What happened to us?
Have you noticed how society seems to have become a bit of a mess lately? I see evidence of this everywhere I look. Have we really lost our direction? At the end of this article you can reach your judgement as to whether I am simply a grumpy old man, well not in the first bloom of youth, or someone who is saying what you are thinking.
Apart from struggling for my daily commercial life I also do some lecturing and pursue some other academic pursuits. This takes me to a variety of Further and Higher Education establishments. Sadly I have to report that most of the young adults swear most of the time and you are considered strange if you ask them to stop, which I do.
Many of the young men spit on the floor and when I told one of them to stop he simply couldn't understand why and instantly tried aggressive behaviour as his default position.
I also insist that the young men and women do not slouch with their feet on the empty chairs or listen to their MP3 players or take phone calls during lessons. They look at me as if I am deranged and I have had to eject a couple of them because they simply refused to live with this rule. Yesterday a young man appeared 45 minutes late for a one-hour lecture and couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t allow him entry.
However this is not just a story aimed at the more moronic of our young. We have a Government that lies and when discovered who does not apologise but justifies. This is about people who are supposed to know better.
Recently we, in the UK, have been barraged with a variety of different numbers of foreigners admitted to work legally. Don’t get me wrong I have nothing against those of foreign origin, my grandparents included!
I’m not so much worried about the foreigners as I am about the liars running our lives, our Government. This is not a political argument, this is about morality.
It is worrying that there are wildly varying numbers of illegal aliens we're told who are living among us. Surely if we know how many this is, we would know who they are and where they live and could simply kick them out.
This reminds me of my headmaster of many decades ago asking me "where did you lose your cap Klinger?" For me to respond, aged 11, but clearly brighter than him, "if I knew where I'd lost it sir it would be on my head."
The facts are that our Government lost all control of this situation and has since sought to obscure this from the public. Years ago the Klinger family lived in California, and they had similar problems, albeit their largest number of illegal aliens were from Central and South America. They seemed to have a more enlightened approach to the same problem. Every so often they had an amnesty to regularise the situation. That way at a given moment in time you knew how many people there were and what resources you needed to plan for. Anyone there, making a contribution to society at that moment in time, was allowed to stay, and rendered legal. This was a tremendous benefit to both the previously illegal and to the society in which they lived. It also stopped the lying and cheating and back room bullyboy tactics of those who take advantage of the weak and the oppressed.
.
Unfortunately, for short-term political reasons, we also have many politicians of every hue who are at ease with a more relaxed version of the truth. Yes, liars.
In the last weeks we have had the most senior police officer in the country hear his department roundly condemned by an official enquiry and he did not resign. We have had a junior minister who called for more severe punishments for those using their mobile telephone whilst driving caught by the police using his mobile telephone whilst he was driving, and he did not resign. We had two senior ministers of our Government tell us figures for immigration that they changed (upwards) on the same day, and again, upwards, the following morning; and neither of them resigned.
It isn’t that long ago that the British system was honour driven. If you were caught doing wrong, or failing to live up to your public duty, you resigned. It was stoic and a very good idea. The whole world looked with envy on our incorruptible civil service bureaucracy, it was all that was best about our country. Honest, efficient, and above suspicion. Of course no system was, or can be one hundred percent perfect, but it can aim for it. We seem to have given up on this, and to be prepared to accept lies, half-truths and spin; and we’re all the worse for it.
In the same vein we have the ever-present debate about climate change. It is an obsession that knows no limit. With every passing day we have further legislation and threats of draconian rules and regulations to enforce eco friendly behaviour. The big new “right on” behaviour is for us to purchase carbon offsets so that we can mitigate the damage we're supposedly doing to our planet. No one has justified this to me as yet. There are people who are gaining from this, and they are businessmen with a vested interest. Just like no one except local and national government will gain from taxing our rubbish collections. However, because these actions are being taken in the name of protecting the planet no one dares even raise a question mark. Instead we are told we must make these and many other alterations to our behaviour to stop our imminent demise.
So I must sort my rubbish while over 20% of the planet’s energy is burnt on the freeways of California, and 2 new fossil fuel power stations a week are being built in China?
I, for one, recognise climate change when I see it, but also recognize that there has always been climate change and always will be. Now the politically correct guardians of the gates of moral right and certainty are convinced that they know the cause, the effect and the cure. They don't and most scientists know this but still stood applauding when Al Gore received a Nobel Prize for his very iffy documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth" which a British court recently found was wrong on at least 9 major counts. Should we simply re-name the
film, "An Inconvenient Opinion"?
I have simply had enough of the thought police now patrolling the corridors of our local and national government nanny state who tell us what to eat and drink, how much to exercise and how to look after our children. They are seeking to run every aspect of our lives in a realisation of an Orwellian nightmare. It is long past time we spoke up.
The reasons why this is all so important are not quite so obvious. I truly believe that we are allowing all the ingredients for a totalitarian state to be put in place without too much thought and virtually no protest. We all understood when some of the tougher laws were introduced they were created to deal with the ongoing terrorist threat. But we have to be extremely careful not to become a totalitarian state whilst protecting our democracy.
Of course while we have a basically decent and well-intentioned, paternalistic and democratic leadership in place we can all sleep safely in our bed. Heaven forbid, through any kind of national emergency and we find ourselves in the hands of someone less benevolent we could be living in a dictatorship.
The increasingly strident rules and laws already make for a less civilised and pleasant place for us all to live in. You can measure the downward spiral of a society by its use of euphemism. When words lose their power and we avoid difficult truths we are in danger of not waking up before it is too late. I am not saying that many of these new laws and regulations have been thought up with evil in mind. No, I firmly believe that the people doing this were well intentioned, but deluded. It is not the job of our political leaders to rule on our lifestyles. That is the job of every individual, for you and me, for our moral conventions. Our religion, our spirituality, our traditions, our evolution to a chosen path, these are the guides to live by. Not the political theorists in the Town Hall. With all the laws and regulations coming into force in our country we are in grave danger. Wake up and be afraid, be very afraid.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Monday, March 17, 2008
Going to the Bejing Olympics?
The last week or so has seen a seemingly popular uprising by the Tibetan people against their Chinese occupiers. Now we are beginning to witness the news of the brutal repression of this by the Chinese government. This news has dribbled out of Tibet despite the authorities largely efficient efforts to cynically censor this whole affair from the world.
I am against the Chinese government in this, as are, I suspect, the vast majority of people watching these events unfold. I have always wanted Tibet free and the Dali Lama in his rightful place. His exile has gone on too long as has the apparent effort toward ethnic cleansing by the Chinese government.
We should seek to apply as much pressure as we can on our governments for them to do the same to their Chinese counterparts to end this unjust and ill conceived occupation. I don't believe we should include a boycott of the Olympics, one of the few global event which should remain above politics. If the West boycotts Bejing the Chinese will find an excuse to lead a boycott of London's Olympics in 2012, and then we're on the slippery slope to not holding global sporting events. My belief is that these events are amongst the more important glue ingredients for international understanding.
What we should do is go to the Olympics, and while we're there, in the full glare of the media spotlight, make a big noise about Tibet and other human rights abuses in China, of which there are many. What we mustn't do is go to the Olympics and allow ourselves to be dragged in front of the global media for picture opportunities in seeming support of the Chinese government. That would be too much like the English soccer team giving the Nazi salute, out of politeness, at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. We can never live that moment of infamy down, and I fear we might be about to repeat that terrible mistake.
The Chinese political establishment inhabit a very sophisticated society and would clearly understand a well thought out global response to their totally unacceptable human rights position, particularly with regard to Tibet. It's time they got out of that small country and started to behave like a responsible member of the family of nations rather than as the neighborhood bully.
I am against the Chinese government in this, as are, I suspect, the vast majority of people watching these events unfold. I have always wanted Tibet free and the Dali Lama in his rightful place. His exile has gone on too long as has the apparent effort toward ethnic cleansing by the Chinese government.
We should seek to apply as much pressure as we can on our governments for them to do the same to their Chinese counterparts to end this unjust and ill conceived occupation. I don't believe we should include a boycott of the Olympics, one of the few global event which should remain above politics. If the West boycotts Bejing the Chinese will find an excuse to lead a boycott of London's Olympics in 2012, and then we're on the slippery slope to not holding global sporting events. My belief is that these events are amongst the more important glue ingredients for international understanding.
