Nadhim Zawahi - children should be seen, and not heard. Honesty in schools must be crushed. Making Schools Safe for Lying Authoritarians.

Nadhim Zahawi, Education Secretary, (also Minister for Mass Infection of Children, Delta and Omicron version), writing in the Daily Mail, suggests a campaign to "root out activist teachers who indoctrinate children."

'Education not indoctrination': Nadhim Zahawi tells schools to root out activist teachers 'brainwashing' children after claims of 'worrying' race lessons and pupils as young as 10 urged to write critical letters about the PM in class

Nadhim Zahawi will issue guidance to ensure teachers present balanced views.

He said it was to ensure 'complexity' of many important questions is understood

Mr Zahawi said it is part of democracy for children to shape own political views

Comes after he investigated reports 'concerning' race theories being taught

Zawahi's ire was drawn forth from a letter written by a 10 year old child, to his local MP, in Nottingham. The letter was written as part of an English lesson at a primary school, Wellbeck Primary School. As per the curriculum instructions, taking real life examples and working them into a written project.

We are told that the teacher involved had posted critical comments on the Johnson governments policies on SARSCOV2 and Brexit on his personal twitter feed, having used the abusive term 'tory scum' at least once .
Here is  a section of the child's letter.

'We looked at famous leaders such as Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama, and we have also looked at teachers and headteachers who are doing their part in keeping us happy, healthy and safe.

'We also looked at people who we respect and disappointingly, our own Prime Minister has not made it onto this list.

'During this past week I watched a story on BBC Newsround that stated our PM is under investigation for 12 parties that have apparently occurred - a few of which had over 100 people at them when we weren't even allowed to meet more than two people

'What makes this matter worse is that when he was questioned about it in Parliament he said the following, ''I have been reassured there was no party.''

This is a lie.
'We also looked at people who we respect and disappointingly, our own Prime Minister has not made it onto this list,'

Reasonable points, well made.

Seems reasonable to me. And yes, I can easily imagine a 10 year old child writing  such a letter, being able to comprehend such basic matters of justice. Most children are  naturally intelligent, creative and curious. Most have a keen sense of injustice.

This brings me back to February 2006, at the Power Inquiry Conference, in Queen Elizabeth Hall, opposite the Houses of Parliment.

Part of the afternoon session was a general discussion that touched on Iraq, Pensions, the NHS, Education, lowering the voting age and other matters. The panel was inviting questions from the audience. About 500 people were seated in the hall.
There was a 13 year old boy, close to the front, who had his hand up, and he kept it up, standing there for a good 10 minutes, as other questions were taken and answered.
Eventually, the panel acknowledgd  his persistence, and allowed him to speak, a microphone was passed to him. This is the question he asked.
"What if the money spent on War in Afghanistan and Iraq was invested into our grandparents pensions?"

The audience erupts in applause. Applause subsides, panel takes two more questions.
The adult politicians on the panel - Menzies Campbell, Ed Milliband - ignored his question, answered the other questions.

I was there, I witnessed that happen. I was infuriated.

The child made a really good observation. We all knew the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were amoral, un-necessary and illegal. 

The 'adults' turned from the honesty of a child and in that moment betrayed the very meaning of democracy and justice. 
Most children have a keen sense of injustice.
Most children, if invited  to, if they feel safe and if they can truly trust the adults before them, will be honest about what they see.
Rarely will they be wrong - they see what they see.
Hence the honest child is seen to be a threat by every authoritarian, be it a parent, a teacher, a class bully or indeed a corrupt politician,
Honest history, a genuinely honest history curriculum would prevent so much avoidable nonsense. The lack of honesty about our histories among our political class, in our news and press media, in news broadcast and across entertainmentin England is well known.

History is not merely about the past, it is the present we are living through. We are always writing our history. Johnson did not break any Laws and he never lies, and even if he did, it cannot be said directly in Parliament. Some people devote a lot of energy to rewriting history as it happens.

What price an Honest History Curriculum? 

However, due to political interference, in spite of teachers best efforts, we do not have a honest and balanced, well informed history curriculum. Lessons on Slavery, Empire and The Holocaust are carefully curated to obscure the detail that really does matter.

My personal take on history is that it ought to tell the stories of the least powerful people and their families, the people most adversely impacted by the actions of the most powerful - for what, and at what human cost. This graphic illustrates this power disparity.

It was created by David Smail, and is part of his talk:  'There's No Such Thing as Society'. The Moral Tyrannies of Therapy

A talk given at the SCOS annual conference on 'Organizations, Institutions and Violence', Dublin, July 2001

source: http://web.archive.org/web/20090530020422fw_/http://www.davidsmail.info/talk01a.htm

David Smail has written much that is pertinent to the situation we find ourselves in, in the midst of a Pandemic. His site is off-line, and this link goes to an archived version of his website, via way back machine, which I find very useful.

