Thursday 9 February 2012

Education, such as it is.

They say the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was to convince people he doesn't exist. I wonder if the devil is the only one to have used that trick.

All those conspiracy theories, all the David Icke and Alex Jones stuff, always left me a little uneasy. David Icke's lizard people and Alex Jones' frantic delivery makes them look, let's be honest here, a little bit mad. Then again, for a long time I didn't believe Common Purpose existed, and then I saw their head girl on YouTube using deliberately exaggerated body-language and voice techniques that would work a treat on anyone non-sceptical. Once you've seen them and understood their workings it just looks like something from the Vincent Price school of acting but it really does work.

The trouble was, I stuck to the 'follow the money' idea when looking for a reason behind it all. That works with the antismoking and antibooze and anti-every-other-lifestyle games because they all lead back to the sale of treatments (not cures, because cures stop the money flow) for imagined addictions or illusory epidemics. There's always a tax involved, so there are several groups making money out of these things.

When it comes to dumbing down education, which is now clearly deliberate, who gains? Who makes money from a population of illiterate, innumerate, indoctrinated drones? Sure, they'll do what they're told but they won't do it very well. Who can possibly benefit from the generation of feral street gangs? MacDonald's does not need that many burger flippers and in the current economy they can get PhD's on minimum wage. There is no shortage of shelf-stackers and trolley-collectors for the supermarkets, and I'm sure they'd prefer their till operators to be able to spot mispriced items. All businesses need a cash room, banks need frontline staff and the innumerate and illiterate are no use there. 

A properly educated 'elite' will not fill those positions. They'd be looking to run those supermarkets, not add up the takings. So who gains financially from the destruction of the education system? Nobody. Follow the money and you can't believe it's deliberate, because there is no money to follow.

That it is happening, and that it is deliberate, is now certain. There still seems no sense to it. Follow the money and you get nowhere. 

It's not about money at all. It's about ideology.

The answer is in this video at 7 mins 50 seconds.



26 comments:

Sam Duncan said...

I haven't watched the video yet, but surely it's obvious. Who benefits from an uneducated underclass of criminals and layabouts? The people who promise to save us from them, of course.

The modern cross-party “consensus” may be more subtle, and more insidious, but it's been quite clear for many years that the Labour Party had absolutely no interest whatever in improving the lot of the “working class”, since success would obviate its raison d'ĂȘtre. I felt at the time, while my Conservative friends rejoiced at the sinner who repenteth, that its mid-1990s admission that the 19th-Century class model was somewhat behind the times and the consequent abandonment of Clause 4 of its constitution looked fishy. They were clearly up to something, and it wasn't enlightenment. A mob of crooks doesn't just suddenly go straight, overnight.

We're now beginning to find out what: we're all the patsies now, not just the downtrodden mill-workers.

By the way, got any good CP links? I took my eye off that ball some time ago (not least because of the likes of Icke and Jones), but I think it may be time to have another look.

Sam Duncan said...

Okay, watched it.

Yep, that too.

What I don't understand is why so few people who might be sympathetic to the ostensible agenda - saving humanity - don't see through this. What kind of humanity is it that isn't free? If that's what it takes to save the world, I'd rather not bother.

As they say in New Hampshire, “Live Free or Die”.

Legiron said...

 I don't think they can see 'humans' any more. They see 'humanity'.

Look at the medical pronouncements on how much salt and fat and sugar and alcohol we're allowed. They take no account of differences between individuals, they treat us as if we are worker bees or ants - all pretty much genetically identical. I've been referring to the 'British Standard Human' half in jest, but they're not joking. They really do see an Aryan ideal and they really do intend to make us fit that mould, or kill us in the attempt.

These socialists see people the same way. As a collective. Like an ant colony. That's why they say anyone who disagrees with them must be stupid or mad. It's because they have no concept of individuality apart from one person. Themselves.

Each of them think they are the British Standard Human. Every time socialism takes control, it comes as a shock to find they are not. They can hardly believe it when their masters line them up against the wall.

Once the socialist system is in place, the first thing those in charge want to do is to eradicate anyone who knows how it was done. The drones are expendable. They actually become a risk, because they are dim enough to brag about what they've done so the only sensible course of action is to kill them. Pol Pot, Stalin, all of them. There is only one Great Leader and if any Lefties are reading this, take note. It's not going to be you. Look at those old photos of drones with their Great Leaders linked to by Captain Ranty  -

http://captainranty.blogspot.com/2012/02/altered-images.html

When it happens, nobody has any sympathy for them. Why would they? The problem, of course, is that once those drones have their eyes opened and are then killed, there's nobody left to point out the early signs when it happens again.

