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Appalling evidence of Britain's confusion and utter intellectual degeneration. "What have burnt toast, Gerry Adams and a burger to do with September 11?," from Mick Hume in the TimesOnline, with thanks to Neil:
EVER WONDERED what our schools are teaching children about terrorism? To judge by some of the material in an education pack being used in my London borough, the questions might include: could al-Qaeda poison your burger? Did the American Government stage the September 11 attacks? And what lessons for the Middle East can you learn from arguing with your mum?The glossy pack of CD-Roms and worksheets is for secondary school citizenship classes. Called 9/11: The Main Chance (no, I don’t know either), it is sponsored by the Neighbourhood Regeneration Fund (no, I don’t know either). When I saw it reported in the Walthamstow Guardian, it sounded too bizarre to be true. Having studied the pack, I can confirm that it is bizarre, but it is true. So here is a glimpse of what might be going on in the citizenship classes that the Government now claims will teach children “our values”.
9/11: The Main Chance attempts to deal with September 11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Middle East and human rights in a simple way intended to make sense to pupils not keen on conventional teaching methods. The result seems more likely to raise levels of confusion and concern.
A worksheet on the targets chosen on 9/11 asks pupils: “Are there any possible targets in your local area?” If that is not enough to get them boycotting public transport, it asks: “What weapons or methods could be used?” There follow helpful links: one to a story on “Food terrorism — the nightmare scenario” illustrated by a juicy burger (which seems an extreme way to get children off junk food), the other to a report “How safe is our water? The threat of terrorism”, which may help the water companies to cut consumption. When the Walthamstow Guardian asked if the 9/11 attacks should be used as a teaching tool, one educationist said the pack was not about “preaching” to children, but about providing “impartial and unbiased information” and “letting them make sense of it”.
That would be information such as: “The terrorists had shown that, despite America’s size and military power, careful planning and complete faith could defeat them.”
So al-Qaeda defeated America. Or did it? After all, according to this impartial pack, “it is not known whether Flight 93 was taken over by passengers or shot down by the military”. The only people to whom this should be “not known” are conspiracy theorists. You might as well tell kids it is not known whether men really landed on the Moon.
The outside sources of “impartial and unbiased information” include a news website that speculates about whether images of Satan appeared in smoke over the Twin Towers, and the mystic significance of the number 11. Another link, to explain the role of the US Vice-President, turns out to be an excerpt from a 9/11 conspiracy website that asks whether Dick Cheney “was directing the response to the attack. Or was he directing the attack?” The pack’s main attempt to situate 9/11 in some context is a lengthy list of “Osama’s grievances”. Raising the chestnut about terrorists and freedom fighters, the pack asks: “Which category do these people belong in: Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Gerry Adams, Martin Luther King?” A better question might be: what do any of them have to do with 9/11?
The orthodoxy today is that all education must be made “relevant” to pupils’ own experience. Thus the section on “Tolerance and 9/11” ends with a quiz about how you would react if your mum burnt your toast, or your brother lent your favourite DVD to his mate. The lesson on conflict resolution suggests that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is like a family dispute about sharing.
No doubt this teaching pack was put together by well-intentioned educationists, despite the inaccuracies and omissions. Of course it is not “pro al-Qaeda”. But nor does it appear to be pro anything else. Instead it reflects the wider confusion and incoherence about these issues. We are unsure who we are or what we stand for as a society, and it is nonsense to expect citizenship classes to fill that vacuum. Government commitment to teaching “values” is worthless when we don’t know what those might be.
Posted by Robert at June 19, 2006 6:26 AM
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I went to school in this particular borough, at the age this pack is aimed at.
40 years ago my deputy headmistress was very big on the Council for World Citizenship. She would be turning in her grave.
But then my old school was praised by OFSTED(like the curates egg, the place was damned with faint praise) for its good exam ratings in "modern languages, particularly Urdu"
But elsewhere things are different I am pleased to say. It is up to us parents to be vigilant as to what our children are being taught, and discuss such things with the school. For example a display on Islam I saw recently in a school made the lower status of women and girls quite clear. That school has strong links with the local church, and parental encouragement for this to continue.