What we should do is go to the Olympics, and while we're there, in the full glare of the media spotlight, make a big noise about Tibet and other human rights abuses in China, of which there are many. What we mustn't do is go to the Olympics and allow ourselves to be dragged in front of the global media for picture opportunities in seeming support of the Chinese government. That would be too much like the English soccer team giving the Nazi salute, out of politeness, at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. We can never live that moment of infamy down, and I fear we might be about to repeat that terrible mistake.
The Chinese political establishment inhabit a very sophisticated society and would clearly understand a well thought out global response to their totally unacceptable human rights position, particularly with regard to Tibet. It's time they got out of that small country and started to behave like a responsible member of the family of nations rather than as the neighborhood bully.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Loving the Anglo American Way of Life
What is it about the Anglo American way of life that makes other people from other nations so jealous? I believe its because they know that there is so much to be envied. They mock our culture but then buy our films, music, writing, architecture, design and other creativity by the bucket load. Our language dominates the world, and is the commonly accepted big brand for everything from commercial air traffic to finance. If two people from diverse third countries get together, the accepted common language will almost always be English.
It’s that open export of our ideas and our concepts that has made ours the global culture. The internet came out of British and American brains willing to share. Compare this to similarly able French or Italian speakers from largely inward looking cultures and you can see why their countries culture simply is not expanding. They used to be happy to share their undoubted brilliance through centuries of inspiration, but then, like the Germans, Dutch, Japanese and others, they simply got left behind.
More than this there is a sense of excitement in Britain and the States that is simply missing elsewhere. This comes from more than what some might regard as cultural imperialism. It is what advertising people call buzz marketing. There is a good vibe, a buzz coming out of the Anglo American experience that attracts others to it. This is plainly not because we get everything right, we clearly don’t, but what we do get right is a national generosity of spirit that is all too rare elsewhere.
I have been traveling between Britain and America for about forty years, and there is something reassuring about being at the nexus of London, New York and Los Angeles. It is where the decisions are made and executed regarding the driving forces of finance, culture and communications and where the prime movers of foreign adventures, both good and bad, are fed from and upon. Perhaps this will change as the BRIC economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China begin to dominate the global economy of the coming century.
I suspect this will not happen for a multitude of reasons. One is that the prime movers of those economies actually seem to want to live in either Britain or America, and while that’s the case I believe the levers of power and choice will stay in our countries. It is simply more fun to live here and safer. The other main reason is that not only has the Anglo American culture been exported for a long while, but so has our capital. We have always invested overseas in a much bigger fashion than our natural competitors. For example Germany and France might invest more in their infrastructure than we do, for which I am envious, but they have never matched us for long term international investment. We have also been brilliantly successful encouraging future leaders of the world to come to our two countries for their education, military training and social polishing.
I am not primarily interested in the economic benefits or wonderful modern culture of living within the Anglo American context. We also have had more real democracy, within a stable context, for a longer time. Despite our many faults we are also both inclined to be interventionist countries for what we believe to be the right reasons, to be on the side of the good guys. We are the people who other countries come to for help because we have a track record for helping those that cannot help themselves. We have got some balls, and that’s no bad thing. Even when our NATO allies join us in a fight regarding a third party, like Afghanistan, which is legal and more or less universally agreed upon, they mostly try to weasel out of the battlefront. Kind of a war lite!
If there are to be global responses to global problems I am convinced these will still have to be led by certain states taking a lead. I see nothing to suggest that the U.S.A. and U.K. will not continue to be at the forefront of the supposedly new world order. Why would I want to be anywhere else but at the centre of events.
I love England and America because they’re terrific and I understand them, and, as important, they understand me. My family lives in both places, and so have I. There are more reasons for loving these places including obvious, wider freedoms of expression and ways to earn a living that have become the norm for many countries grudging in their admiration for the Anglo American lifestyle.
However there are also some growing differences between Britain and America that are beginning to become obvious and that often go unremarked.
One of the things I love about America is that its basic social shape or lifestyle has not changed perceptibly in all the time I have been going there, whereas in the UK everything has changed. This statement will astonish many Americans as they believe theirs is the country, which is moving forward quickly whereas they believe little old England is stuck in the past. In some ways I wish this were so, but the opposite is true. There is a consistency to American life, not always a good thing, but largely it is. In the UK we live in what has become perhaps the biggest Western social experiment in modern times. Our laws are evolving so fast no one I know can keep pace. For example there are so many initiatives, laws and regulations supposedly to curtail the ill effects of climate change that they are beginning to change the very fabric of our lives. We now also have something approaching five million closed circuit television cameras in place in Britain, photographing the average city dweller up to 400 times a day. We are about to develop biometric identity cards for our people and a national data base for almost every heading. It is ironic that the country who’s author George Orwell bought the world the nightmare visions of 1984 and Animal Farm is also the place where these are apparently coming to life. Perversely I am certain that many of these new laws are being created with the best of intent, without their proponents understanding the huge and imminent danger of a slip over the cliff of civilization their ideas are taking us toward. Unless these issues are addressed just one bad undemocratic leadership will result in an inevitable totalitarian British state,
My hope is that there will be a massive national realization of and revulsion to the dangers of a drift toward a police state in the U.K. Hopefully just as there was a Thatcher to beat back the seemingly unmanageable power of the trade unions there will be another political figure to harness this natural democratic and evolutionary trend in our national character. As the emergence of other great leaders in British history has proven we are capable of finding just the right person at the right time. If we don’t then America might find itself even more politically isolated in future, just when its economy and therefore its military will be much weaker. We need each other to be strong, and we need each other to be free, and so does the rest of the world.
It’s that open export of our ideas and our concepts that has made ours the global culture. The internet came out of British and American brains willing to share. Compare this to similarly able French or Italian speakers from largely inward looking cultures and you can see why their countries culture simply is not expanding. They used to be happy to share their undoubted brilliance through centuries of inspiration, but then, like the Germans, Dutch, Japanese and others, they simply got left behind.
More than this there is a sense of excitement in Britain and the States that is simply missing elsewhere. This comes from more than what some might regard as cultural imperialism. It is what advertising people call buzz marketing. There is a good vibe, a buzz coming out of the Anglo American experience that attracts others to it. This is plainly not because we get everything right, we clearly don’t, but what we do get right is a national generosity of spirit that is all too rare elsewhere.
I have been traveling between Britain and America for about forty years, and there is something reassuring about being at the nexus of London, New York and Los Angeles. It is where the decisions are made and executed regarding the driving forces of finance, culture and communications and where the prime movers of foreign adventures, both good and bad, are fed from and upon. Perhaps this will change as the BRIC economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China begin to dominate the global economy of the coming century.
I suspect this will not happen for a multitude of reasons. One is that the prime movers of those economies actually seem to want to live in either Britain or America, and while that’s the case I believe the levers of power and choice will stay in our countries. It is simply more fun to live here and safer. The other main reason is that not only has the Anglo American culture been exported for a long while, but so has our capital. We have always invested overseas in a much bigger fashion than our natural competitors. For example Germany and France might invest more in their infrastructure than we do, for which I am envious, but they have never matched us for long term international investment. We have also been brilliantly successful encouraging future leaders of the world to come to our two countries for their education, military training and social polishing.
I am not primarily interested in the economic benefits or wonderful modern culture of living within the Anglo American context. We also have had more real democracy, within a stable context, for a longer time. Despite our many faults we are also both inclined to be interventionist countries for what we believe to be the right reasons, to be on the side of the good guys. We are the people who other countries come to for help because we have a track record for helping those that cannot help themselves. We have got some balls, and that’s no bad thing. Even when our NATO allies join us in a fight regarding a third party, like Afghanistan, which is legal and more or less universally agreed upon, they mostly try to weasel out of the battlefront. Kind of a war lite!
If there are to be global responses to global problems I am convinced these will still have to be led by certain states taking a lead. I see nothing to suggest that the U.S.A. and U.K. will not continue to be at the forefront of the supposedly new world order. Why would I want to be anywhere else but at the centre of events.
I love England and America because they’re terrific and I understand them, and, as important, they understand me. My family lives in both places, and so have I. There are more reasons for loving these places including obvious, wider freedoms of expression and ways to earn a living that have become the norm for many countries grudging in their admiration for the Anglo American lifestyle.
