.

Government guidelines to help them comply could require staff to take children on visits to multi-ethnic schools, stage joint plays and sporting events or twin with other schools.

Ministers said some suburban teenagers had never met a Muslim or Hindu and needed more contact.

Ofsted, the schools watchdog, will be given the power to force schools to comply. Those who do not risk being consigned to a failing list.

Teachers’ leaders said the guidelines were heavy-handed and unnecessary.

The advice says schools should “give their pupils the opportunity to mix with and learn with” pupils from other ethnic, religious and class backgrounds.

Lessons in all subjects should help to teach children tolerance and break down prejudice.

Schools must encourage pupils to strike up e-mail friendships with children at schools with a different racial or religious mix. They should also consider inviting imams and vicars to talk.

... One in five schoolchildren is from an ethnic minority, official figures show. Two per cent of secondary schools and 5 per cent of primary schools in England have no ethnic minority pupils.

Alan Johnson brought in the requirement for schools to “promote community cohesion” after abandoning plans for admissions quotas for faith schools.

The Education Secretary wanted all faith schools to reserve a quarter of places for non-believers but changed the plans after opposition led by the Catholic Church.

Instead, he said schools should be required to demonstrate they are improving community relations.

So the prime-mover of this deeply unwelcome proposal is The Rt Hon Alan Johnson MP, who was appointed Secretary of State for Education and Skills in May 2006.  Here is his ministerial team, among them Jim Knight, who seems to be connected with this particular proposal.

The political provenance of this initiative is the failed attempt to legislate powers for local councils to make new faith schools reserve a quarter of places for children outside the religion.

Johnson defended that attempt by declaring, “There must be a balance between preserving the special quality of faith schools and building greater community cohesion and understanding between different cultures.  By opening up a proportion of places to children of different faiths where local communities wish this, we will help create a system where all faith schools play a full part in the education of local children.”

The principle involved in this seemed clear at the time, even if it was not directly enunciated by ministers for fear of inflaming Pakistan in the North.  Islamic schools narrow their pupils’ understanding of the majority way of life.  Experience of the Kufr and the Kufr’s faith might tell little Moslem mites not only something about the England in which they were domiciling, but about themselves, their teachers and even some of the Suraw.

Now, it was not a particularly good proposal.  Natural balkanisation is better.  And the Bishops took it as an attack by secular leftists on faith schools per se, which is certainly not what Johnson said.  But the implicit focus seemed to me to be in the right place for once.

The new proposal, however, is quite different.  Now we are not talking any more, even implicitly, about challenging Islamic fundamentalism.  It’s the English instinct to separate that ministers find offensive.  The old, self-hating leftist twitch is back.

Well, in my unending quest to be charitable to politicians I persuaded a certain John Standing (who, you will understand, is someone extremely well-known to me but, strangely, to no other living being) to e-mail Lucky Jim the Schools Minister and his Tory Shadow, Nick Gibb MP.  Nothing too complicated.  I don’t want to tax their limited intellectual resources:-

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Doctor (of?) Anthony Edkins is not English.  He is, however, headmaster of the very English Harrop Fold School in Worsley, Manchester.  He is really rather keen on anti-racism, and appears to have taken to himself and his staff the task of instilling this charming philosophy in his lucky pupils.

The result is that Harrop Fold is rapidly becoming the most heavy-handed, notoriously white-hating school in the country.  Last April, a 10-year old boy who, allegedly, had called an 11-year-old mixed-race pupil a ‘Paki’, ‘Bin Laden’ and ‘nigger’ during a playground argument was charged with “a racially aggravated public order offence”.  When the case came before the court, District Judge Jonathan Finestein remarked, “This is how stupid the whole system is getting.  I was repeatedly called fat at school.  Does this amount to a criminal offence?  It’s crazy.” (For this opinion, let it be said, he received the due amount of contumely from the educrats).

