We Don’t Want No Education

{My plan had been to present next what Dr. Theodore Dalrymple says about those who caused the disaster of the British underclass, which has spread ante-grade and retrograde into the middle and upper classes. However, British education just screams for presentation first. This includes the mind-sets of those who created British education.}

(See Lessons from Life at the Bottom and The British Underclass: The Effect and America Follows UK , our previous articles about Life at the Bottom, the brilliant book by Dr. Theodore Dalrymple.)

One of the most chilling chapters in Life at the Bottom is the chapter about secondary public education in England. Dr. Dalrymple introduces the topic this way:

Education has always been a minority interest in England…In the past…[the lack of interest]…was purely passive: the mere absence of knowledge. Of late, however, it has taken on a more positive and malign quality: a profound aversion to anything that smacks of intelligence, education, or culture. (P. 68)

He goes on to state that "…it is impossible to overstate the abysmal educational depths to which a large proportion of the English have now sunk, boding ill for the country's future in the global market."

For example, few of the 16 year olds whom he treated could read and write with any facility. Three syllables defeated almost all of them. Not a single youth he met could multiply nine by seven. He relates that one boy when asked to multiply three by seven said, "We didn't get that far." And, this lad meant by "that far" as after twelve years of compulsory education.

That their ignorance is profound hardly states the problem. They do not know writers, a single line of poetry, simple dates such as those for World War II. They know as little about Stalin as they do about Shakespeare. "To them, 1066 is more likely to mean a price than a date."

One of the first sequelae of such a malignant system is that "…the young [are] condemned to live in an eternal present, a present that merely exists, without connection to a past that might explain it or to a future that might develop from it." (P. 70) Their only standards for evaluation of anything come from advertisements and television.

Some of this is not the fault of the youth. The betrayal of England by its intellectuals has been profound, and is the same that our intellectuals are doing to our country. For example, failure is no longer permitted in the English educational system. Why? Failure might damage a youth's self-esteem. Everyone must get a graduate certificate. Attention to syntax and orthography are eschewed because they inhibit children's creativity and powers of self-expression. Knowing that they got something wrong induces a debilitating sense of inferiority from which they can never recover, so say those in charge of British compulsory education.

Dr. Dalrymple writes of meeting now and then teachers who try to teach properly, but they live in fear "…rather reminiscent of the atmosphere that surrounded those who secretly tried to propagate truth behind the late Iron Curtain." It is with good reason that these "renegade" teachers are afraid. Their jobs are under continuous scrutiny by administrators, who are part of the problem. For example, most schools will allow only five corrections per any piece of student work.

What is happening in the schools is an extension of progressive child-rearing: "laissez faire tempered with insensate rage." No child learns any form of discipline or any other meaning for consistency. He learns to react only to moods of parents and teachers, which are almost always inconsistent.

Beyond, however, "[t]he ground is laid for a bloody-minded intolerance of any authority whatever, even should that authority be based upon patently superior and benevolent knowledge and wisdom." Authority has gone from being suspect to being totally disrespected. These children learn to exist totally on impulse gratification, including doing only what they feel like doing, not doing anything anyone in authority presents.

Progressivism has contaminated British schools as much or more than in America. Children are groupies. They are taught in groups, and they are expected to learn cognitive materials and their use through accidental discovery and play. The group is all; the individual has been totally devalued.

Later in their lives, when Dr. Dalrymple sees them in his capacity as psychiatrist, he finds the best of them asking how they can get interested in something, anything. They have no interests, and no clues about how to acquire any. This means, simply but tragically, that nothing has any importance, i.e., any value, to them. This illustrates the destructiveness of modern nihilism. They have learned nothing, including how to learn. They are totally deficient in materials of mental life and in the methods of using these materials. They have no autonomy or self-direction to their minds. Add to that their complete indoctrination against effort and a complete dedication to immediate gratification of basal impulses. They would have to improve substantially just to be called "shallow."

The biggest obstacle to improvement in English primary and secondary compulsory education comes from within the education establishment itself. This is exactly the situation in America, where the same suffocation is also imposed by the teacher unions. The government and unions fusion is an abominable monster destroying the minds of English children; add to that the abysmal inferiority of their teacher colleges, which seem to be as bad as ours.