However there are also some growing differences between Britain and America that are beginning to become obvious and that often go unremarked.
One of the things I love about America is that its basic social shape or lifestyle has not changed perceptibly in all the time I have been going there, whereas in the UK everything has changed. This statement will astonish many Americans as they believe theirs is the country, which is moving forward quickly whereas they believe little old England is stuck in the past. In some ways I wish this were so, but the opposite is true. There is a consistency to American life, not always a good thing, but largely it is. In the UK we live in what has become perhaps the biggest Western social experiment in modern times. Our laws are evolving so fast no one I know can keep pace. For example there are so many initiatives, laws and regulations supposedly to curtail the ill effects of climate change that they are beginning to change the very fabric of our lives. We now also have something approaching five million closed circuit television cameras in place in Britain, photographing the average city dweller up to 400 times a day. We are about to develop biometric identity cards for our people and a national data base for almost every heading. It is ironic that the country who’s author George Orwell bought the world the nightmare visions of 1984 and Animal Farm is also the place where these are apparently coming to life. Perversely I am certain that many of these new laws are being created with the best of intent, without their proponents understanding the huge and imminent danger of a slip over the cliff of civilization their ideas are taking us toward. Unless these issues are addressed just one bad undemocratic leadership will result in an inevitable totalitarian British state,
My hope is that there will be a massive national realization of and revulsion to the dangers of a drift toward a police state in the U.K. Hopefully just as there was a Thatcher to beat back the seemingly unmanageable power of the trade unions there will be another political figure to harness this natural democratic and evolutionary trend in our national character. As the emergence of other great leaders in British history has proven we are capable of finding just the right person at the right time. If we don’t then America might find itself even more politically isolated in future, just when its economy and therefore its military will be much weaker. We need each other to be strong, and we need each other to be free, and so does the rest of the world.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
An Economic Tsunami?
Yesterday saw another outcome of the sub-prime mortgage disaster. Bear Sterns, the fifth biggest investment banker in the U.S.A. was bailed out by the Federal Reserve Bank. This was the same Bear Sterns which, one year ago, was voted the most "admired investment bank" in America.
There will be more such banking collapses to come. The question is how many, to who, when and can the financial system smoothly come through this. If any of the banks bigger than Bear Sterns in the States or Northern Rock in the U.K. the recent British bank collapse that was nationalized a couple of weeks back, goes down then we are in for very big trouble.
That is why it is essential that our central banks give total and immediate support if there is any sign of a problem. Our entire banking system relies on customers having faith in the system. Nothing is more important than this, it is what they exist for. If faith in the system vanish we get runs on the bank, and Northern Rock's near total collapse demonstrated this to perfection. It took very little time to see people fighting for their cash. Surely that example will have been taken on board by the central bankers and they will not hesitate to give help again. If there is a moment where they blink we are all in very big trouble, and a tsunami will come that could sweep away much, if not all, of the prosperity we have enjoyed for nearly twenty years.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Mister Bean - In Charge of the Money
In the UK the person in charge of our economy is called Mr. Darling, and he is the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Where money is concerned he is the main man. Our cause is not helped by the fact that Mr. Darling has a name that seems designed for a particularly British form of comedy. This is compounded by the fact that he looks exactly like Mister Bean. In fact, after listening to his budget earlier in the week, I now know he is Mister Bean!
Without a hint of irony he told us that we were doing very well economically, and that although the world economy in general was going to have a rough year or two, we, the British, were better placed than anyone else to sail serenely through the choppy seas to come. Forgive me continuing with metaphors, but what planet is he on?
We are borrowed to the hilt despite our having an incredibly strong economic inheritance from the sainted Maggie Thatcher era. On top of which this Government have spent, or mis-spent, depending on your political point of view, enormous sums of our money gathered in from our oil and gas revenues over the last two decades, now, sadly, nearing their end. In addition to which the Government are about to exceed their self imposed borrowing targets ranking us amongst the biggest borrowers in the world, ranking us, per capita, amongst those economic powerhouses, Egypt and Hungary.
If this were not enough our tax burdens are at historic highs, albeit more indirectly gathered than previously. Last in this sad list is the fact that the Government is squandering a disproportionately high percentage of the GDP. From beginning as a lean, mean fighting machine we are morphing into a socialist workers paradise, with the transition hidden behind political spin.
Darling is dressing up many of his actions as plans to decrease climate change. That's how he can legitimize charging huge amounts of additional tax on "gas guzzler" cars, and, in October, yet more tax on gas itself. This is on top of the already huge tax burden on petrol we pay now, up to about 80% of the approximately £5 ($10) per gallon, already on our gas station forecourts. He is also presiding over a ruinous housing policy which he will directly manage to ruin, and that seemed impervious to this Government's mismanagement, until the American sub-prime lending bust. That wasn't Darling's fault, but he then screwed up the British end by acting with startling indecision until it was too late, and then went all macho on us, when he should have been negotiating behind closed doors. He is a grade A prat!
Those of you who have not been to the UK in a while would be astonished at our cost of living. London and Tokyo compete for the unwanted title of the world's most expensive city.
I am astounded that the patience of the British public continues to hold despite never ending price increases on everything including water, power, mortgages, food, transportation and taxes etc. Not to worry though, Mister Bean, he tells us everything is great.
Mister Bean might look funny, and sound daft, but he is actually Count Dracula, and he is sucking the financial blood out of our country. How does the saying go, you can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people........
Without a hint of irony he told us that we were doing very well economically, and that although the world economy in general was going to have a rough year or two, we, the British, were better placed than anyone else to sail serenely through the choppy seas to come. Forgive me continuing with metaphors, but what planet is he on?
We are borrowed to the hilt despite our having an incredibly strong economic inheritance from the sainted Maggie Thatcher era. On top of which this Government have spent, or mis-spent, depending on your political point of view, enormous sums of our money gathered in from our oil and gas revenues over the last two decades, now, sadly, nearing their end. In addition to which the Government are about to exceed their self imposed borrowing targets ranking us amongst the biggest borrowers in the world, ranking us, per capita, amongst those economic powerhouses, Egypt and Hungary.
If this were not enough our tax burdens are at historic highs, albeit more indirectly gathered than previously. Last in this sad list is the fact that the Government is squandering a disproportionately high percentage of the GDP. From beginning as a lean, mean fighting machine we are morphing into a socialist workers paradise, with the transition hidden behind political spin.
Darling is dressing up many of his actions as plans to decrease climate change. That's how he can legitimize charging huge amounts of additional tax on "gas guzzler" cars, and, in October, yet more tax on gas itself. This is on top of the already huge tax burden on petrol we pay now, up to about 80% of the approximately £5 ($10) per gallon, already on our gas station forecourts. He is also presiding over a ruinous housing policy which he will directly manage to ruin, and that seemed impervious to this Government's mismanagement, until the American sub-prime lending bust. That wasn't Darling's fault, but he then screwed up the British end by acting with startling indecision until it was too late, and then went all macho on us, when he should have been negotiating behind closed doors. He is a grade A prat!
Those of you who have not been to the UK in a while would be astonished at our cost of living. London and Tokyo compete for the unwanted title of the world's most expensive city.
I am astounded that the patience of the British public continues to hold despite never ending price increases on everything including water, power, mortgages, food, transportation and taxes etc. Not to worry though, Mister Bean, he tells us everything is great.
Mister Bean might look funny, and sound daft, but he is actually Count Dracula, and he is sucking the financial blood out of our country. How does the saying go, you can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people........
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Bridging the Great Educational Divide
This is an extract from an academic presentation I gave last week at an Arts Faculty conference at the Open University to both their people and their Open University Validation Partners from around the world in Milton Keynes, which is in the countryside near London, in the U.K.
The UK’s creative sector is growing at twice the pace of the rest of the British economy. The creative sector is no longer a poor relation of bigger, more responsible, senior sectors of industry. We are it! We have arrived. We are bigger than cars, steel and almost any other sector. We are now the big boys of growth. In London, one of the world cities, we are over 10% of the entire economic scene, with a worth measured in many billions of pounds, and employ several hundreds of thousands of people. Even companies like BT consider themselves part of this phenomenon, now to a large extent feeling themselves part of as an entertainment provider, knowing that communications would one day have to be provided for free.