Woodsy42 said...

"(not cures, because cures stop the money flow)"
Successful parasites and infections don't usually kill the host.

Legiron said...

This parasite has so many hosts it can afford to kill a few.

cfrankdavis said...

At exactly 7 minutes 50 seconds, the guy is saying that well-educated people consume more than ill-educated people. Is that the point???

JuliaM said...

"
What kind of humanity is it that isn't free? "


The safe kind. The cozy kind. The 'zoo animal' kind...

Legiron said...

 The key is this 'sustainability' idea. Years ago, when I was in agricultural research, the buzz was 'sustainable agriculture' even though nobody seemed clear on what it was. It looked very much as if they wanted to ditch all farm machinery and go back to  having a load of peasants with picks and hoes in the fields.

That morphed into 'organic farming' which was popular with the hippies but not with the farmers because it involved using no weedkillers. Peasants with hoes again.

This is all very well on a smallholding or even on a farm intended to supply a village, but you can't feed a country with those methods. Cambodia tried and failed, North Korea is trying and starving. It's been tried and has failed time and time again.

Now they've found the problem. There are too many people to feed with 'sustainable agriculture'. The solution? Kill all the people.

The same approach now informs the educational agenda. Smart people earn their money and buy big cars. Dopey plebs are happy with handouts and with small or no car.

The solution? Same as Pol Pot's. Kill all the smart people and make sure there are no new ones coming along. Okay, they aren't rounding up the academics and maybe they won't this time. This time they're playing a longer game.

They'll just wait for the educated ones to die, or let the Ferals deal with them.

tinks said...

Strange that we are told that we are better educated than ever - the summer exam results farce and the dissonance in what employers say. What are they learning - they don't seem to be learning how to think or make valued judgements? That there has been a dumbing down and the drip, drip, drip of lifestyle and other fearmongering announcements to keep the masses on edge is obvious. There are people high up responsible for this and co-ordinating this. I've seen Fabianism in action with local groups, leading to a group think and a stifling of genuine debate.

I think the internet is a revolution, which is why it is feared. As for the tinfoil hatters like Icke and Jones, day by day they are being proven to be more right than wrong. More and more people are reading blogs and those questioning things are reaching more and more people.

Like many of those sidelined, I thought David Icke was a bit of a nutter and was thus ignored, then I followed a recommended link to a 30 minute video, which pretty much expanded on everything I said in the 4 minutes of my song 'Wake Up'. Funny old world, perhaps I'm a bit of a nutter too!

stopcpdotcom said...

Don't forget to read up on communitarianism:

http://nikiraapana.blogspot.com/2010/10/niki-raapana-talks-to-herself-about.html

.

Jackie said...

Oh...my...god!!!  I'd never heard of David Icke so I googled him.  Found this on his website:

http://www.davidicke.com/headlines/56932-david-icke-the-one-party-state-essential-knowledge-for-a-wall-street-protestor-part-two-
 
specifically addressed to Occupy protestors.  I gather that Mr. Icke has been at this for a long time (and has probably suffered the usual "conspiracy" crap).  To me, it's blatantly obvious that what he is saying in the video, especially regarding the United States, is true.  It's equally obvious that it is ALL intentional, and it scares the bejeezus out of me!

nisakiman said...

"Now they've found the problem. There are too many people to feed with
'sustainable agriculture'. The solution? Kill all the people."

"The solution? Same as Pol Pot's. Kill all the smart people"


LI, you have summed up in a nutshell the socialist ethos. It's never a case of "fit the ideology to the situation", it's always "change the situation to fit the ideology",

Thomas said...