Don't write the UK off quite so quickly please.
Posted by: Granny Weatherwax![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at June 19, 2006 7:18 AM
*sighs* Kj... are you still wondering why I go on about what they teach in the schools?
Posted by: Gary at June 19, 2006 7:37 AM
Folks, the dis-information has begun!!!!
Posted by: bigcatgirl13106 at June 19, 2006 7:42 AM
61.4 percent of Australians are anti-muslim.
Posted by: Voltaire at June 19, 2006 7:44 AM
in a simple way intended to make sense to pupils not keen on conventional teaching methods
Is that PC-speak for thickos?
Posted by: Interested at June 19, 2006 7:51 AM
I am currently on the lookout for online MSM that deal with issues such as this one in the first place, as well as in a critical, non-dhimmified way. Lately there have been quite a few links here to such stories from TimesOnline. Could it be a sign of cracks appearing in the PC ice age that this old media outlet seems to deal with Islam in this way? I sure hope so.
Posted by: anti-uffe at June 19, 2006 7:55 AM
Lately there have been quite a few links here to such stories from TimesOnline.
The Times, on-line is my first post of call in the mornings these days, followed by the Telegraph. Then I look at the BBC which is still good for some things. During the day I might get a look at a paper paper and if I see anything interesting I will go to their website and see if I can find an on-line version to post elsewhere.
Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at June 19, 2006 8:56 AM
I ditched Al-BBCera World recently after worshipping at their altar for many, many years. I agree that they have great coverage on many issues, but I became allergic to their coded references such as "troubled suburbs," "youth," and omissions about the gang that killed the jewish person in Paris. The final straw was when they labelled Ayaan Hirsi Ali "controversial," with *her* being on the receiving end of death threats. I felt so patronized that I had to drop them, even if I miss some of their reporting.
Posted by: anti-uffe at June 19, 2006 9:06 AM
Folks, the dis-information has begun!!!!
Lordy, lordy bigcatgirl - what rock have you been hiding under? The disinformation has been going on for 30 years or more in the US.
in a simple way intended to make sense to pupils not keen on conventional teaching methods
Is that PC-speak for thickos?
Not necessarily. This teaching style is quite common in "alternative" schools. And here in the US this style is rapidly becoming the norm across the board, even in math.
As one elementary "teacher" told me - "we are all equally smart." OK - if you say so. Many school districts no longer do anything whatever to "label" children, especially separate them by intelligence. As a result they "teach" to the lowest common denominator.
Just one more reason to homeschool!
Posted by: gallopinggranny at June 19, 2006 9:38 AM
Many school districts no longer do anything whatever to "label" children, especially separate them by intelligence.
Interested has written quite a few times about the demise of what in the UK were called the Grammar Schools. The school I attended, in the London borough mentioned above, was a girls grammar then, and I think the intellectual rigour of our deputy head's idea of what constituted citizenship classes in 1966 is still evident in my friends and me today.
Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at June 19, 2006 9:48 AM
Sooner or later, nobody will know what grammar schools were. They will just be the school that your gramma went to.
This Learning Resource Pack - or whatever the current jargon calls it - is guaranteed to misinform and to foster conspiracy theories. These children will be eyeing their burgers suspiciously and avoiding public transport without facing up to the source of terrorism, which in the UK today is Islam.
Posted by: Interested at June 19, 2006 10:07 AM
gallopinggranny,
"Lordy, lordy bigcatgirl - what rock have you been hiding under? The disinformation has been going on for 30 years or more in the US."
Well the only rock I have been trying to stay under is in order to stay cool during this first heatwave of the summer season.
Getting back on topic, when it comes to the 9/11 dis-information, it is becoming more common now that 5 years is coming up since that horrible day. I do agree with you that outright dis-information has been going on the last 30 years or so.