It’s only natural that young people want to join this vibrant sector, want to learn about it, and then inhabit it for the rest of their careers. Culture informs our lives, and feeds into every aspect of them. Virtually no youngster in the industrial world does not own a mobile phone, an MP3 player, a games console, a TV a DVD player and, of course, a computer. Through all of them pours interactive creative output in an unending stream. Today’s task is not to discuss the reason for this personalized electronic infusion but to understand the young consumers. This has resulted in an increasing blurring of the lines between consumer and creator. Kids are interactive.
I am a passionate devotee of the creative arts. We are all the better for the creation, viewing and appreciation of them in all their forms. I am of the view that people blessed with creative abilities, drive, appreciation and instinct are a force for good in our world. I have, to that end created a new entity called www.bCreativelimited.com where we celebrate creativity in all its forms. I have spent my life writing and making films of all types and teaching others how best to do so themselves. However I am not here to self advertise, although I will, given half a chance.
Instead I want to debate how we can best share the creative instinct within an academic context reinforced within a religious or moral construct. Of course all rules are best exemplified by a story to demonstrate the point, and it is said that Adolf Hitler was appreciative of the arts. As the zany Nazi German New York character in Mel Brooks “The Producers” describes the difference between Hitler and Churchill and their artistic abilities thus, “Churchill, you call him a painter, Hitler he was a painter, he could paint an entire room, two coats, one afternoon!”
Last Autumn I was walking through the campus of my then new Further Education College in which I was going to serve as a part time lecturer. My academic background to that point has been at Higher Education level, and I have also been a film- maker and writer and toiled in the corporate world. I have worked occasionally with the Open University Validation Service in various guises and traveled the world extensively as a filmmaker, writer and educator. I was now going to lecture to various FE media classes. I had just agreed to do some work with the Oxford and Cambridge Review and I thought it would benefit me to learn from teaching at younger levels, between Year 11 GCSE groups on through BTEC’s, National Awards, National Diplomas and Foundation Degrees. I also thought it might be fun but I soon realized that previously I had been spoiled, having led the film production courses at the Bournemouth and Northern Film Schools. There we had our pick of the best and the brightest, amongst the most motivated and able film and media production students in the world. Thereafter I directed the behemoth Media Production Centre at the University of East London, servicing the media needs of thousands from within my beautiful air conditioned office where I could muse on the finer points of media and creative teaching whilst looking on the changing moods of the River Thames. Now I trudged across a very different vista, the mud-splattered college, more of a building site than a cloistered hall of academe. The students looked more bovine than eager. They dripped social worker from their knuckles, which dragged alarmingly close to the floor. They smoked even though this was prohibited, they swore, even though this was not permitted, they spat on the floor, despite this being both foul and a health hazard. They had very little to recommend them. To paraphrase a Winston Churchill quote, “They have all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
There is a difference between right and wrong. One of the places these values must now be taught is our place of learning. This is considered controversial, but one wonders why. I imagine it wouldn’t even be a subject for discussion if families had succeeded in inculcating a responsible attitude and into the young.
I come from an interventionist, muscular Judeo Christian left of centre background. I was taught that you must never wait to cofront ignorance as it will grow and morph into hate, prejudice and victimization. In education you must seek to teach the whole person, not just the subject on the curriculum. You should try and create a moral geography for them to explore. We might well not always do what’s right, the Lord alone knows how very weak I am, but at least we should try and understand the differences between right and wrong. This belief system dictates that you don’t walk past the unacceptable but make your objection known. I stopped a young man who spat on the ground and told him that this was a disgusting and unacceptable way to behave, as it was both unhealthy to others and made him look silly. There was a moment when he considered doing something nasty to me but then he relented, smiled and apologized, his friends took note. A very small victory, but nevertheless I was reinforced in the view that you stop aberrant behavior immediately or not at all. I was not shocked, or even moderately surprised that at my first lecture attendance was very low, and many students rolled in late, listening to their MP3 players, talking on their mobile phones or to each other. I was disappointed, and frankly quite insulted. In the armed services you salute the badge, not the man. Your position as a teacher warrants common courtesy. How do you set about achieving this?
I formed the view that before one can coherently teach such a group you have to create a moral topography, setting out the parameters, the borders of acceptable behavior. I talked to my peers. Most of them were bowed by the weight of trying and failing to work within systems that creaked with inadequacies. I come from a film making background where punctuality, attendance, honesty and top performance are demanded all the time. These would be my building blocks. My message being that if you didn’t meet these simple media demands you were not worthy to study these subjects. Luckily for me, there were two other lecturers with similar views, one is a born again Christian, but although our observances are different our values are similar. The other person who joined our informal, ad hoc group of like-minded souls was a Moslem young woman. A strange team indeed, heard the one about the Jewish middle-aged man, the young Greek Cypriot born again Christian woman and the Islamic girl whose family came from Sri Lanka. But we shared a desire for “old fashioned” or core values.
We shared some similar rules, and these were simple and straightforward. No lateness would be tolerated, no swearing, no MP3’s or mobile phones and no gossiping in class. Non-attendance without an accepted reason had to end. Work not handed in on time would fail that unit. We all felt that we needed to weed out those students who were simply in the wrong place studying the wrong course and remove others from the student number who saw media study as a soft option, and this was quickly achieved. The results for the vast bulk that remained with us were astonishing and positive. Most interesting and rewarding for me was the fact that the 20% or so of my students who wanted media jobs when I started to teach them had grown to more than 80% by the time I left the college.
There are many ways in which we pass on knowledge. The British convention is that we generally break this down into two main areas, theory and practice, we label the latter, vocational, and there is a definite diminutive contained in the word, vocational. It is as if those who go on to practice are somehow the intellectual inferior of those that study and theorise on that practice; but we are left asking how there will be something to deconstruct if no one is there to facilitate the construct. There has also long been a separation of these so that they now form a divide, more like a chasm within our academic institutions. These are characterised by many as follows, if we are from the Russell Group or its devotees, we are more pure than the driven academic snow, and we, naturally assume the languid air of Oxbridge and try to turn the study of the arts into a purely theoretical, deconstructive construct. If we have our origins within the old Polytechnics the likelihood is that we are supposed to have swallowed the opposite view, we only teach button pushers so that they can go and get a job in media.
My contention is that we should be striving to do the exact opposite. We must seek to use the teaching of the creative arts to help students explore the possibilities and thinking this space allows them to study and understand, morally and within a social context, the complexities of humanity. The last six months has seen me striving to do this in this local FE College. I had, with some success, explored similar ideas at HE, in institutions known more for their practical abilities to teach the best young talent how to produce media rather than how to read that media. I believe it is of even more importance to explore at all available levels, our place within the universal issues, such as racism and morality. It is not enough to teach how students can best produce creative media unless they have some understanding of why they should do so other than to purely entertain and how such creative output can be used to affect themselves and the society they inhabit.
All traditional religion tell us that there is a moral parameter, there is a difference between right and wrong, and some form of deity or group ideology to judge our actions. At the college I was lecturing part time at these articles of faith had, or were all breaking down. It was accepted, for the sake of a quiet life, when a student swore in class, or spat on the floor outside, or smoked in a non-smoking area, or was not punctual, or simply did what they wanted to do. I had never seen anything like it and, I suspect, this is the underbelly that we all want to disappear, or sweep under the collective carpet.
There is a contradiction in the British F and HE systems and how the funding systems work. The UK has not suffered from a lack of general funding for more than a decade. In fact it has been awash with certain types of money. It’s what kind of money, applied how, that has been, and remains the problem. I have visited, worked at or examined at many institutions in this country and there are new buildings going up, or recently constructed everywhere. These capital projects cost billions of pounds. We have seen waves of expenditure follow the growth of the HE sector from an historic 4% of the requisite population when I was a youth, to a figure more than ten times that number now. What doesn’t track is the revenue spending to go along with it. Therefore we have built a great many new buildings, fill them with fantastic hardware but are hard pushed to staff it strategically as we would like or use the correct software. This was exacerbated by rather too much focus on the RAE and other, arcane, systems of evaluation that have not, sometimes delivered as they might. This has resulted in strange anomalies. My department in UEL was top rated for research. It also had a stellar publication record. Nevertheless many of its students were not vocationally taught to a sufficient level. We constructed a magnificent Docklands campus where we were great in certain disciplines, but lacked such excellence alarmingly in others. We could recruit from around the world but our retention rates were alarmingly poor. Of course, this is part of a bigger picture of many such institutions with similar problems and we’re not here to deal with those here other than to state that there is an obvious, urgent and long term need for universities to be dealing with these problems at a local and not national area.