The intellectuals who produced the travesty of British education are part and parcel of the intellectuals who bear sole responsibility for the freakish contemporary British underclass and for the near intellectual disintegration of the U.K.

It does not help that the English people in general have blatantly disvalued education for decades. Not everyone does, of course, but so many are simply unaware of the need for education, as odd as that might seem. Their progeny see nothing of value to be obtained from education, not even for getting jobs.

There is a hidden "benefit," however:

"There is one great psychological advantage to the white underclass in their disdain for education: it enables them to maintain the fiction that the society around them is grossly, even grotesquely, unjust, and that they themselves are the victims of this injustice. (P. 76)

The other side of that double-edged sword is equally destructive to the underclass. They routinely have a profound resentment of achievement, and doing well in school is one of their greatest resentments. Being smart and learned threatens their entire Weltanschauung. "The success of one is a reproach to all." One who improves himself threatens all and threatens the comfort zone of a truly dissipated life style.

Where these of the underclass got such notions in the first place and why these notions have become a complete Weltanschauung are not to be found among the underclass. They come from British intellectuals who are as refractory to examining their ideas critically as are American intellectuals; all are of the left. These intellectuals and their ideas we take up next.

Comments

[Dave]

I'm a Brit - and a socialist. I completely agree that my country is going to shit and - unfortunately - this seem irreversible (in that any policy designed to halt the slide would be unacceptable to media, public and politicians themselves in that it would involve pointing out the existence of a few "elephants in the room"). However, it is erroneous to blame this on "socialism". It is the result of wishy-washy, hand-wringing wet liberalism. As a left-winger, I place great value on society and on its network of mutual obligations & duties: this is what sets us apart from the "devil-take-the-hindmost" individualism of the right. It follows from this that I detest the feckless culture of our underclass - and not least because it degrades what was once a strong working-class ethic of collectivism & self-improvement.

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This is also occurring in the USA. I'm not too sure you can always blame the teachers, as education is not something that happens to you. It requires a student's active participation. It also requires an adult at home who is interested in the student's progress at school.

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Excellent. This situation was created back in the 70's when the Feds decided that employer tests for jobs were discriminatory. The employers said "Fine" and decided that instead of testing they would make a college degree the standard for hiring. Now when you buy a cell phone, you get to have a recent college graduate set it up. How's that working for you. The WSJ, I think Taranto, had an article on it or included it in one of his blog.

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[Jim Baxter]

Jim Baxter
Sgt. USMC
WWII & Korean War
semper fidelis
pointman/follower of The Lion of Judah


INDIVIDUAL VALUE - Gift of Y'shua JESUS
by James Fletcher Baxter

The Old World method of measuring human value was,
and still is, by the group. Whether tribe, clan,
city-state, color, ethnic, or gender, the Old
World, ancient and modern, measures by the plural
unit. Individuals had and have no value of them-
selves but only as they were and are part of a
collective.

When Y'shua Jesus died on the cross, the veil of
the Temple at the Holy of Holies parted from the
top down. The individual believer in the congrega-
tion had, for the first time, a face-to-face, one-
on-one relation with his Creator. The Creator,
Himself, had validated each individual for the
first time.Thus, the Individual became the corner-
stone for later human value measuring systems:
socio-political, philosophical, religious, educa-
tional, economic, etc., henceforth and forever.
Western Civilization, America, English Law, civil
Rights, the 'democratic' process, etc., all sprang
from that single event. (Greco-Roman 'democracies'
were 95% slave throughout their entire histories.)
Biblical principles are still today the foundation
under Western Civilization and the American way of
life.

Many social systems attempt to borrow ideas of
"democracy" without the basic premise in The Indi-
vidual. Such a system is only superficially and
temporarily 'democratic.' The cornerstone of the
democratic process is The Individual and the
cornerstone of the value of The Individual is
Y'shua Jesus! It is not possible to have one with-
out the other. There is only One Source - there is
no other.

It is additionally interesting to note that all
value measuring systems are based on the single
definitive unit of the system. Ex: Number, Time,
Distance, Weight, Heat, Money, Angle, Volume, etc.

Only humanism makes the abusive error of measuring
human value by the plural unit and attempts to
build social structures, relations, and institu-
tions thereon. Such man-made systems can only be
abusive and oppressive because in reality there
are only individual persons. Groups or collectives
are merely convenient verbalizations about indi-
viduals. They are not reality.

