THE QUEST

I left school when I was 15. Since then I haven’t undergone any formal education at all, and have never gained an academic qualification in anything. Neither have I ever read a ‘how to’ writing book, or attended a writing class.
For many years I was quite happy with my lack of education. I could read, write, do sums, and a good memory meant I remembered a lot of ‘facts’ from school. This, along with common sense, seemed to get me through life quite adequately.

It all changed when I came down with CFS.

I belonged to the ‘school’ that thought too much education was not required for normal life. I had managed to hold down jobs, advance in a career, hold a conversation on most subjects, and was generally considered ‘intelligent.’
Becoming ill with CFS, and the experiences that followed it, caused me to change this view. And this was based on a realization that, if no one could tell me what was wrong with me, I should find out why.

For this I needed knowledge, and that meant self-education.

Suddenly I found myself, at the age of 27, devouring books of all kinds in an attempt to educate myself. And the more I delved into learning, the more I realized that much of our knowledge was a con.
Basically, knowledge, today, is based on specialization, but the more I studied these specializations, the more I realized that it was just one type of knowledge. Modern learning had little to do with ‘holism’, or seeing things as a whole.
I suppose it began a quest. And I’m on it still.

© Anthony North, September 2007

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TEACH ME WRONG

In the UK the ‘A’ level results have been announced, heralding a new debate on whether education is dumbing-down or not. Some 97% have passed this year, with 1 in 8 getting A grades.
Of course, the experts say no dumbing-down is involved, but you could say they would say this. To argue it IS occurring would be for them to admit that the system they oversee is in decline.

If they all pass, it’s stupid

We can add to the problem by stating that, if the number of pass rates is increasing, then even if dumbing-down is not occurring, the only answer is students are getting brighter. And if this is so, then the nature of the exam should get harder.
By not making it harder, the result is that education is increasingly becoming a vehicle of mediocrisy rather than excellence. And the inevitable result of this is that future graduates will only have a blanket degree of competence, with no ‘stars’ to add vibrancy to any system or institution.

Mechanisation of society

It could be that this is what modern culture is aiming for. Let me put it this way: once, schools provided a rounded education, but now it looks increasingly like ‘education’ is only what is needed to keep society and business going.
Hence, rather than having a vibrant cultural expression, education is being geared to provide nothing but passive ‘cogs’ to keep the machine operating. And the final outcome will be a ‘machine-like’ society where no innovation is done, and no has the sense to realize it is wrong.
The Terminator, it seems, was incorrect. It is not machines that will take over us, but us who will end up apeing the machine.

© Anthony North, August 2007

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TONY ON TEACHING AND OTHER NEWS

THOUGHTS FROM A COMMON MAN
News and comment LATEST: Teachers ain’t what they used to be … PLUS … Can Brits ever tell the truth? It’s that EU Constitution again … or not? Totalitarianism rules, OK.
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TEACHING IN A MESS?

A study by Buckingham University Centre for Education and Employment Research has found that less than half of teachers of maths, science or languages in the UK have good degrees, whilst around three quarters of teachers of social sciences or history do.
The result, they claim, is that teachers of the latter are full of enthusiasm, driving students on to A-level, whilst the former do not inspire. However, can the subject be as simple as this?

I doubt it.

The question must be asked: why did our present generation of teachers fail to get adequate degrees? After all, I would suspect that teachers of maths or science would be more driven as it is much more of a ‘vocation.’
I suspect the answer can be found in the new attitudes of universities to pack students in, and guarantee their financial survival. As such, the culture of most universities is for the least testing subjects.
The hint is given in the research that it is the teachers who are letting the system down. I suggest it is the system that is letting THEM down.