The English higher education system in general rewards form filling, target achievement, throughput and exit velocity more than it does excellence. I note with satisfaction that some of the beacons of old fashioned getting it right, are how it’s still done at the Open University, and about twenty of our other British universities. These exemplify how the system could work in general for this country, if there were the will and standards. These institutions make certain that rigorous academic standards are maintained. I am convinced that their doing so has largely ensured that they continue to secure large amounts of additional funding, and the maintenance of this gold standard of quality has meant they all recruit well. That is at the macro level, whereas most of us spend the majority of our time working daily within the micro level. We can only expect to overcome the bigger problems by starting at the ground floor and building on those foundations. The one thing the failed central command economies of the past century have taught us is that top down philosophies in big institutions like education simply does not work. An example of how wrong this is all going is that the system is simply dysfunctional. What is required is either not possible or cannot be achieved. I was just informed that the college expected me, like all their lecturers, to prepare a lesson plan broken down into twenty-minute sections, even if the lesson was three hours long, and this had to be validated, in detail. There had to be an Assignment Brief and this had to be validated, in detail. This had to fit within a Scheme of Work, and this had to be validated, in detail. I could go on but I think you get the picture. Added to this was when I was faced with a student with any learning difficulties I was to give up to half my lesson time to that student exclusively. I asked whether, if I had two such students I would then have no time for anyone else.
I will never forget my first lessons at the college. I set about trying to find out more about the students, their levels of knowledge and interests. I discovered a great divide between their ideas of what creative arts are, and what their place within them could be. There was an appreciation, an enjoyment of movies, music and some television, but not for much more than sheer visceral pleasure. There was no understanding of why they liked something, no deeper grasp of what an artist might be trying to say, or why. No inkling that they were participating in an ongoing creative interaction that affected every aspects of their lifestyles.
I set about my bridge building by giving the students a few simple tests on the subjects at hand and their scores averaged well below 40%, which was simply not an acceptable base level. I also asked them about themselves and what they thought was the purpose of the creative industries, most specifically with regards to TV, newspapers, radio and advertising. Their responses indicated that they were not aware of having been asked to seriously consider such subjects although all of these issues should have been at the core of their courses. Most disturbing to me, when I asked them about their take on conspiracy theories there was a general consensus that 9/11 was an American fabrication and the moon landings were faked. Conversely the same students believed there had been Alien abductions and UFO sightings were definitely real. I asked all of them for any proof of any of these statements and all pointed to me to the “net”. What they meant was that their had been videos posted on You Tube etc. which made such claims, and this being their source, it was believed. Not only was there no rigor, there was little self-discipline, no understanding of gathering evidence to support any argument. When I asked one of the students why she believed in the crop circles and not the existence of man’s landings on the moon she told me that her dad had told her about the former, and he knew about these things, and she’d seen a part of documentary on You Tube which said that the Americans fakes the landings, and you could tell by the fact that their flag was “mistakenly” taut, when, in fact there was no air to blow it in that direction on the moon. I pointed out that this was not a mistake and that NASA had prepared the flag to look good in zero atmospheres. Why would students of any level ignore the evidence provided by regular media but accept unknown sources, or electronic gossip, buzz marketing and simple anonymous malice. The reason is that people are unable to differentiate between the sheer proliferations of sources pouring toward them in an unending torrent. What looks good, panders to baser instincts, looks cool and entertains is often given greater credence than formal, forensic evidence, if the latter is perceived as boring.
My recent direct experience touches on various FE levels of study I was teaching. Elements in which these students were particularly weak were Key Skills, particularly writing ability, research and anything theoretical. Therefore whatever else we did regarding the moral questions had to include communication in writing that I would reinforce by creating a vigorous verbal debating group. It was essential that we used popular language rather than the language of film, media or communication, the subjects I was covering, to enable this process. We wanted to make complex thought processes as accessible as possible, as easily as we could.
Apart from all the reasons I have touched upon earlier I was very disturbed to witness various forms of overt and covert racism between the students. Therefore there were reasons beyond the theoretical for me to address these issues. I used very simple systems to explore these ideas in class and they centered on our classes watching films, which we then debated and they then wrote about. I picked films for them to review that examined important social issues and did so dramatically. The films were, “This is England” and “La Haine” about racism in England and France, “Pierrepont” regarding capital punishment and “We Were Soldiers” touching on heroism of different types and patriotism. All touched on the human condition and dispensed with stereotypes. As each film was playing I would write headings for them to include in their essays. The idea being to stimulate thought regarding issues that touch all our lives and to make the students aware of themselves within the larger society. By picking films from three countries we were immediately able to dispense with racial stereotypes about the French, Americans, Arabs, Jews, Vietnamese and others. It opened the student eyes regarding violence, capital punishment, sexual politics and the differences between people being less important than that which they have in common.
Although I cannot claim to have created or discovered forensic evidence with regards to the impact that this and other initiatives had on these students we can at a base level inform you that the students themselves believe it has changed their perceptions. Our attendance, punctuality and achievement results all became exemplars. After shaking out some students, who perhaps, in retrospect should not have been there in the first place, we achieved near 100% attendance and punctuality and delivery of on-time work. The results were about 20% higher than those previously achieved. The students told me they had never been happier in any classes, and this, for me, was perhaps the biggest reward. They now clearly understood the purpose of their course of study and what they should be gaining from it. They also had a clear understanding of what we required from them. It was a good starting point.
The UK’s creative sector is growing at twice the pace of the rest of the British economy. The creative sector is no longer a poor relation of bigger, more responsible, senior sectors of industry. We are it! We have arrived. We are bigger than cars, steel and almost any other sector. We are now the big boys of growth. In London, one of the world cities, we are over 10% of the entire economic scene, with a worth measured in many billions of pounds, and employ several hundreds of thousands of people. Even companies like BT consider themselves part of this phenomenon, now to a large extent feeling themselves part of as an entertainment provider, knowing that communications would one day have to be provided for free.
It’s only natural that young people want to join this vibrant sector, want to learn about it, and then inhabit it for the rest of their careers. Culture informs our lives, and feeds into every aspect of them. Virtually no youngster in the industrial world does not own a mobile phone, an MP3 player, a games console, a TV a DVD player and, of course, a computer. Through all of them pours interactive creative output in an unending stream. Today’s task is not to discuss the reason for this personalized electronic infusion but to understand the young consumers. This has resulted in an increasing blurring of the lines between consumer and creator. Kids are interactive.
I am a passionate devotee of the creative arts. We are all the better for the creation, viewing and appreciation of them in all their forms. I am of the view that people blessed with creative abilities, drive, appreciation and instinct are a force for good in our world. I have, to that end created a new entity called www.bCreativelimited.com where we celebrate creativity in all its forms. I have spent my life writing and making films of all types and teaching others how best to do so themselves. However I am not here to self advertise, although I will, given half a chance.
Instead I want to debate how we can best share the creative instinct within an academic context reinforced within a religious or moral construct. Of course all rules are best exemplified by a story to demonstrate the point, and it is said that Adolf Hitler was appreciative of the arts. As the zany Nazi German New York character in Mel Brooks “The Producers” describes the difference between Hitler and Churchill and their artistic abilities thus, “Churchill, you call him a painter, Hitler he was a painter, he could paint an entire room, two coats, one afternoon!”
