When Teresa May and David Cameron spout off about British values and then claim that those values are Democracy, Tolerance, Rule of Law, whilst they flout all three on a regular basis, one wonders what do they really intend. Especially when they are unable (or unwilling) to explain it in any logically meaningful manner.
Speaking to school leavers from varied ethnic backgrounds, young people who have conversations across the globe without the adults interjecting, people who see that underneath all national identities we are human, people who understand that being humane is the first and only value of any real importance, young people who see that they are being targeted by these claims of British values; what they see is an attempt to create division amongst their contemporaries, to build a form of Capitalist Neo-Liberal Nationalism, that equates the flag and what it symbolises with ‘hard working families’ and ‘tolerance of others’, the right to own a home (to be indebted for most of ones life), the rule of brute force in International Politics (Iraq, Libya, Syria, Northern Ireland)… what they see is a demand that they adopt values they do not hold, values that are inhumane, that are at the root of the war mongering the British Government is engaged in.
Tolerance, to tolerate suggests that those being tolerated are lessor, different, other. You will be tolerated as long as you toe the line and abandon your own sense of self in favour of the British Power Establishment.
Democracy?
With 21% of the electorate giving total Power to an ideological band of robber barons actively dismantling the social contract that we care for the vulnerable in our Society, without the profit motive, and handing it to their friends to be turned to profit?
Shamocracy!
British values in action, as by the evidence of the behaviour of the British Government:
British values – collusion with violent Militia, in Northern Ireland, in Syria, in Libya and elsewhere.
British Values – protecting predatory pedophiles from public prosecution in order to protect the Power Establishment?
British Values – Zenophobia stirred up by UKIP, the Daily Mail and others..
British Values – Fracking ....
British Values – Trident ... as a 'deterrent', worthless and useless in practice.
British Values – Institutional power over a people.
British Values – low wages, subsidised by the tax payer, to improve profitability of British Corporations.
British Values – a people coerced into debt through indoctrination, and economic sleight of hand, (right to buy, tax subsidies for mortgages) that owning a home is more important than spending time with one’s children.
British Values – children cared for by well trained and well paid nannies for the wealthy rather than by their parents, and the children of the poor cared for by low paid, ill-trained childcare workers working for private enterprise.
British Values – the elderly set aside from societal engagement and participation, held in ‘care homes’ run as profit centers.
British Values – using the Rule of Law to abuse, control, dominate and coerce the population.
And then there are human values…
..although a human type of education is here to stay, it is most certainly not the prevailing type of education. So I would like to take a look at the two polar extremes of our modes of education and at the politics that is implicit in each of them.
Before I go any further, I should say what I mean by the word ‘politics’. I am not at all thinking of political parties, or government organisations. I am using the term in it’s modern sense. We hear talk of ‘the politics of the family’ or ‘the politics of psychotherapy’ or ‘sexual politics’. In this present day sense, I believe that the word ‘politics’ has to do with power or control in relationships, and the extent to which persons strive to gain such power – or to relinquish it. It has to do with the way decisions are made. Who makes them? Where is the locus, or center, of decision making power? Politics concerns the effects of such power oriented actions on individuals and systems.
If we think of the political characteristics of education, the traditional mode is at one end of a continuum, and a person centered approach at the other.
The traditional mode:
1. The teachers are the possessors of knowledge, the students the expected recipients.
2. The lecture, or some means of verbal instruction, is the major areas of getting knowledge into the recipients. The examination measures the extent to which the students have received it.
3. The teachers are the possessors of power, the students are the ones who obey.
4. Rule by Authority is the accepted policy in the classroom.
The person centered mode.
1. The leaders, or persons who are perceived as authority figures, are sufficiently secure within themselves and in their relationships to others that they experience an essential trust in the capacity of others to think for themselves, to learn for themselves.
2. The facilitating persons share with others – students, and possibly also parents and community members- the responsibility for the learning process.
3. The focus of the learning center is primarily on fostering the continuing process of learning. The content of the learning, whilst significant, falls into a secondary place.
4. The discipline necessary to reach students goals is a self discipline, and is recognised and accepted by the learners as being their individual responsibilities. Self discipline replaces external discipline.”
This was written by Carl Rogers between 1972 and 1979.
In the late 70s and early 80s, as the person centered approach was spreading across the UK. Keith Joseph’s concern in 1984 was that people should be educated to ‘know their place’. To that end he redirected Educational policy along ideological lines, to ensure that the concerns of power and the 'economy' as understood by power were to be promoted, rather than in the best interests of our children as people in development. "Evolving Consumers'as a technical term for children.
Neo-liberal revolutions at home were to be crafted through indoctrination, and economic falsehoods and gimmicks, as opposed to the imposition of Neo-Liberal revolution through violence, as in Chile and as so many other cases reveal.
Thatcher had a ‘soft spot’ for Pinochet. David Cameron was sent to South Africa to do her business with the Apartheid Regime. Tony Blair reworked the meaning of Labour to integrate Neo-liberalist ideology into it’s executive behaviour.
That concern remains present in current education, in much mainstream media and in politics. This concern is what drives the so-called ‘Greek Debt Crisis’ which is in truth a crisis for the IMF in that it’s imposition of Neo-Liberal Economics breaches Human Rights Law, is causing real harm to real people, and is therefore illegal. (the law under which these loans are set up is English Contract Law). Iraq was an illegal war of aggression. So too the bombing of Libya.
Power Rules and the people must submit.
The fact that Power uses our taxes is besides the point, is not up for rational discussion, let alone any rational discourse based on the evidence of adverse outcomes of the uses to which the Executive puts those taxes, which are after all a shared community resource.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe
