Education in "Utopia"

Education Education Education

"In his great work Equality [1931], R. H. Tawney pointed out that the English educational system "will never be one worthy of a civilised society until the children of all classes in the nation attend the same schools . . . The idea that differences of educational opportunities among children should depend upon differences of wealth represents a barbarity.""

England is perhaps unique in Europe in the sense that it is still fully in the grips of the utter barbarity described above.

It's not that private schools should be abolished (though that might help things). It is that they should not be necessary!

The idea that an education system in England that is different to the current one represents a "utopia" is false.
"Utopia" means "nowhere."
And a different educational system to the English one exists "everywhere in Europe except England".
This is hardly "nowhere"!

"Education! Education! Education!" says TB.

There will never be a solution to the problems of English education until New Labour fully addresses the crux of the problem as expressed by Tawney above.

I remember feeling annoyed at the age of 9 when I realised that the school I was going to was far better than the schools of other children in terms of the quality of the education and the facilities; and that my parents were nearly bankrupting themselves to send me there. It made me feel angry at the injustice even at that age. Also there was the pressure for exam results. The place was just an exam factory where your parents bought you a ticket to keep you in the middle classes.

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"England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land of snobbery and privilege, ruled largely by the old and silly."

George Orwell.

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I don't think semi-privatised academies are the answer either.

http://www.antiacademies.org.uk/

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It is contended that there is no reason why education should not be provided as a supposed charitable good.
Why not let health or transport be run by charities as well?
Ridiculous isn't it?
Health and transport could be run by charities.
But what kind of society would tolerate that the best transport and the best health was provided by so-called private "charities"?
Education is just as important as health and transport provision.
The bottom line remains that (very) rich people should never have a (much) better education than (very) poor people.

In England, uniquely and barbarously, this is very much the case.

It is utterly disgusting and intolerable.
And it quite simply would not be tolerated were England in any way a civilised entity.

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It also must be pointed out that many so-called "public" schools in England were founded in the late medieval period with the explicit intention of educating the poor or the general populace....

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All education should be secular and non-denominational.

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"Utopia" etymologically either means "good place" or "no place"/"nowhere".
"A good place" is not necessarily something that should not be strived for in my view.
Or at least "a better place".
Calling it "nowhere" is also conducive to being realistic. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try and improve things.

"Disillusionment" with Politics.

Stop Press! Rant

The current supposed disillusionment and disengagement with politics is in reality the direct and desired result of capitalism.

Saw Stephen Fry on telly last night and I can be silent no longer. He seemed to say "Our government is corrupt because we are. Our government is vermin because we are."
Bollocks.

New Labour is not the party of the people. New Labour/ The US Democrat Party of England is the party of business.

On shows like "This Week" and "The Daily Politics" politics is presented as entertainment. Issues are presented along with pop music and graphics which trivialise the issues and distance them from the viewer. Above all nothing is serious in this view. And even if it were serious there is nothing you or I or anyone can do about it. According to the "This Week" view, politics is out of the reach of ordinary people and has it's own coterie of political celebrities who we must worship. It was always thus, and always will be.

Politics is not serious. It's just the way it is. The only parties worth hearing from are the main parties. And who are the main parties? The ones we say are the main parties. Is it government by, for and of the media??

Politics is just parliament, politicians, celebrities and the media.
It is not allowed to be anything else.

(I exaggerate of course. It is supposed to be for effect :)

"A vibrant political culture needs community groups, libraries, public schools, neighbourhood organizations, cooperatives, public meeting places, voluntary associations, and trade unions to provide ways for citizens to meet, communicate, and interact with their fellow citizens. Neoliberal democracy with its notion of the market uber alles, takes dead aim at this sector. Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless."

Robert W.McChesney.

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Loyal to Lovely

Friday, May 19, 2006

Loyal to Lovely

Another (in my view:) interesting blog from the sunny cyber land of Lovely.
I am a citizen of Lovely. Why don't you join up too at:
www.citizensrequired.com/


From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:-

"Article 15.(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights Adopted and proclaimed by UN General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December 1948 "

Are the UN denying King Danny and Lovelians their human rights?

The country of Lovely has no more nor no less right to exist than any other country or state.

Countries or, more accurately perhaps, states, are completely arbitrary and, ultimately, an absurdity.

(Maybe states are to a point a necessary evil and a necessary absurdity. I am not so sure.)

Countries and nationalism are in a sense an absurdity. We're all humans.

"My country is the world; my religion is to do good."
Tom Paine.

Long live King Danny!

"A STATE [is] An arbitrarily-defined part of the earth's surface, occasionally having a human population with a common culture and language, which is more or less cut off from all other parts of the world and forms the geographical base for centralised and hierarchical control of its human population by powerful elites. The division of the world into states is a condition so much taken for granted that we almost never stop to think why we have states at all, why we need them, and what the world might be like without them..."

John Button, Dictionary of Green Ideas, 1988.

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The lovely cyberland of Lovely is also where I picked up my internet name, CitizenSofa.