This article below in The Conversation on the matter of Holocaust history, and a general lack of knowledge across the UK on that matter, is topical, in that it reveals something of the grimy underbelly of discrimination currently emanating from the Home Office, and percolating throughout the ideological fight or flight emotional grooming of Brexit, and the almost constant political 'fiddling' with our children's education. The politicos at the Department of Education are quite exercised about indoctrination - they prefer their own to any others, or to none, as it happens.

https://theconversation.com/most-uk-adults-dont-know-key-details-of-the-holocaust-how-it-has-been-taught-in-schools-may-explain-why-171702

"A survey exploring knowledge of the Holocaust has exposed limited awareness in the UK of some of the most fundamental aspects of this history. Conducted by the Claims Conference, a non-profit organisation which secures compensation for Holocaust survivors, the survey was based on interviews with 2,000 randomly selected adults. Less than half of the respondents knew that six million Jewish people were killed and only one-quarter were aware of the meaning of “Kindertransport”, the rescue of children from Nazi territories.

I am a researcher at the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education and was a member of the taskforce for the Claims Conference United Kingdom Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Study. My research explores teaching and learning about the Holocaust in English secondary schools.

Absence from schools

The lack of knowledge revealed by the survey is partly due to patchy school teaching of the Holocaust. Before the 1990s, Holocaust teaching and learning in the UK was neither widespread nor popular. Generations of children received little or no formal education about the Holocaust.

This had slowly begun to change in the 1980s, but the most significant development came in 1991 when the Holocaust became compulsory content in the national history curriculum in England for students aged 11-14 years. It has remained on the curriculum ever since. Although there is no such statutory requirement in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, it is widely taught in these countries as well

The deliberate lack of a fully informed historyin schools is a covert method of indoctrination by omission. "What they don't know about us can't harm us."

Which helps explain why Home Office can get away with proposing legislation that criminalises the entire traveller community. By which I mean to say that in a healthy governance system, that idea would be shot down as soon as an official uttered the words or sent a memo or email suggesting such a policy, and that person would be subjected to a 'performance review' and likely urged to seek counselling. Clearly we do not have a healthy governance system at The Home Office.

A brutal oppressive column inciting legalised hatred of Traveler culture is not a joke.

https://barristerblogger.com/2021/05/20/the-evil-of-priti-patels-anti-gypsy-legislation/
This blogger writes about a very dark article in the times, written by Matthew Parris:"What on earth has happened to Matthew Parris?
For the last thirty years or so he has produced beautifully written, persuasive columns on subjects from llamas to high politics, typically characterised by thoughtfulness, tolerance and moderation. Then, last Saturday he wrote an extraordinary piece under the headline “We should stop pandering to Travellers.”
Depressingly, almost all of the 1200+ people commenting below Mr Parris’s article agreed with him. Many of the comments – and I doubt that they were those sympathetic to Gypsies – had been deleted as “violating our policy,” but a sample of those considered acceptable included comments such as:

“They live below the legal radar and do not abide by the same rules of decency and respect that most people do.~Poor to non existant (sic) education, high levels of criminality, high unemployment and truly dreadful attitudes to women make it a group we can do without in the future.~These groups are the most violent of societies and live by crime. Of course their children are uneducated; wives are beaten; medical staff are intimidated. The list is endless.~[T]heir lifestyle is at root parasitic – it feeds almost entirely off the mainstream without giving back – or any intention of doing do – it’s all take and no give; all entitlement and no responsibility.”~That their children are deprived of education is the fault of their lifestyle, children moving all the time cannot have a settled education. That they die young, is also their own fault too.”
~

Matthew Parris, his editor, the editor of the Times and all these people view the prospect of  legalised oppression of the traveller culture as a positive.
The same people are livid over Allan Carr's Holocaust 'joke'.  Hypocrisy abounds.

"And Times readers are more polite than most. 
Elsewhere in the press it is easy to find, below almost any story about Gypsies commenters describing them as “filthy,” “thieves,” “freeloaders” “rats” and worse. The occasional slightly more liberal commenter might observe that whilst all these things are true of Travellers they are less so of the “genuine Gypsy,” a view shared by Heinrich Himmler who wished to spare a few “pure-bred” Gypsies while organising the murder of at least 500,000 whom he considered racial vermin.