In the US, as schools fail, then the unionized government workers, the teachers, can call it a major problem, as it will be obvious and measureable. Then based on that, they can call for more centralized power, control and authority and more money to be wasted, thrown at the problem, which of course all goes into the pocketbooks of the teachers, related staff, government bureaucrats and the unionistas, who can then continue to manufacture more of the problem, thus repeating the cycle. So someone in that case is benefiting financially and politicially. And it was FDR, one of the US Democratic Party's patron saints who clearly said that unions do not work for government employees and would lead to cronyism. Yet it is nowadays the same US Democratic Party that stands firmly behind government worker unions, like those in the educational system, thus the entire party is itself corrupt and has pitted some people (those who benefit from unionism in government workers, especially in the area of education) against everyone else, who has to continue paying higher and higher taxes to the cronies who steal all the money, all under the guise of "saving the children". When those children mature and remain ignorant, then the policies that caused it can be expanded further come the next generation, thus magnifying the divide between the two classes, with the crony unionized educational class at the top whining for more money, stealing more from everyone else, who will be more dumbed down than the generation before and thus more gullible and willing to pay it, without noticing they are being had. (Your commenting system is sluggish BTW and has a super long wait between keyboard input and response on-screen.)

Thomas said...

There was a study in fact, published online yesterday, can be Googled as it showed up in several places, that using Las Vegas, NV, USA as example, they discovered that something like $4.5M yearly was being paid by taxpayers to the government to fund days off taken by unionized government workers, many if not most of whom are involved in the educational (indoctrination) system to fund their time off doing lavish political conferences to benefit the party that then continues to expand the bureaucracy that expands the union that expands the cronyism that weakens the educational system while the more dumbed down and indoctrinated products of this system are the same ones who are paying for the graft, yet totally oblivious to their servitude because it is circular and the same ones benefiting (education department workers) have an economic self-interest to keep the system going indefinitely, if they can get away with it - which by proper propaganda and indoctrination programming, they so far apparently have been doing quite well.

Lou said...

Bit like Andy Kerr discovered.

Andrew Grichting said...

This is really disappointing. Go *read* the Education for Sustainable Development Toolkit for yourself. It is available for free on the web at http://www.esdtoolkit.org/esd_toolkit_v2.pdf

Read the entire section that they are quoting; it starts on page 11; from the scare quote, it continues to state:

"The challenge is to raise the education levels without creating an ever-growing demand for
resources and consumer goods and the accompanying production of pollutants. Meeting
this challenge depends on reorienting curriculums to address the need for more-sustainable
production and consumption patterns."

I personally disagree with the focus that is implied, that we should educate to create awareness and action for "sustainability" (which assumes that life is zero-sum game), but it is *clearly* not calling for educational devolution.

Try again.

Sam Duncan said...

You need to know his history to understand. He's a former BBC sports reporter who started going around about 20 years ago wearing turquoise jumpsuits (because it's the “colour of the universe”, apparently) and claiming that he was the son of God, sent to save us from a conspiracy of lizard people who were taking over the Earth.

There is good reason for him “suffering” accusations of conspiracy theorism. He was, quite obviously and literally, mad.

He may well have recovered since then, and there may indeed be some truth in what he's saying now (to be fair, he does admit that his antics back in the '90s might have been somewhat over-the-top: the lizard people may not be actual lizards, like those space Nazis in “V“.... although he swore blind that they were, live on national TV), but it's very hard for those of us who saw him go from soberly reading the football scores to ranting about the Second Coming in teal to take him, or anything he's associated with, seriously. The bar of proof - already high for assertions such as these - has been set higher. I'm sorry for those who are sure he's right, but it has.

Jackie said...

 Thanks for this, Sam.  Maybe I should have looked a bit further about him ;)  Honestly, Icke has Obama pegged exactly right as far as I'm concerned.  I had such high hopes for Obama and he has been a total disappointment.  When I first realized this is when I started looking for reasons.  Could be I'm a complete nutter, too, but this is why Icke made sense to me.

Tony said...

Take away the lizards and shape-shifting and pretty much all that he says makes complete sense these days.

Legiron said...

 Tsk. I have already mentioned the tricks of body language and wordplay and here they are again. Andrew, I could make a living as a fake psychic, don't play those games here,

I will come back to this tomorrow when tonight's way-above-recommendations booze wears off. If you want to pretend exsuperiority on that basis, go ahead.

You have twelve hours before the Pretentious Guns fire  up.

Andrew Grichting said...

Hi LegIron,

OK, I am speaking bluntly here. I have *no* idea what you are talking about (re: body language & wordplay). I've posted on your blog before, and read it regularly; I am interested in your expressed views - tell me where I'm wrong, and I'll listen. Not necessarily agree, but I will consider the information you provide and see if it alters my outlook.

