Friday, January 26, 2007

Britain’s Dystopian School Children

British reader (and author) Paul Weston has sent along another essay, this one about the current condition of British public education. Mr. Weston included the following cover note:

Dear Baron,

Now that “Big Brother” has shown the world, to their international horror, the result of our educational system, the government (as reported yesterday) is attempting to polish up our school children via “Citizenship” classes. Although these exist already, they are intending to “teach” more about slavery, immigration, the legacy of British Empire, the European Union and equality. Alan Johnson, the Education Minister, thinks this will help in the notion that “schools should play a leading role in creating community cohesion”.

Having watched the BBC interview of several school children yesterday, I was reminded of something I wrote a few years ago which I enclose below.

I am not aware of educational standards in the USA (save books by Thomas Sowell and Dinesh D’Souza apropos brainwashing) but it could be quite amusing/instructive if you were to post it and compare the comments from Britain and the US. Although you may not believe it, what I describe is typical of most British schoolchildren.

Kind Regards,
Paul Weston

And now the essay itself:

Britain’s Dystopian School Children
by Paul Weston


Imagine the scene. You are sitting on a bus with nineteen fellow adults at 4pm during school term time. Your journey is suddenly interrupted by the noisy arrival of nine teenage products of our utopian/dystopian comprehensive schooling system. They shriek, they swear and they spit. They eat crisps and throw the empty packets to the floor, drink coke and allow the subsequently discarded cans to roll up and down the aisle and between your feet. One of them, a fifteen year old called Wayne turns up his ghetto blaster as a girl, covered in cheap gold jewellery, her hair scraped back, decorative rings adorning various parts of her overweight, multi-pierced anatomy grinds herself into his lap, her lipsticked mouth a knowing grin, her mascara’d eyes aflutter. She is fourteen years old. She knows all about sex; thrice hetero, bi and gay varieties, she learned that at primary school. She goes by the name of Shazza and lost her virginity to Wayne’s brother Dwayne at the age of twelve.

Shazza also knows about abortions, at least she knows they are her right in the event that Wayne, the Epsilon-Semi-Moron she is presently gyrating upon, fails to use the state-subsidised condoms handed out in assembly and “Knock Her Up”. Should the wayward Wayne impregnate her, and should she not take up her inalienable right to abort Wayne’s epsilon offspring she also knows her right to a free council flat as yet another ruined single mum teenager. Shazza, Wayne and their gang all know about these things, and others, such as how evil the British Empire was and how we perpetrated and condoned the evils of slavery. Sadly though, the name Wilberforce will only elicit a vacant, bovine look or a glottal-stopped enquiry into which club he plays for.
- - - - - - - - - -
There are some things however that she does not know. She has no concept of the notions of honour, patriotism, duty, obligation, deference and civility. She can barely read, spell, add up or multiply in her head. She has no knowledge of her culture, the history of her country or the history of the institutions that make up and form the community she grew up in. No knowledge of music, art, language or literature. She is the same as the rest of her friends. Today, on-board the number twelve bus they are simply representing their school (motto: Striving For Excellence In The Community). In later years they will represent Britain as her tattooed, alcohol-fuelled ambassadors in the Dantesque clubs and bars of Ibiza, Faliraki and Torremolinos.

They are the sub-race; their future lives will consist of eking out a low wage, semi-criminal, state-subsidised existence on the periphery of civilisation. They are the death rattle in the dying convulsions of a once proud educational system in a once proud nation. Obscene as they are, the truly ultimate obscenity is that they are the cold-blooded, calculated, consciously planned end product of the liberal/left’s tightly controlled forty-five year experiment in Socialist Social Engineering. The British comprehensive inner-city school version of “Give me the boy and I will give you the Wayne”.

There is of course one other thing that Shazza, Wayne and their friends know. They know that you and the other nineteen adults on the bus are frightened of them. They know this because nobody has asked them to turn down the music, stop swearing, or pick up their litter. Would you?

13 comments:

rickl said...

"A Clockwork Orange" has truly come to pass. With a vengeance. I think Anthony Burgess himself would be taken aback by this.

Jerri Lynn Ward, J.D. said...

Dear God, we are doomed.

Fellow Peacekeeper said...

A chap I know recently did a stint in England teaching, he described the children (ordinary white British) as "feral".

Papa Ray said...

"They know this because nobody has asked them to turn down the music, stop swearing, or pick up their litter. Would you?"

Yea, I would, I have, and will do so again and again, each time I'm present around kids that are disrespectful, causing problems or doing something that I don't believe they should be doing in my face.

Yea, I make a few enemies that way, some principles, school officials, teachers and some parents. But, sooner or later, they all get over it.

But I don't make enemies of the kids. Kids are like animals, they need direction, they need boundries they need authority. You give that to them consistantly and they learn to live with it and most learn to like it.

When myself or people like me are around kids, the kids have no trouble knowing that we are the Alpha Males.

I don't terrorise Sarah's K1 class, but since the first of the school year, over their teacher's initial objections I have "taught" them how to behave when I am around.

The teacher does her best, but coralling 32 kids all under the age of 6 and making them behave half way decent, is a miracle if and when you can do it.

When am I around you say? Well quite a bit, I am now almost a sub, because I like to come early and help the teacher get everything rolling and the same in the evenings, trying to get everything wrapped up and the kids on their way. Plus school functions, guest reading and any excuse I get to be a part of my only GrandDaughter's life.

I'm not going to make the same mistakes (again) I made with my kids, neglecting them, because I was working all the time, or too tired to be as much a part of thier lives as they needed and deserved.