Last Autumn I was walking through the campus of my then new Further Education College in which I was going to serve as a part time lecturer. My academic background to that point has been at Higher Education level, and I have also been a film- maker and writer and toiled in the corporate world. I have worked occasionally with the Open University Validation Service in various guises and traveled the world extensively as a filmmaker, writer and educator. I was now going to lecture to various FE media classes. I had just agreed to do some work with the Oxford and Cambridge Review and I thought it would benefit me to learn from teaching at younger levels, between Year 11 GCSE groups on through BTEC’s, National Awards, National Diplomas and Foundation Degrees. I also thought it might be fun but I soon realized that previously I had been spoiled, having led the film production courses at the Bournemouth and Northern Film Schools. There we had our pick of the best and the brightest, amongst the most motivated and able film and media production students in the world. Thereafter I directed the behemoth Media Production Centre at the University of East London, servicing the media needs of thousands from within my beautiful air conditioned office where I could muse on the finer points of media and creative teaching whilst looking on the changing moods of the River Thames. Now I trudged across a very different vista, the mud-splattered college, more of a building site than a cloistered hall of academe. The students looked more bovine than eager. They dripped social worker from their knuckles, which dragged alarmingly close to the floor. They smoked even though this was prohibited, they swore, even though this was not permitted, they spat on the floor, despite this being both foul and a health hazard. They had very little to recommend them. To paraphrase a Winston Churchill quote, “They have all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
There is a difference between right and wrong. One of the places these values must now be taught is our place of learning. This is considered controversial, but one wonders why. I imagine it wouldn’t even be a subject for discussion if families had succeeded in inculcating a responsible attitude and into the young.
I come from an interventionist, muscular Judeo Christian left of centre background. I was taught that you must never wait to cofront ignorance as it will grow and morph into hate, prejudice and victimization. In education you must seek to teach the whole person, not just the subject on the curriculum. You should try and create a moral geography for them to explore. We might well not always do what’s right, the Lord alone knows how very weak I am, but at least we should try and understand the differences between right and wrong. This belief system dictates that you don’t walk past the unacceptable but make your objection known. I stopped a young man who spat on the ground and told him that this was a disgusting and unacceptable way to behave, as it was both unhealthy to others and made him look silly. There was a moment when he considered doing something nasty to me but then he relented, smiled and apologized, his friends took note. A very small victory, but nevertheless I was reinforced in the view that you stop aberrant behavior immediately or not at all. I was not shocked, or even moderately surprised that at my first lecture attendance was very low, and many students rolled in late, listening to their MP3 players, talking on their mobile phones or to each other. I was disappointed, and frankly quite insulted. In the armed services you salute the badge, not the man. Your position as a teacher warrants common courtesy. How do you set about achieving this?
I formed the view that before one can coherently teach such a group you have to create a moral topography, setting out the parameters, the borders of acceptable behavior. I talked to my peers. Most of them were bowed by the weight of trying and failing to work within systems that creaked with inadequacies. I come from a film making background where punctuality, attendance, honesty and top performance are demanded all the time. These would be my building blocks. My message being that if you didn’t meet these simple media demands you were not worthy to study these subjects. Luckily for me, there were two other lecturers with similar views, one is a born again Christian, but although our observances are different our values are similar. The other person who joined our informal, ad hoc group of like-minded souls was a Moslem young woman. A strange team indeed, heard the one about the Jewish middle-aged man, the young Greek Cypriot born again Christian woman and the Islamic girl whose family came from Sri Lanka. But we shared a desire for “old fashioned” or core values.
We shared some similar rules, and these were simple and straightforward. No lateness would be tolerated, no swearing, no MP3’s or mobile phones and no gossiping in class. Non-attendance without an accepted reason had to end. Work not handed in on time would fail that unit. We all felt that we needed to weed out those students who were simply in the wrong place studying the wrong course and remove others from the student number who saw media study as a soft option, and this was quickly achieved. The results for the vast bulk that remained with us were astonishing and positive. Most interesting and rewarding for me was the fact that the 20% or so of my students who wanted media jobs when I started to teach them had grown to more than 80% by the time I left the college.
There are many ways in which we pass on knowledge. The British convention is that we generally break this down into two main areas, theory and practice, we label the latter, vocational, and there is a definite diminutive contained in the word, vocational. It is as if those who go on to practice are somehow the intellectual inferior of those that study and theorise on that practice; but we are left asking how there will be something to deconstruct if no one is there to facilitate the construct. There has also long been a separation of these so that they now form a divide, more like a chasm within our academic institutions. These are characterised by many as follows, if we are from the Russell Group or its devotees, we are more pure than the driven academic snow, and we, naturally assume the languid air of Oxbridge and try to turn the study of the arts into a purely theoretical, deconstructive construct. If we have our origins within the old Polytechnics the likelihood is that we are supposed to have swallowed the opposite view, we only teach button pushers so that they can go and get a job in media.
My contention is that we should be striving to do the exact opposite. We must seek to use the teaching of the creative arts to help students explore the possibilities and thinking this space allows them to study and understand, morally and within a social context, the complexities of humanity. The last six months has seen me striving to do this in this local FE College. I had, with some success, explored similar ideas at HE, in institutions known more for their practical abilities to teach the best young talent how to produce media rather than how to read that media. I believe it is of even more importance to explore at all available levels, our place within the universal issues, such as racism and morality. It is not enough to teach how students can best produce creative media unless they have some understanding of why they should do so other than to purely entertain and how such creative output can be used to affect themselves and the society they inhabit.
All traditional religion tell us that there is a moral parameter, there is a difference between right and wrong, and some form of deity or group ideology to judge our actions. At the college I was lecturing part time at these articles of faith had, or were all breaking down. It was accepted, for the sake of a quiet life, when a student swore in class, or spat on the floor outside, or smoked in a non-smoking area, or was not punctual, or simply did what they wanted to do. I had never seen anything like it and, I suspect, this is the underbelly that we all want to disappear, or sweep under the collective carpet.
There is a contradiction in the British F and HE systems and how the funding systems work. The UK has not suffered from a lack of general funding for more than a decade. In fact it has been awash with certain types of money. It’s what kind of money, applied how, that has been, and remains the problem. I have visited, worked at or examined at many institutions in this country and there are new buildings going up, or recently constructed everywhere. These capital projects cost billions of pounds. We have seen waves of expenditure follow the growth of the HE sector from an historic 4% of the requisite population when I was a youth, to a figure more than ten times that number now. What doesn’t track is the revenue spending to go along with it. Therefore we have built a great many new buildings, fill them with fantastic hardware but are hard pushed to staff it strategically as we would like or use the correct software. This was exacerbated by rather too much focus on the RAE and other, arcane, systems of evaluation that have not, sometimes delivered as they might. This has resulted in strange anomalies. My department in UEL was top rated for research. It also had a stellar publication record. Nevertheless many of its students were not vocationally taught to a sufficient level. We constructed a magnificent Docklands campus where we were great in certain disciplines, but lacked such excellence alarmingly in others. We could recruit from around the world but our retention rates were alarmingly poor. Of course, this is part of a bigger picture of many such institutions with similar problems and we’re not here to deal with those here other than to state that there is an obvious, urgent and long term need for universities to be dealing with these problems at a local and not national area.
The English higher education system in general rewards form filling, target achievement, throughput and exit velocity more than it does excellence. I note with satisfaction that some of the beacons of old fashioned getting it right, are how it’s still done at the Open University, and about twenty of our other British universities. These exemplify how the system could work in general for this country, if there were the will and standards. These institutions make certain that rigorous academic standards are maintained. I am convinced that their doing so has largely ensured that they continue to secure large amounts of additional funding, and the maintenance of this gold standard of quality has meant they all recruit well. That is at the macro level, whereas most of us spend the majority of our time working daily within the micro level. We can only expect to overcome the bigger problems by starting at the ground floor and building on those foundations. The one thing the failed central command economies of the past century have taught us is that top down philosophies in big institutions like education simply does not work. An example of how wrong this is all going is that the system is simply dysfunctional. What is required is either not possible or cannot be achieved. I was just informed that the college expected me, like all their lecturers, to prepare a lesson plan broken down into twenty-minute sections, even if the lesson was three hours long, and this had to be validated, in detail. There had to be an Assignment Brief and this had to be validated, in detail. This had to fit within a Scheme of Work, and this had to be validated, in detail. I could go on but I think you get the picture. Added to this was when I was faced with a student with any learning difficulties I was to give up to half my lesson time to that student exclusively. I asked whether, if I had two such students I would then have no time for anyone else.
I will never forget my first lessons at the college. I set about trying to find out more about the students, their levels of knowledge and interests. I discovered a great divide between their ideas of what creative arts are, and what their place within them could be. There was an appreciation, an enjoyment of movies, music and some television, but not for much more than sheer visceral pleasure. There was no understanding of why they liked something, no deeper grasp of what an artist might be trying to say, or why. No inkling that they were participating in an ongoing creative interaction that affected every aspects of their lifestyles.