Agenda21 is an idiotic program that deserves all the scorn that can be heaped on it - but it seems to me that the quote in that clip is specifically out of context.

Perhaps I was condescending my saying you should "try again", and that I was "disappointed" - mayhap these words were hasty and ill-considered, but it seemed that you were reacting to a planned provocation in an insufficiently critical way.

All the Best,
Andrew.

Legiron said...

 I was very, very drunk. Yes, certain phrases can trigger an automatic anti-Righteous response. Sorry about that.

But even if the quote is out of context, it matches my own experiences. I was a lecturer in higher education for 13 years and saw the dumbing-down happen. At the time I thought it was just stupid management decisions but it's so widespread it has to be deliberate. By the time I left, the piggery manager was in charge of one of the microbiology courses I had run throughout my time there, and I had been moved into teaching a course on organic farming, which I knew nothing about. That's not a joke.

We are now at the stage where supermarkets have to teach new recruits basic literacy and maths, and universities are taking maths out of science courses. Kids come out of school able to spout a load of fake numbers and without the skills to check those numbers for themselves. Explain the numbers to them and they genuinely don't understand your reasoning because they have not been taught how!

Their idea of 'raising education levels' translates as 'teach them what we want them to believe'. No exaggeration. I saw it happen, and I left in 2005 while the pace of dumbing down was still accelerating. It wasn't until a few years after I left that I realised what was going on, when I found it was happening everywhere.

I'm not so sure it is all that much out of context, you know.

Legiron said...

 I think he's dropped the lizard story lately.

Andrew Grichting said...

I know what you mean; I am also involved in education. I have not yet concluded that the decrease in educational standards is intentional, as many good people are involved in the industry, working to the best of their abilities to create opportunities for students, despite the sytemic difficulties. I also think that private education can result in a better outcome for students.

I collect older textbooks (particularly mathematics), and the "expectation" trajectory is clearly negative. So far I have attributed this to the increased requirements of student attendance - far more individuals are required to attend educational institutions for longer than in previous years - this can't help *but* reduce the overall educability of the school-going population, and thus the "mainstream" curricular content levels have diminished. I don't see this (necessarily) as a plan to result in less highly educated individuals, just an inevitable downside of trying to ensure that more people reach certain minimum standards.

Of course, when you combine the above expectations with the ideology of in-situ differentiation (anti-streaming), it becomes harder to envisage a non-malignant mental process that could justify not only the intent but the outcome of modern education. When it is expected that an educator can manage a classroom where the ability spectrum stretches from 1 year above expectations to (up to) 7 years below pre-requisites, that does seem unreasonable.

I guess in writing this much, I'm moving my viewpoint closer to yours, but my single most convincing piece of evidence is something I stumbled across in my own schooling system 3 years ago. Indulge me by letting me put it forth as a question: In the final year of compulsory education, there is a final examination. Mathematics is a critical subject (but this data point is available for other studies as well); what would you expect the minimum attainment (as a percentage of correct answers required) would be for the educational administration to award a statement of competence (satisfactory completion)?

Legiron said...

 When I did maths O-level, it included things like quadratic equations and simultaneous equations which I have never found a practical use for. I've made use of a lot of trigonometry and statistics, I've drawn on maths, metalwork and engineering science O-levels when building specific lab equipment that didn't previously exist, but much of the deep algebra I've never used and have forgotten.

Long division - easy. I once knew how to work out square roots on paper but that's gone now, because I can get a calculator for pennies that does it.

So I would say a 50% pass mark would be okay for maths at the level it was in 1976.

Andrew Grichting said...

The content of secondary mathematics is an issue of concern; it is abundantly clear that the graduated population have a rampantly insufficient grasp of practical mathematics (particularly, as you confirm, statistics). However, the current mathematical studies in my state (Victoria, Australia), the required percentage to get a pass mark on the end of year exam on the mainstream mathematics subject is 10%.

Not a misprint, Ten percent. Check it yourself:
http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vce/statistics/2011/section3/vce_math_methods_cas_ga11.pdf

This is why I have begun to wonder if there is more than just ineptitude and politics behind the outcomes of modern education. This is not just mathematics; it is across most subjects. This is an externally assessed exam - teachers are not involved in correcting or designing it - it is completely independent of the frontline teachers - and in my personal experience, they are not aware of this statistic.

I do note, however, that the uppermost grades still maintain some integrity - the high grades still require a high level of competence in the content.

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