The same problems and opertunities arose with my [3] Grandson's friends (teens), of course they were warned of my "old fashioned" ways and attitude by my Grandsons, but they had to test me. Well, I was tested and they failed. But now, there is no more problems with their friends, they know how to act in my company.

Which may or may not teach them how to act around other adults.

I can only hope.

Papa Ray
West Texas
USA

Subvet said...

Papa Ray, I salute you.

As a 54 yr old new father I'll try to be as involved with my kids as you with your grandkids. "Feral" children aren't in my game plan.

And yeah, just like Papa Ray I open my big mouth and call the little darlings on their actions. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Maybe some day I'll get my head handed to me. The older I get the more likely that is.

But you're either a part of the problem or a part of the solution. I've read "A Clockwork Orange" and saw the flick also. Depressingly prophetic.

Asger Trier Engberg said...

"They know this because nobody has asked them to turn down the music, stop swearing, or pick up their litter. Would you?"

I agree with Papa Ray, I would certainly also ask them to turn down the music. And I have done so many times.

Here is my trick, if they are too many:

1. You walk over to them with a friend
2. You loudly start talking indirectly about "loud teenagers in the bus" - or "do they scare the old folks"
3. You start discussing with your friend whether you should call the police

That will shut them up. It is dangerous - but basically they are only kids, and they need rules. And a little show of courage will sometimes inspire them.

If you want people to behave with civility, you have to courageous enough to fight for that civility. In the beginning it is a little scary, but you get used to it, and training your courage is always a good thing.

Bob said...

Papa Ray should stay in Texas. Not a week goes by without the press reporting yet another middle aged family man beaten or knifed to death by gangs of children. Believe me, unless you have been to any of Britain's big cities you simply have no idea what has happened to this country.

X said...

I really wish I could disagree with Bob in that regard but what he's said, and nearly everything in the main post, is fairly typical of children's behaviour in many parts. Oh there are variations. A lot of kids are well behaved and well-meaning but there's an increasing mass of uneducated, uncaring monsters with attention spans shorter than a goldfish and with most of their brains reduced to mush by politically correct garbage. The worst part is, they're often very bright kids. They could be smart if they were educated properly. Those children are the one thing that really has me worried about the future.

Flanders Fields said...

Paul Weston is pointing out the realities which will and to a great extent do exist in the USA and where those lead. As he makes clear, the left is responsible in each country for instituting policies which led to this. Our common problem with England and all of Europe, which has now become a matter of national survival, is obtaining control over and reversing stupid, but intentionally created, leftist policies.

It is not the kids who need to be disciplined so much as us. They did not create the policies or allow them. We did. It was too convenient to turn our kids over to the state to nurture and warehouse. We had other things to do while it was happening and didn't realize that others had nefarious motives and ideas to promote in the stead of education.

The left is dangerous by itself. In England, it is combined with various minorities to dilute and disrupt any individual or group who oppose them and to persecute any expressing nationalist or non-left views. Freedoms are taken away by so-called Hate laws, which are used to express hate of the leftist/minoritity combos against nationalism or historical patriotism.

We are only a step or two behind

ziontruth said...

The psychologists of the humanist school of the 1960's had it, as one of their core doctrines, that a child is a physically small adult. From this premise, a child's conflicts can be resolved through negotiations and concessions just as is true with an adult (not true for all adults, but that's for another comment or post).

School bullies are a fact of life. But under humanist psychology, the way to "defuse" school bullies was only through talk, talk, talk and the occasional carrot, incentive, bribe to make the bully stop. The idea that a school bully, because of his age, was not amenable to rational persuasion was out of the question. As was the idea that those incentives only encouraged the bully in his path. As for the old-fashioned idea of, after having exhausted all alternatives, to castigate the bully verbally (forget about corporally), that was pooh-poohed in horror, for it could hurt the delicate soul of the boy. The souls (and bodies) of the kids he hurt weren't even given a thought.

So it is we have, out of the work of the Destructive Generation (the Sixties Hippies with their insistence on fixing everything, including that which ain't broke), a Destroyed Generation knowing everything about rights and nothing about duties.

There is hope, though. I'm part of the conservative youth backlash.

Anonymous said...

"There is of course one other thing that Shazza, Wayne and their friends know. They know that you and the other nineteen adults on the bus are frightened of them. They know this because nobody has asked them to turn down the music, stop swearing, or pick up their litter. Would you?"

Not unlike the Jihadis with their rhetoric and their violence; no one dares to ask them to tone it down.

And there is the link: the same cowardly policies that encourage the Jihadis have encouraged these kids.

Those kids and the Jihadis should have both had their "whoopin's" years ago.

Papa Ray said...

In defence of Texas, we don't have many kids as described by "Bob". Yes, in large cities there are gangs but these are usually older teens and young "adults", but they don't go around looking for trouble with adults, because they know they will wind up in jail.

Should I stay in Texas, yes, yes and hell yes.

Because if I was in jolly old [e]ngland, I would be up on charges of either assault or manslaughter if I was attacked or seriously threatened by anyone.

We have strong feelings about that sort of thing down here.

Papa Ray

Anonymous said...

I have just returned from parade service at my church with about 80/90 young people aged 4 to 19. One of them my own those friends I know well.
The only thing I can fault them for is not leaving enough chocolate biscuits for me at the tea counter.
For every noisy Wayne and Shaz there are 7 or 8 decent children being overlooked. Remember the most noise is made by empty vessels.