Lovely - King Danny's country - is in fact a flat. So my thought process was that some of the furniture might be citizens of Lovely.
Then one of my proposals for the name of the country was "Union of Sofa Socialist Republics" which, even though I say it myself, is quite funny.
Armchair Anarchists and Sofa Socialists abound on these kind of sites after all.
So that's how I came up with my name.
I was briefly Citizen Bidet on the message boards because I believe in bidets as opposed to the disgusting English invention of toilet paper.... Don't get me started.
Then I changed to Citizen Sofa.
I don't really like it anymore but I am sort of stuck with it.
I am not sure if I want to be a "citizen" of anywhere. I am an anarchist.
I suppose I could still change it. Might well do.

A Myth About the Middle East

Thursday, May 25, 2006

A Myth About the Middle East

"...Arab society and much of the Muslim world are not dictatorial or intellectually paralysed because of religion, but the other way around - it is the existence, for other reasons, of such states and societies that itself produces a paralysed religion."

(Myth 86, p.165, "100 Myths about the Middle East",  2005, by Fred Halliday.)

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Destruction and deprivation lead to a more primitive religion; development of all kinds can lead to reform and cultural development.
This general principle obviously does not just apply to the Middle East and Islam.

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In the Middle East and Afghanistan American policy was a major cause of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.

Discussion of "The Sane Society" by Eric Fromm.

Interesting Book - "The Sane Society" (1955) by Eric Fromm.

I read "The Sane Society" by the psychologist Eric Fromm a few weeks back.

Even though it was written in 1955, I think it is still relevant today, maybe even more so. 

That was near the beginning of the sort of period we're in and he diagnosed some of the problems at the outset.

It was a great relief to find someone saying what is obvious. Our society is basically unhealthy, insane. :)

He spends the first two thirds of the book saying why this is so and slagging off capitalist society of the last couple of centuries and then in the last third he tries to come up with an answer to the vitally important question: "It's all very well you slagging everything off but what would you do and how would you do it?"

He sketches out some answers and they are quite convincing. I don't think they are utopian. I think they're only natural.

One thing that he stresses and that J.K. Galbraith and E.F. Schumacher (for example) stress is that the conventional economic way of looking at the world is relatively new and complete bollocks.

I also read "The Economics of Innocent Fraud" by J.K. Galbraith, one of the greatest economists who ever lived and he seemed to be saying that his whole subject was bullshit:) .

I wish the style of this little book was less ironic and elusive. I wish he'd been more concrete in it. 

I can't help thinking he was reluctant to spell it all out.

The conventional view of work, employment and unemployment is questioned by Galbraith in this book, his last and in his view his best.

Eric Fromm also believed that a component of a sane society was a basic guaranteed income for all, as explained in the book. So I am not the only one. E.F. Schumacher also makes the point that work must come to be regarded as work and not just as paid work. I will put up a quote about this.

Andre' Gorz, another Green philosopher, also believed in some kind of basic income.

I think Eric Fromm is a sensible psychologist, and an excellent thinker.

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Another thing to ask, which is relevant to the question of cultural lag, is :

Why should people be encouraged more to read "The Communist Manifesto" of 1848 - also why should more people have heard of it? - than "The Sane Society" of 1955??

In the year 2048 - if we are still here - will people find "The Communist Manifesto" more relevant than "The Sane Society"?

And will it still be the case that far more people will have heard of "The Communist Manifesto" than "The Sane Society"??

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BASIC INCOME 
EARTH NETWORK:

http://www.basicincome.org/bien/

"The Everything Industry" - a poem

The Everything Industry - a poem

The Everything Industry
Why today is everything an industry?
Is it just a new hyper-logical use of language?
Or conspiracy of ideology?
Or neither?
Just the result of the profit motive ruling
For the last few decades?
Industrial relations
Crushed by the wheels of industry
Industry Shmindustry
Everything's an industry
There is no room for anything that
Doesn't make money now.
It's here or brought near
the time when everything
Has a price.
And nothing is a service
No one serves
Industry is a technical term for economists and geographers
Not a way of life
We used to Say the X trade
the trade
now it's more
There is something wrong about these words
There is something wrong here
I can't put my finger on it
But I know there is something wrong
It has jarred in my ears
For at least a few years
Which sound strange to you now?
The media industry
The health industry
The mental health industry
The football industry
The mental health industry
The holocaust industry
The parking industry
The food industry
The pornography industry
The travel industry
The train industry
The postal industry
The teaching industry
The knowledge industry
The religious industry
The church industry
The defence industry
The war industry
The funeral industry
The baptism industry
The academic industry
The university industry
The monsastery industry
The biology industry
The music industry
The film industry
The money industry
The leisure industry
The idleness industry
The health industry
The industry industry
The politics industry
The art industry
The poetry industry
The gaming industry
The gambling industry
The sex industry
The charity industry
The hope industry
The faith industry
The space industry
The service industry
The devotion industry
The justice industry
The truth industry
The birth industry
The death industry
The love industry
The life industry