I set about my bridge building by giving the students a few simple tests on the subjects at hand and their scores averaged well below 40%, which was simply not an acceptable base level. I also asked them about themselves and what they thought was the purpose of the creative industries, most specifically with regards to TV, newspapers, radio and advertising. Their responses indicated that they were not aware of having been asked to seriously consider such subjects although all of these issues should have been at the core of their courses. Most disturbing to me, when I asked them about their take on conspiracy theories there was a general consensus that 9/11 was an American fabrication and the moon landings were faked. Conversely the same students believed there had been Alien abductions and UFO sightings were definitely real. I asked all of them for any proof of any of these statements and all pointed to me to the “net”. What they meant was that their had been videos posted on You Tube etc. which made such claims, and this being their source, it was believed. Not only was there no rigor, there was little self-discipline, no understanding of gathering evidence to support any argument. When I asked one of the students why she believed in the crop circles and not the existence of man’s landings on the moon she told me that her dad had told her about the former, and he knew about these things, and she’d seen a part of documentary on You Tube which said that the Americans fakes the landings, and you could tell by the fact that their flag was “mistakenly” taut, when, in fact there was no air to blow it in that direction on the moon. I pointed out that this was not a mistake and that NASA had prepared the flag to look good in zero atmospheres. Why would students of any level ignore the evidence provided by regular media but accept unknown sources, or electronic gossip, buzz marketing and simple anonymous malice. The reason is that people are unable to differentiate between the sheer proliferations of sources pouring toward them in an unending torrent. What looks good, panders to baser instincts, looks cool and entertains is often given greater credence than formal, forensic evidence, if the latter is perceived as boring.
My recent direct experience touches on various FE levels of study I was teaching. Elements in which these students were particularly weak were Key Skills, particularly writing ability, research and anything theoretical. Therefore whatever else we did regarding the moral questions had to include communication in writing that I would reinforce by creating a vigorous verbal debating group. It was essential that we used popular language rather than the language of film, media or communication, the subjects I was covering, to enable this process. We wanted to make complex thought processes as accessible as possible, as easily as we could.
Apart from all the reasons I have touched upon earlier I was very disturbed to witness various forms of overt and covert racism between the students. Therefore there were reasons beyond the theoretical for me to address these issues. I used very simple systems to explore these ideas in class and they centered on our classes watching films, which we then debated and they then wrote about. I picked films for them to review that examined important social issues and did so dramatically. The films were, “This is England” and “La Haine” about racism in England and France, “Pierrepont” regarding capital punishment and “We Were Soldiers” touching on heroism of different types and patriotism. All touched on the human condition and dispensed with stereotypes. As each film was playing I would write headings for them to include in their essays. The idea being to stimulate thought regarding issues that touch all our lives and to make the students aware of themselves within the larger society. By picking films from three countries we were immediately able to dispense with racial stereotypes about the French, Americans, Arabs, Jews, Vietnamese and others. It opened the student eyes regarding violence, capital punishment, sexual politics and the differences between people being less important than that which they have in common.
Although I cannot claim to have created or discovered forensic evidence with regards to the impact that this and other initiatives had on these students we can at a base level inform you that the students themselves believe it has changed their perceptions. Our attendance, punctuality and achievement results all became exemplars. After shaking out some students, who perhaps, in retrospect should not have been there in the first place, we achieved near 100% attendance and punctuality and delivery of on-time work. The results were about 20% higher than those previously achieved. The students told me they had never been happier in any classes, and this, for me, was perhaps the biggest reward. They now clearly understood the purpose of their course of study and what they should be gaining from it. They also had a clear understanding of what we required from them. It was a good starting point.
Two Tribes - An Identity Problem
Two Tribes – An Identity Crisis?
There was a football match last week. Russia travelled to Israel to play a group-qualifying match in the national European championship. If Russia would have beaten Israel, who were already not in a qualifying position, then Russia were through and England would have been out of the knock out tournament to be held next year in Austria.
England needed a favour from the Israeli team. The Sun newspaper jumped to an astonishing conclusion. Israel and Russia would act in collusion for the benefit of the latter, because of the “interests” of Roman Abramavitch. For those of you who have been asleep for the last few years, Roman is the Russian oligarch who pumped about several hundred million pounds into Chelsea F.C. For those of you who miss the point of this story I should explain. The common denominator of the slur on Roman and the Israel football team is that they are money grubbing Jews. This is the kind of slur the Nazis used to employ against Jews. It is the same rubbish that informed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. We are Jews therefore we are plotters, we are Jews, therefore we are rich, we are Jews therefore we will do anything for money.
In case you missed the slurs and innuendo there is the general disdain in which the football pundits treated the possibility of Israel being able to obtain a result from the Russians. Israel is not in the first rank of football superpowers, but then neither, based on results in tournaments, is England. Forgetting this for a moment it seems strange to the point of being stupid to ignore some salient facts. Israel has only lost 2 out of their last 18 home matches, and in their last two qualifying tournaments has only lost the odd game or so. Amongst those teams unable to beat Israel at home were England and France. So ask yourself why the normally sagacious English journalists were suddenly blind to the possibility that Israel might get a result. Why when Israel beat Russia were those same journalists, “astonished”?
When the television stations cut to the pubs where English fans were watching the Israel match with such interest we saw English men dressed as orthodox Jewish men, complete with funny hats, beards and curled ringlets toasting Israel with mock Jewish toasts. I don’t expect much better from soccer fans of any type, after all there are those that are currently argue that its OK for tens of thousands of them to shout at “The Yids” of Tottenham Hotspur and to make gassing noises. I do expect better of the television broadcasters. They seemed to think it was very funny. Imagine the howls of protest if black people or Muslims or other groups were similarly mocked.
It has become acceptable to mock Jews, to question their motives, and to de-legitimise us a group without any proof other than that we are Jews and therefore are suspect.
Who am I? I am a Jew boy and proud of it. I’m not going to claim Englishness, as, although born in this exceptional country, I cannot claim to be of the blood. I am not sure I want to claim Saxon, or Norman or Viking, Pict or Celtic forefathers. Or even a mixture. I am a Jew boy because that is how the world labels me in their secret thoughts, in those times when no one is looking or listening.
I am happy to accept being British, along with my fellow Brits from all over the world who have settled here over the millennia. What a wonderful country we all built, and now watch being dismantled by apathy and political correctness.
The Chief Rabbi was quoted as saying in a recent article that he had never encountered anti-Semitism until recently. If this is an accurate report, where has he been? I think he must mix in very polite Gentile society when not surrounded by his Jewish peers. What a pity it would be that such a wonderful person, armed with the best articulation of sound principles is so cut off from reality. He could be so much more beneficial to Jewish people in this regard if he was better informed.
I am proud to claim pure Jewish stock. Yes, for those of you fellow Jews who might be in denial, we do have our distinguishing blood types and peculiar predilection to certain illnesses that the Lord chose us for. Perhaps he could choose someone else for this good fortune? However I am reliably informed that this is a religion and not a race. I disagree, as it is highly unlikely that other religions have a blood type indication of belonging to their group. You can be a Muslim, Hindu, Christian or Buddhist and any race you like. We however, largely have the distinction of being both a religion and a group, that loosely I shall term a tribe. We are not quite a race, as we are also found in many races, but we are a discernable entity, that can legitimately be called a tribe. In the dictionary that is described as “A group of people ethnologically related and forming a community...”
My family is a microcosm of most Jewish families in the Diaspora. My father and mother were born in the UK, grandparents from the UK, Russia and Poland. Go back a further few generations and the ones from Poland on my father’s side were German Jews imported to the Polish town of Lodz to help run, manage, engineer their factories for their German owners. We have traced them back a few centuries in Germany where they were apparently clock makers. My three children were all born in the UK, but two of my three grand children are American, and one of my sons-in-law is Israeli with Jewish ancestry of both Ashkenazi and Sephardic background. Like most other Jewish people I have extended family all over the world, particularly in the States and Israel.
So what am I is a question I have had to ask many times in my life when confronted with a world that wants answers to such questions. I remember as if it were last week, well it was, the question, “who would you fight for if Israel, God forbid, had to fight Britain?” That is actually something that has happened in many of our lifetimes before the British abandoned their Palestine mandate around 60 years ago. My response is clear, against anyone else I would do my duty for this country, but against Israel I would have to be an objector. I couldn’t lift my hand against my people.