It is a law of liberal life, though, that extremists, left unchecked, will unfailingly push their luck too far.  The brown-skinned Edkins, who inevitably describes his school as “vibrant”, has succeeded in this mighty ambition.  It’s surely all downhill for neo-Marxist fanaticism at Harrop Fold from here:-

Schoolgirl arrested for refusing to study with non-English pupils

A teenage schoolgirl was arrested by police for racism after refusing to sit with a group of Asian students because some of them did not speak English.

Codie Stott’s family claim she was forced to spend three-and-a-half hours in a police cell after she was reported by her teachers.

The 14-year-old - who was released without charge - said it had been a simple matter of commonsense and accused the school and police of an over-the-top reaction.

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Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, only just ennobled, not yet detached from his political roots, not yet one of the great and good:-

It is a great honour and nice to be associated with a part of Kent where I live and where the countryside and traditional villages are so wonderfully and uniquely Kentish.  I will be fighting Kent’s corner in the Lords.  Of course, to all my friends, colleagues and people in Kent I hope I remain just Sandy.

Now, it happens that Kent’s corner includes an impressive clutch of selective Grammar Schools that have been fighting for their existence for forty years.

So, surely the new Conservative peer must want to see Kent’s precious senior schools protected from the egalitarians and social engineers?  He must be a believer in the good Conservative principle of rewarding ability?  And that of parental choice.

But here’s Lord Bruce Lockhart after a few months of exposure to the ermine and altruism:-

Proactive admissions policies could be used to establish a better ethnic balance in schools.  In towns where the totality of the minority ethnic population is 15 per cent of the whole, we should consider the use of numbers in admissions policies.

We have to get to a situation where people regard the total ethnicity of a town as being represented in schools, otherwise we are never going to be properly integrated.

Children start off being colour-blind and this is a wonderful thing.  But if you have schools where the children are being educated in different ethnic groups you are going to lose that and you are simply not going to have integration.

If we are to have stable communities and to prevent the rise of the far Right, our job now is to put all these issues on the table and open a public debate.

The first question I would ask is precisely how “just Sandy”, the Conservative councillor and all round good guy, metamorphosed into a MultiCult leftist.

The cleavage between right- and left-liberalism can be summed up in a word: choice.  When people are encouraged to make their own choices they somehow never make the ones that the social engineers require.

School choice ‘means classroom ghettos’

Giving consumers choice in public services - and particularly in schools - is causing acute risks to racial equality.

That, at least, is the view of the Commission for Racial Equality which warns that Tony Blair’s commitment to increasing choice undermines that other current political mantra of increasing integration.

Indeed, it’s feared that choice will encourage racial segregation in an already highly segregated country.

This report was a special feature on BBC 1 evening news.  Mark Easton examined the educational divide in Blackburn, where ...

22% of the population come from ethnic minorities but 90% of non-white primary school children go to overwhelmingly non-white schools - up from 60% in just six years.

In secondary schools too, segregation is increasing.

Twenty-five years ago Pleckgate High School was predominantly white.

Today, 30% of pupils are white and the latest intake is 20% white.

“It is the parental choice that is having the main impact,” says head teacher Robin Campbell.

“How do you resolve that? We are then into the realms of social engineering and I don’t think that would work in any borough

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Harvard’s Roland Fryer takes on the conventional wisdom that diversity is strength in public schools:

It appears that in integrated public schools, “acting white”—getting higher than average grades—does in fact lead to social consequences for black students. However, in private schools and unintegrated public schools this does not appear to be the case. Apparently, the social context of integrated public schools lends itself to an “oppositional culture” where blacks reinforce cultural norms in opposition to the norms of the dominant social class to self-identify.

So white flight from the diverse public schools may be good for the black students “left behind” in those public schools.  Of course, the politically correct fundamentalists would say it doesn’t matter how many black students suffer since integration is an overriding moral goal.  Integrate now, observe the damage and then try various things to lower the damage.  If it takes a generation, two, three… lost to the experiments with our children’s lives to get it right—so be it.  Sacrifices must be made.

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