I have yet to see a 'group.' All I have ever seen
are individuals.Have you ever seen a group - or is
it a verbal convenience? Reality is only in the
individual person. And, such a validation never
derived from a human source without the initiative
of the Creator. (The French Rationalists of the
18th Century favored the fruit - but rejected the
branch, tree, and root.)

Today, wherever Y'shua Jesus is rejected, the
group or collective is still the basic way of
measuring human value - or human non-value.

We thank the Lord God for revealing His validation
of each individual person. We thank Him for creat-
ing each person uniquely, in His image, and call-
ing each one to a courageous ascension by Y'shua
Jesus, who said, "I AM the Way..."

Praise the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and
His Son of Man, Y'shua Jesus.

Reference: Exodus 25:30,40 Hebrews 9 Matthew 27:51
Mark 15:38 Luke 23:45 KJV

Jim Baxter
Teacher, 5th Grade - 30 wonderful years!
vincit veritas

pointman/follower of The LION of JUDAH

[Jim Baxter]

"What is human?" GOD's answer...

Keven J. Hasson, President of the Becket Fund, recently stated, "...the American and Soviet systems...offered differing visions of freedom and human nature." The missing element in every human 'solution' is an accurate definition of the creature.

In the Bible, God's Word has accurately defined the human being as 'the earth creature endowed with the ability to choose.' His natural Rights, therefore, are merely an extension and application of natural human endowments, which all humans -everywhere in the world - possess.

Even as goldfish, canaries, and puppy dogs require an environment based on their natural features, so humans require external freedom to fulfill their natural internal abilities of choice, selection, election, and consent.

Uniquely, America was founded on this definitive paradigm in human nature. All nations should reject foundational human opinion that teaches otherwise.

Further, God's gift of criteria for choosing between alternatives supplies us with superior standards for successful visionary choice-making. Humans cannot invent (or replace) criteria greater than self, ACLU to the contrary.

Defining 'human' accurately is the first step in establishing accurate and successful environments, institutions, and creative relationships for earth's Choicemaker. Middle East governments, and all leaders, would do well to pay attention: nature and nature's Creator speak with an authoritative voice. Psalms 25:12 119:30, 173 Joel 3:14 Selah

No one is smarter than their criteria.

[Jim Baxter]

Each individual human being possesses a unique, highly developed, and
sensitive perception of variety. Thus aware, man is endowed with a natural
capability for enacting internal mental and external physical selectivity.
Quantitative and qualitative choice-making thus lends itself as the superior
basis of an active intelligence.

Human is earth's Choicemaker. His title describes his definitive and
typifying characteristic. Recall that his other features are but vehicles of
experience intent on the development of perceptive awareness and the
following acts of decision and choice. Note that the products of man cannot
define him for they are the fruit of the discerning choicemaking process and
include the cognition of self, the utility of experience, the development of
value measuring systems and language, and the acculturation of
civilization.

The arts and the sciences of man, as with his habits, customs, and
traditions, are the creative harvest of his perceptive and selective powers.

Creativity, the creative process, is a choice-making process.

His articles,
constructs, and commodities, however marvelous to behold, deserve neither
awe nor idolatry, for man, not his contrivance, is earth's own highest
expression of the creative process.

Human is earth's Choicemaker. The sublime and significant act of choosing
is, itself, the Archimedean fulcrum upon which man levers and redirects the
forces of cause and effect to an elected level of quality and diversity.
Further, it orients him toward a natural environmental opportunity, freedom,
and bestows earth's paradigm title, The Choicemaker, on his singular and
plural brow.

In the Bible, God's Word has accurately defined the human being as
'the earth creature endowed with the ability to choose.' His natural Rights,
therefore, are merely an extension and application of natural human
endowments, which all humans - everywhere in the world - possess.

Even as goldfish, canaries, and puppy dogs require an environment
based on their natural features, so humans require external freedom
to fulfill their natural internal abilities of decision, choice, selection,
election, and consent.

Uniquely, America was founded on this definitive
paradigm in human nature. All nations should reject foundational human
opinion that teaches otherwise.

No one is smarter than their criteria.

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