© Anthony North, August 2007

DISHONEST BRITAIN

We’re all a load of liars. So says a recent survey of 2,000 people by Royal and Sun Alliance. Indeed, two thirds of people admit to lying, with the other third … well, they’re most likely lying anyway …
… read more …

DRAFT EU CONSTITUTION THAT ISN’T

So the new draft EU Treaty is out. Much revision yet to be done, but apart from changes in titles, no anthem, etc, is it really any different to the Constitution. Yes, it is. Not in what it says, but in the fact that it won’t need a referendum to get it passed …
… read more …

TOTAL THOUGHTS

I’ve been thinking lately about totalitarianism – you know, when a few take over the many and there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s a feeling nowadays that the west is heading in this direction. Is it true …
… read more …

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Inde-Pol

TONY ON METROPOHELL AND OTHER NEWS

THOUGHTS FROM A COMMON MAN
News and comment LATEST: The rich are getting richer, and heading south … PLUS … Bring back history in the school; are kids talking themselves into depression?
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METROPOHELL

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has confirmed that the gap between rich and poor in the UK is getting worse. This is not to say that ‘poverty’ is what it once was, but the gap is still racing ahead.
This comes at the same time as the Children’s Society advises that UK parents work the longest hours in Europe, with 66% not having enough time to devote to their children. This leaves many kids feeling abandoned as divorce rates rise.
Could there be a clear link between these two surveys? The pursuit of money comes with a hard price. However, it seems this is not a national problem as such, for it seems the rich are heading fast for the south.
The area within a 100 mile radius of London is the new centre of affluence, leaving the ‘poor’ to occupy the rest – particularly the north. And development in this ‘rich’ area is advancing fast.
I can see, in a couple of decades, a science fiction scenario developing, with the rich herding themselves into a soulless ghetto of individuals – a kind of Metropohell – with the ‘poor’ stuck out in the wilderness.
And as the science fictional representations of this scenario usually show, give me the wilderness every time.

© Anthony North, July 2007

TALKING OUT PROBLEMS IS DEPRESSING

Well that’s one in the eye for the touchy-feely, ‘talk-about-your-problems’ culture. Dr Rose, a researcher from the University of Missouri-Columbia has advised that teenage girls who talk about their problems too much are more prone to depression …
… read more …

KNOW YOUR HISTORY

Ofsted have advised that the study of history in UK schools is shunned. Up to 70% of pupils drop the subject before GCSE. Further, it is a trend that has been gathering steam for some time …
… read more …

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TONY ON GREEN, BROWN, FIB …

THOUGHTS FROM A COMMON MAN
News and comment LATEST: Is Gordon Brown destroying belief in the UK? Does Reality TV offer reality? And lots more …
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IS CHOCOLATE CAUSING BIGGER CREMATORIA?

Dark chocolate is more of a stimulant than a long kiss. As soon as it melts it explodes chemicals in the brain and makes the heart beat faster – for four times as long as a kiss.
The study, conducted by neurophysiologist Dr David Lewis of The Mind Lab, demands an obvious question: Is chocolate a form of safe sex?
Unlikely. In the same week we hear that crematoriums are having to buy bigger furnaces to cope with the increasing size of the deceased. Chocolate is part of the obesity problem. Obesity is coming at a time that we are increasingly living, and doing things, alone.
Anyone see the connection?

THE BROWNSKI REVOLUTION

From 2010 UK schools will be required to cater for children from 8am to 6pm. The idea is to help working mothers, but teachers have now warned that it might undermine family life …
… read more …

WEATHER OF MASS DESTRUCTION

The UN seems to have accepted the importance of measures to fight climate change. ‘Weather of mass destruction’ may well be discussed by the UN Security Council. Ideas have been aired for new roles for the organization …
… read more …

FIB POLITICS

Over the recent Iran hostage crisis I recently read a question: who do we believe, Iran or Blair? A British columnist feels the need to ask the question. No such question could have been asked in Britain prior to 1997 …
… read more…

REALITY? AS IF

Don’t we just love them. The Reality Show. See people how they really are. Watch their moods, their actions. Learn what it is really like to be human. Yes, very true – as long as you see what they do and then do the opposite …
… read more …

© Anthony North, April 2007

Inde-Pol

NAVIGATION

Above - pages - essays to blow your mind
The Second Level - sub-domains on cults, writing and more
Eye on the World - current affairs
North’s Review - current affairs, writing and lots of fiction