Strangely when I watch Israel compete at football I don’t find myself truly identifying with the team although I do identify with the idea of them being, partly, my team. I suppose that might be because I simply don’t look like those brown skinned, slim, wiry, black haired Middle Easterners. Strangely I cannot tell the difference between the sprinkling of Arab and majority Jewish players in the team. All of who don’t look like my fair skinned, fair haired Eastern European looking family.
I had seen the big Israel versus Russia game as an ideal opportunity for me to support both my tribes, the British and Jewish. However although I am a patriotic Brit and a fervent football fan I found myself torn. I have an affinity for Israel that transcends my baser instincts. I am hugely proud of all its many achievements, I am hugely upset when it has difficulties, inconsolable when it acts in a way I find disagreeable. Nevertheless there was no reason to assume that there was a conspiracy for Israel to let Russia win in a money fix, nor any reason to assume Israel had no chance. I am not sure if such sentiments on behalf of the British media is their natural arrogance, or their in built belief that Israel simply cannot be as good as their record indicates, or a little bit of casual anti-Semitism. How can the Jews be any good at sport? Whichever one, or most likely a mixture, I don’t like it, and it wouldn’t be accepted about any other group in our British society. It has become politically correct to be incorrect about Jews. We are “fair game”.
As I write this it is the morning of the next big game, England versus Croatia. If England win or draw England go through. Whatever Croatia does it is already through to the next round. Do you think there might be a fix, is anyone going to dare to accuse either team of a comfortable fix if they draw?
Look at what the manager of Croatia was reported as saying, , “I think that Israel trying so hard against Russia, when it had nothing to gain, restored my belief in sportsmanship. That is what we are going to do, try our best.” It’s a shame this sentiment was not widely shared by our fellow Brits.
There was a football match last week. Russia travelled to Israel to play a group-qualifying match in the national European championship. If Russia would have beaten Israel, who were already not in a qualifying position, then Russia were through and England would have been out of the knock out tournament to be held next year in Austria.
England needed a favour from the Israeli team. The Sun newspaper jumped to an astonishing conclusion. Israel and Russia would act in collusion for the benefit of the latter, because of the “interests” of Roman Abramavitch. For those of you who have been asleep for the last few years, Roman is the Russian oligarch who pumped about several hundred million pounds into Chelsea F.C. For those of you who miss the point of this story I should explain. The common denominator of the slur on Roman and the Israel football team is that they are money grubbing Jews. This is the kind of slur the Nazis used to employ against Jews. It is the same rubbish that informed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. We are Jews therefore we are plotters, we are Jews, therefore we are rich, we are Jews therefore we will do anything for money.
In case you missed the slurs and innuendo there is the general disdain in which the football pundits treated the possibility of Israel being able to obtain a result from the Russians. Israel is not in the first rank of football superpowers, but then neither, based on results in tournaments, is England. Forgetting this for a moment it seems strange to the point of being stupid to ignore some salient facts. Israel has only lost 2 out of their last 18 home matches, and in their last two qualifying tournaments has only lost the odd game or so. Amongst those teams unable to beat Israel at home were England and France. So ask yourself why the normally sagacious English journalists were suddenly blind to the possibility that Israel might get a result. Why when Israel beat Russia were those same journalists, “astonished”?
When the television stations cut to the pubs where English fans were watching the Israel match with such interest we saw English men dressed as orthodox Jewish men, complete with funny hats, beards and curled ringlets toasting Israel with mock Jewish toasts. I don’t expect much better from soccer fans of any type, after all there are those that are currently argue that its OK for tens of thousands of them to shout at “The Yids” of Tottenham Hotspur and to make gassing noises. I do expect better of the television broadcasters. They seemed to think it was very funny. Imagine the howls of protest if black people or Muslims or other groups were similarly mocked.
It has become acceptable to mock Jews, to question their motives, and to de-legitimise us a group without any proof other than that we are Jews and therefore are suspect.
Who am I? I am a Jew boy and proud of it. I’m not going to claim Englishness, as, although born in this exceptional country, I cannot claim to be of the blood. I am not sure I want to claim Saxon, or Norman or Viking, Pict or Celtic forefathers. Or even a mixture. I am a Jew boy because that is how the world labels me in their secret thoughts, in those times when no one is looking or listening.
I am happy to accept being British, along with my fellow Brits from all over the world who have settled here over the millennia. What a wonderful country we all built, and now watch being dismantled by apathy and political correctness.
The Chief Rabbi was quoted as saying in a recent article that he had never encountered anti-Semitism until recently. If this is an accurate report, where has he been? I think he must mix in very polite Gentile society when not surrounded by his Jewish peers. What a pity it would be that such a wonderful person, armed with the best articulation of sound principles is so cut off from reality. He could be so much more beneficial to Jewish people in this regard if he was better informed.
I am proud to claim pure Jewish stock. Yes, for those of you fellow Jews who might be in denial, we do have our distinguishing blood types and peculiar predilection to certain illnesses that the Lord chose us for. Perhaps he could choose someone else for this good fortune? However I am reliably informed that this is a religion and not a race. I disagree, as it is highly unlikely that other religions have a blood type indication of belonging to their group. You can be a Muslim, Hindu, Christian or Buddhist and any race you like. We however, largely have the distinction of being both a religion and a group, that loosely I shall term a tribe. We are not quite a race, as we are also found in many races, but we are a discernable entity, that can legitimately be called a tribe. In the dictionary that is described as “A group of people ethnologically related and forming a community...”
My family is a microcosm of most Jewish families in the Diaspora. My father and mother were born in the UK, grandparents from the UK, Russia and Poland. Go back a further few generations and the ones from Poland on my father’s side were German Jews imported to the Polish town of Lodz to help run, manage, engineer their factories for their German owners. We have traced them back a few centuries in Germany where they were apparently clock makers. My three children were all born in the UK, but two of my three grand children are American, and one of my sons-in-law is Israeli with Jewish ancestry of both Ashkenazi and Sephardic background. Like most other Jewish people I have extended family all over the world, particularly in the States and Israel.
So what am I is a question I have had to ask many times in my life when confronted with a world that wants answers to such questions. I remember as if it were last week, well it was, the question, “who would you fight for if Israel, God forbid, had to fight Britain?” That is actually something that has happened in many of our lifetimes before the British abandoned their Palestine mandate around 60 years ago. My response is clear, against anyone else I would do my duty for this country, but against Israel I would have to be an objector. I couldn’t lift my hand against my people.
Strangely when I watch Israel compete at football I don’t find myself truly identifying with the team although I do identify with the idea of them being, partly, my team. I suppose that might be because I simply don’t look like those brown skinned, slim, wiry, black haired Middle Easterners. Strangely I cannot tell the difference between the sprinkling of Arab and majority Jewish players in the team. All of who don’t look like my fair skinned, fair haired Eastern European looking family.
I had seen the big Israel versus Russia game as an ideal opportunity for me to support both my tribes, the British and Jewish. However although I am a patriotic Brit and a fervent football fan I found myself torn. I have an affinity for Israel that transcends my baser instincts. I am hugely proud of all its many achievements, I am hugely upset when it has difficulties, inconsolable when it acts in a way I find disagreeable. Nevertheless there was no reason to assume that there was a conspiracy for Israel to let Russia win in a money fix, nor any reason to assume Israel had no chance. I am not sure if such sentiments on behalf of the British media is their natural arrogance, or their in built belief that Israel simply cannot be as good as their record indicates, or a little bit of casual anti-Semitism. How can the Jews be any good at sport? Whichever one, or most likely a mixture, I don’t like it, and it wouldn’t be accepted about any other group in our British society. It has become politically correct to be incorrect about Jews. We are “fair game”.
As I write this it is the morning of the next big game, England versus Croatia. If England win or draw England go through. Whatever Croatia does it is already through to the next round. Do you think there might be a fix, is anyone going to dare to accuse either team of a comfortable fix if they draw?
Look at what the manager of Croatia was reported as saying, , “I think that Israel trying so hard against Russia, when it had nothing to gain, restored my belief in sportsmanship. That is what we are going to do, try our best.” It’s a shame this sentiment was not widely shared by our fellow Brits.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