Posted by: bigcatgirl13106 at June 19, 2006 1:37 PM
Wow. The Brits have gone from Shakespeare to sharia't in one easy lesson...
Dashed unsporting!
Posted by: pythagoras at June 19, 2006 1:50 PM
The author of the article said this about the 911:The Main Chance (aka terrorist empathy indoctrination packet):
This teaching pack is big on “putting yourself in the other person’s shoes”.
Well, where the hell is the module on putting oneself in the shoes of someone in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001?
Or how about asking kids to come up with a strategy to retake control of flight 93?
Or ask them to imagine if they were on flight 93 with their cell phone, who would they call and what would they say?
Or even forget about empathizing with Americans, as I'm sure that it too distasteful to ask of a child, what about getting them to imagine what it was like on the London subway when the bombs went off on 7/7?
Ask the kids to imagine if the person next to them had an arm blown off or was really badly burned. What would they do - stay and give what help they could or would they run for their lives?
Would they hold the hand of a stranger who was beyond help, just so that person wouldn't have to die alone?
I think the author is to be congratulated that he speaks out at all against this terrorist empathy indoctrination packet, but he is off the mark when he says that 911: The Main Chance is not pro-Al Qeada. It is ALL about Al Qeada, there is absolutely no mention made of the victims of 911. This terrorist empathy indoctrination packet completely ignores the victims of 911, and yet the author makes a claim that this propaganda is not for any side? What a crock.
And he is completely wrong when he ASSUMES that the creators of the terrorist empathy indoctrination packet had any sort of good intentions at all. To the contrary, it has a very malicious intent - this packet is a multiculturalist indoctrination tool intended to destroy the cohesion of Great Britain as a nation. And that is the ultimate intent of multiculturalism (which is just another name for social marxism), to divide and conquer western democracies.
Posted by: WhiteDemon}:) at June 19, 2006 5:55 PM
What, no re-enactment exercise depicting the 4,000 Jews who were secretly phoned by the Zionist Occupation Governemtn (ZOG) to stay home from work at the WTC on the morning or 9/11?
And what about the glaring omission concerning the blood of Christian babies that goes into making matzohs?
These propagandists are slipping.
Give any cunning liar a months and the kids in every English school would believe that it was super-secret Pentagon lasers that blew up the WTC towers from the roof of the Washington, D.C. building, and then the Gigantic ruby argon device overheated and exploded in the 5-sided building, itself, killing almost 200 warmongering imperialist tools of the Jews.
Kids have no built-up resistance to bullsh*t yet.
They'll believe anything fascinating. The wilder, the better.
Teach critical thinking and rigorous historical details.
All this touchie-feelie crapulous flatulence is corrosive to the cortex.
Why not show the raw footage of the attacks instead of playing silly games with the facts?
Or would that breed Islamophobia?
Posted by: profitsbeard at June 19, 2006 6:27 PM
"not keen on conventional teaching methods."
I'm all in favor of launching one or two unconventional 'teaching methods" to make the Muslims understand. If that doesn't work, then one or two more unconventional 'teaching methods" should be dropped until they do understand.
Posted by: jsla at June 19, 2006 11:09 PM
it's a shame that places like oxford and cambridge, once respected towers of learning [I mean this in a good sense], are now in danger of falling into the cesspool of lies, fraud, falsehood, and mediocrity. One threat over oxbridge is chris pattern, who has been appointed to some big job in one of those schools.
Anyhow, to illustrate the decline of cambridge, look at some of the books coming out of the Cambridge Univ Press in recent years. Simply disgraceful from a scholarly point of view!! A truly childish ignorance of facts or disregard of facts!! And that is not just one book that slipped through, but several books that I've seen.
Posted by: Eliyahu at June 20, 2006 6:11 AM
I meant chris patten, former EU foreign policy bigwig.
If it's not clear, I'm suggesting that oxbridge is in danger of going the same way as the lower level education in the UK, as illustrated by the "learning packet" or whatever it's called.
Posted by: Eliyahu at June 20, 2006 6:14 AM
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