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SOUL MOURNED
A student at a top Melbourne state school writes to Andrew Bolt:
The day after it had become apparent the George Bush had won the US election and Mark (not his real name) was appearing slightly jubilant in my maths class—my teacher (who also happens to be the union rep at the school) asked him to look in her eyes and swear he was happy about Dubya’s re-election.
When he did so, she announced to the class: ‘We should hold a minutes silence for the passing of Mark’s soul’.”
UPDATE. More Melbourne school news from The Age’s Geoff Strong:
The warning signs were apparent to Chris Doig at least 10 years ago. A small group of the teacher’s students made it clear they despised Australia, regarding it as a degenerate culture to be disrupted and ultimately swept aside.
Two Muslim students danced with joy after the September 11 attacks in the United States. Other students told him these attitudes came out of ideas picked up at Melbourne’s northern suburbs mosques.
The teacher says he tried to voice concern to his school administration, to the Education Department bureaucracy, even to senior political figures in his own Labor Party, but his warnings were ignored.
Via reader Andrew Richards, who notes two differences between the print and web versions of this story:
Web headline: “Australia-hating Muslims unchecked, says teacher”
Print headline: “School system ‘failed to act’ on Australia-hating students”
Web conclusion: “The teacher said these students used to boast that Australia would become a majority Islamic country in 50 years. ‘They would do this by converting the infidel and by out-breeding the rest of the community.’”
Print conclusion: “The teacher said these students used to boast that Australia would become a majority Islamic country in 50 years.”
[Sorry, but this is way OT - watching Geoffrey Robertson on Denton, I thought that this international legal mind (and, quite possibly the vainest man in the universe) would have something substantial to say on Guantanamo, etc., but all he could come out with was standard moobat boilerplate - (a) Lynndie England and co. were acting on orders from the White House, and (b) George Bush has ‘torn up’ the Geneva Convention. He should go back to being Kathy Lette’s handbag.]
It is amazing that even “the Age” is waking up to waht has gone wrong at our schools; Front page today is a story about
“A small group of the teacher’s students made it clear they despised Australia, regarding it as a degenerate culture to be disrupted and ultimately swept aside. Two Muslim students danced with joy after the September 11 attacks in the United States. Other students told him these attitudes came out of ideas picked up at Melbourne’s northern suburbs mosques. The teacher says he tried to voice concern to his school administration, to the Education Department bureaucracy, even to senior political figures in his own Labor Party, but his warnings were ignored.”
Times have changed; this article would have been supressed as “Hansonist” a few years agoThe long url was breaking the page so I changed it into a link. The Management.
Posted by arnienelly on 2005 08 30 at 09:08 PM • permalinkHow do students who reject their teachers’ Leftist propaganda avoid ridicule? They lie and pretend to agree with them.
Of course. Hell’s bells, I went to a Quaker ultra leftist college in which most of the professors were right out of the anti-Vietnam War sixties. I learned very quickly that if you wanted to score good grades, you had to talk the talk.
Actually, it was kind of fun, seeing how well a 18 year old boy from a conservative small town can pull off acting like a big city leftist. I think I can still do it, if I wanted. Which I don’t.
Posted by wronwright on 2005 08 30 at 09:18 PM • permalinkApropos wronwright’s story, does anyone have links to stories about lefties being forced to act like conservatives in order to avoid ridicule, bad grades, job loss etc.? Somehow I’ve never read such a thing…funny, that.
Actually, I’m wondering not just if it happens at all, but if lefties would even be able to pull it off…
PW: “Apropos wronwright’s story, does anyone have links to stories about lefties being forced to act like conservatives in order to avoid ridicule, bad grades, job loss etc.? Somehow I’ve never read such a thing…funny, that.”
Hilary Clinton?
Posted by Bruce Lagasse on 2005 08 30 at 10:00 PM • permalinkFrom the Bolte article
One wrote yesterday: “My eldest son was . . . attending a Victorian secondary college. In a class discussion the topic was ‘The Stolen Generation’ and whether we should say ‘sorry’.
“My son expressed the view that he wasn’t sorry for something that he had not done personally—it was not received very well by the teacher. My son was kept after class until he agreed that his views were wrong and that he had changed his mind and would say ‘sorry’.
“He eventually said what was required even though he hadn’t changed his views—yes, he had to lie.”
Many other students, especially in tertiary arts courses, tell me they, too, learn to say not what they think, but what teachers tell them to think.
Is this really the schooling we want for them? Lessons in hypocrisy and cynicism?
I can think of few better ways to ensure the demise of the Left.
Personally, I think a healthy Democracy needs at least two competing philosophies, buth with the same general aims, but differing in methods. Left and Right.
While the Left is playing such poisonous little games - and we’re just seeing the fruits of seeds planted decades ago so it won’t go away quickly - then a whole generation of Australians will learn to do what many in the Eastern Bloc did - parrot the Party Line, while keeping their real thoughts to themselves. And voting the Leftist B**stards out at the first opportunity.
The Left needs reform - as much as the Right did 50 years ago, when they used similar tactics.
Until the Left as a whole stops flirting with Anti-Semites and Fascists, and abandons the “corporate culture” that produces such pedgagogues who punish “thoughtcrime”, it won’t be a credible alternative. This is going to take a long time.
What do we do in the meantime? Hopefully, ensure that the Right doesn’t lurch too far into Rightward extremism, as it lacks competition. I’m surprised it hasn’t already happened, in fact, something of the reverse. As the Left has become more disconnected from Reality and the Electorate, the Right has become, if not moderate, then at least receptive to the elctorate’s wishes.
#8 I’m sure it’s never happened, PW, because that kind of dissimulation requires a degree of self-knowledge that lefties simply don’t possess.