UNI-CULT

No one is more boring than an intellectual. By the millions we ignore them, advising they get a life, or take up something less dangerous such as stamp collecting. Usually single-minded, they can spend their life on the accumulation of data for a specific hypothesis, or pore over the works of a particular previous intellectual who is invariably brighter than they will ever be. Certainly they are needed, but we should really put guards on those ivory towers.
Before being accused of glorifying the idea of dumbing-down, I must put a proviso. Intellectualism should be followed by as many people as possible - exercise for the mind does wonders. But are today’s intellectuals really bright, or are they just playing? Further, is modern intellectualism a valid use of free-thinking, or has something sinister been creeping into our universities.
In previous times, few people reached the heady heights of intellectualism. As such, those who did had a brain that was up to the task. In today’s world of shoving everyone in a university who has ever opened a book, we can argue that their intellectual capacity to think independently of their lecturers must be diminished. And this could well be leading to a disturbing phenomenon in wider society.
Every now and again a cult will hit the headlines because they’ve committed mass suicide or shot-up a bunch of US agents. The secret of cultism is that a charismatic guru hooks a number of middleclass, reasonably intelligent kids who are searching for something in life. Bombarded by ideas of a world how the guru sees it, a form of subservience grows, with the guru feeding off their adoration, and the kids feeding off his purpose.
The above description of cultism shares many similarities to the modern lecturer/student relationship. Intelligent, but without the capacity for free-thinking, the student can, today, suffer a form of brainwashing, taking a specific mentality out into the professional world he will later inhabit. Wrapped up in the academic process, this mentality will have little in the way of understanding of normal life. Hence, when this new professional middleclass begins to impose their standards on the rest, it will be of a different order to what most people understand.
The result is that a gulf grows wider and wider between those who govern and the governed. Whereas in the past the intellectuals were few in number, and usually stereotyped as eccentric, the new intellectualism wears a suit and ingrains itself in every area of life. With an essentially liberal credo, the uni-cult disciples then go on to wreak havoc with society, imposing such abominations as rampant political correctness, and, as with the cult disciple, unable to see the damage because they cannot conceive that they, or their lecturers, are wrong.

(c) Anthony North, March 2005

EDUCATION - PUT IT IN YER HEAD

What is education?
It seems to be many things to many people. But for most of history it has been to do with providing a rounded knowledge from which you could then go on to specialise. However, modern western society seems to have another view. Obsessed with financial success, politicians seem to think that education is now only to do with preparing us for the world of work.
Whether academic or vocational, this seems, now, to be the only ethic. But is there more to this than meets the eye? Education can be split into many categories. One of them is the imposing of a moral code. Through education, we are thought to be taught how to be nicer, more social people. This one has gone by the board of late due to liberal thinking. Put simply, liberals believe man, in his natural state, is a social animal. Hence, morality is inbred, so doesn’t need to be taught.
You only have to look at a riot, or simply a group of people denied what they want, to see that this is rubbish. Rather, man is instinctual, and will always seek what he wants. This can only be remedied by education imposing a thin veneer of morality. And by their insistence on man’s social nature, liberals are destroying the moral fabric of society.
Another important element of education is an appreciation of aesthetic value - i.e. the beauty of the world, the brilliance of man, as expressed through the arts. To many people, this is a mere distraction, but man needs more than work. But unless he is educated to know to look for those things above work, all he will do when not working is look around for trouble.
We are only enriched when we are aesthetes at heart.This is particularly seen with the loss of our ability to cope with boredom. Aesthetic values are best understood through quiet contemplation, becoming bored, and through this inactivity, triggering thoughts in the head. This is where true fulfillment comes in life, as mystics have always known. But nowadays, because this aesthetic element is no longer in education, the only thing we trigger when approaching boredom is a video game.
History is also vital to education, and a thing a modern, forward looking society hates. But how much of the feeling of emptiness in modern society is due to a lack of appreciation of how we got here? Put simply, if we don’t know where we came from, how can we know where we’re going?The bottom line is this: education is a rounding of our appreciation of experience, making us whole human beings. In this way we become able to think for ourselves. Which is maybe the problem. Politicians don’t want us to think for ourselves too much. It upsets their applecart. It seems they no longer want to educate the natives.

© Anthony North, March 2004