As for Moreland City College, I used to live in that street, and that school was a toilet. The council permanently closed the street to through traffic so the little dears didn’t get run over. It was like something out of the Projects.
My daughter was on the negative side of a debate “That smoking should be banned”.
She gathered some information that debunked the proposition that passive smoking is dangerous and put this forward to the pre-debate meeting for consideration as it would be useful to counter the anticipated argument of the affirmative.
The teacher severely rebuked her for even making such a suggestion saying that no student of hers would profer such an argument.
Needless to say she got the rounds of the kitchen from me. Her excuse was that she was having a bad day.
BTW I have never smoked and detest it with a passion.
A few years ago in college (is it called “university” in Australia as it is in U.K.?) a did something very foolish and signed up for an 8am philosophy class. I understandably had trouble staying awake at times. The teacher made frequent references to “evil republicans” and “evil conservatives”. I don’t make political waves in class since it is likely to affect my grades. Unfortunatly, one day the teacher was wandering around the classroom, giving his droning lecture, and I started to nod off. When he was standing near my chair he made some snide reference to “idiot republicans” and without thinking, my sleepy brain made me say, “Push off, you narrow-minded twit” just loud enough for him to hear. He gave me a very shocked look at kept the class fairly non-political for the next few days. Of course, after that he went right back to insulting a good portion of his class.
Posted by MikeTheLibrarian on 2005 08 31 at 12:12 AM • permalinkMikeTheLibrarian
In Australia we havePrimary School (preschool/kinder and years 1-6)
High School (Secondary) (years 7-12)
University (Tertiary) Where you get Bachelor Degrees, PhDs, Masters etc.
We used to have TAFEs (Schools of Technical and Further Education, wheretradesmentradespeople learnt their skills (plumbers, carpenters, teachers, hairdressers), and these were cheap (free?). You could also go there to do bridging courses to get your grades up to go on to University.
Then the Gov decided to make all TAFEs Universities of Technology, and they cost a lot more now, too.
And a lot of trades are now “taught on the job” and we have a trade shortage. Small business can’t afford to pay an apprentice and teach him, for example, carpentry, because there is a lot of supervision involved.Sadly the indoctrination in state schools goes back years. Between 1982 and 1985 I had one Marilyn Matthews as an English and History teacher at Merrimac High.
Almost every lesson was turned into active proselytising for socialism and militant feminism - woe betide you if you had a conventional religious upbringing or politically conservative viewpoints - she would penalise grades and denigrate you in class.
She may still be teaching in either Queensland or New South Wales. She’d be in her mid to late 50s now.
Remember the name. I won’t forget.
—Nora
Posted by The Thin Man Returns on 2005 08 31 at 12:37 AM • permalinkPrivate schools are just as infested with leftist shit these days. It actually gets in the way of the education, they spend so much time spouting propaganda you never actually learn anything.
Posted by Aging Gamer on 2005 08 31 at 12:54 AM • permalinkTeacher should have been fired… A teacher leading that kind of abuse is not fit to be a teacher. If they won’t fire the cretin; the parents should sue the teacher and the school.
I had to deal with that sort of crap at my alma malus Colby College. Unlike one commenter above I didn’t keep my head down and tell the profetoids what they wanted to hear. The quality of my degree suffered and I came out of university one freaking ticked off young man.
Course Hull University here in the UK cured me. We worked hard, argued a hell of a lot but still got pickled together afterwards.
Posted by Andrew Ian Dodge on 2005 08 31 at 07:30 AM • permalinkI remember with bitterness an occasion around 1983 or ’84 in Melbourne when I popped into my son’s State Primary School to pick him up after class whilst still in uniform (Army).
I was a few minutes early so the principle suggested I have a look at the class in action, to which I readily agreed as I had been interstate on a promotion course for 12 weeks and had missed out on my usual regular interaction with my son’s teachers.
As we walked down the hallway to my son’s classroom the principle explained to me that the subject being taught in that period was `Peace Studies’, a new subject recently introduced by the state Labor Government.
When we stopped at the door of the classroom she looked me up and down with a smile on her face and then knocked on the door and we entered the room.
She introduced me to the 20 something female teacher (I had not met before) who was conducting the class. The `teacher’ stood staring at me during the introduction as `****’s father’ as if she’d been smacked across the face.
After a moment she began screaming at me – abusing me for coming into `her’ room wearing a `fascist uniform’ and frightening `her’ children.
As I looked past the screaming harpy who had begun sobbingly telling me she had just returned from the Greenham Common anti US vigil in Britain and how proud she was to stand up to the `imperialist US fascist military industrial complex’ I saw the walls covered with drawings by children featuring maps of Australia with mushroom clouds in vivid reds and yellows erupting from all the major cities with aircraft flying above decorated with US flags.
I was more than a bit shocked at the anti US brainwashing of my young son being conducted in that fetid room and lashed out verbally at the `teacher’ and the principle before dragging both of them out of the room and telling them both they were soviet propagandist cunts not fit to be a real teacher’s arsehole.
My son started at a Catholic Primary School a few days later after I had spoken at length with its staff and determined `Peace Studies’ would not be taught there.
All my children have attended Catholic or other private schools since then as I believe as a paying customer I have a greater ability to influence what their curriculum contains and how it is taught.
However, as parents we cannot become complacent – we must take a close interest in what our children are being taught as some teachers just can’t help themselves and stop teaching and begin preaching.
Re private schools in Australia - I suspect they too have tended to be leftist and always have been. After all they do have teachers. I recall some subtle digs by younger (ie 30-ish) teachers at Scotch in Perth in the late 60s. These were the same teachers who used sarcasm and put-downs as educational incentives.
Posted by walterplinge on 2005 09 01 at 05:38 AM • permalink
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Please, let me say it first. Mark should have observed a moment of silence for the passing of the teacher’s brain.