How little has changed in 500 years. It has been the Gypsy and the Traveller’s lot to be hated, feared and misunderstood for centuries. The preamble to the Egyptians Act 1530 illustrates how little those prejudices have changed:
“FORASMUCH as before this time divers and many outlandish people calling themselves Egyptians, using no craft nor feat of merchandise have come into this realm, and gone from shire to shire and place to place in great company, and used great, subtil, and crafty means to deceive the people … and so many times by craft and subtilty have deceived the people of their money, and also have committed many heinous felonies and robberies, to the great hurt and deceit of the people that they have come among ….”
The Act made it unlawful for Gypsies to enter the country, and those already here were given 16 days to leave or forfeit their possessions.
Henry VIII’s attempt at ethnic cleansing failed, as did another  Act passed during his eldest daughter’s reign in 1554, which exempted Gypsies from deportation or execution if they assimilated into the general population or, as the Act put it, gave up their “naughty, ungodly and idle” way of life."
Is this History taught honestly in all our schools?  Is it not the case that that lack of honesty is part and parcel of the way oppression and hatred is nurtured and anger is directed at the nomadic culture by the settled, and that it functions as a scapegoat, a distraction and a vent for other frustrations the ordinary settled endure at the hands of the Ruling Class?

Indoctrination?
What is political grooming other than a profoundly ugly psychologically abusive covert form of indoctrination?

SCL, the 'strategic election communications' company which birthed Cambridge Analytica, ran psyhological warfare campaigns in 68 countries, during 100 elections, before Cambridge Analytica was spawned to indoctrinate and groom vulnerable people across the UK to support Brexit, the lies of which lay scattered all about us in early 2022.
https://qz.com/1239762/cambridge-analytica-scandal-all-the-countries-where-scl-elections-claims-to-have-worked/

Unsurprisingly, the people involved in this kind of work continued, even after Cambridge Analytica was exposed, and devoted their energies to spreading covid misinformation and lobbying the Covid Recovery Group amongst the Conservatives, leading to avoidable harms not being avoided.
https://bylinetimes.com/2021/02/02/cambridge-analytica-psychologist-advising-global-covid-19-disinformation-network-linked-to-nigel-farage-and-conservative-party/

Nadhim Zahawi, the multi-millionaire landlord who voted to cut the £20 a week Universal Credit Covid Uplift, who voted against regulation of dodgy landlords and increased rights for renters, who took up the role of Education Secretary and is quite clearly  an education dunce,  the same Nadhim Zawahi wants to 'root out activist teachers who indoctrinate abd brainwash children?'

Nadhim Zawahi who is personally and institutionally responsible for mass infection of school children across England, as the Education Secretary that coerced children into unsafe schools in the midst of a pandemic.

Nadhim Zahawi has written to School leaders.

Focus = attendance

This is particularly concerning attendance targets are already driving many headteachers to threaten vulnerable households with fines and prosecutions.

https://t.co/lwsoFHfk4y pic.twitter.com/NX2WpzYShy

— Clinically Vulnerable Families 💙💜💗 (@cv_cev) November 23, 2021

Yeah, that Nadhim Zawahi. 

~
Kindest regards

Corneilius

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The Vatican, The UN Torture Committee and Reward/Sanction Methods of behaviour modification.

On Friday 9^th May, a report on the questioning of The Vatican before the United Nations Torture Committee was released into the public domain at the same time that calls from within other Christian denominations emerged, from within The Protestant Churches and Evangelical Churches, to address their known issues with reporting and prevention of pedophilia and other acts of mistreatment, cruelty and serious abuse of children occurring in all settings they were and are responsible for.

The call was to not do as the Vatican has done, and seek to attempt to manage or control the ‘crisis’ so as to protect their ‘image’ and ‘status’ which inevitably causes even more trauma for all survivors.

With regard to the torture matter, it is really crystal clear to me that every form of indoctrination to which children are subjected that comes with with sanction, punishment, chastisement and reward is a form of psychological torture.

"If you are driven by the threat of eternal torture to be a good person, you're a frightened person.

 

To instil, indoctrinate, inculcate or impose upon a small child's body, mind or psyche the feeling or sensation or thought frame associated with fear of existential punishment, as a psycho-social structure or some 'moral code', as coercive and violent as it is, is torture.”

This means that the person using such a coercive process upon a child is frightening the child and a frightened child, quite obviously,  will not see sense in the instruction and the matter will thus require coercion, to ensure compliance. All for 'the child’s own good', of course. And for the good of Society.

Of course.

This is based on a dreadful misperception of the child, which has been a foundational meme of Christian European culture and indeed Abrahamic cultures for a long, long time, (the fear of Satan/The Wild in the child that must be tamed at all costs) and it mirrors all sorts of adverse power relationships that are institutionalised into our mainstream Societal structures even to this day.

This dynamic mirrors the relationship between Power, Law, the State, and the Citizen. The power issue is the core of the problem, from the personal to the Institutional. It is because this Christian-post Christian social thought map strikes at the heart of one’s sense of self as a vulnerable child that it has so much power over the adult, especially if the adult has ‘adapted to fit in’ and is less than fully aware……  with generation after generation ‘adapting to fit in’ it is easy to see how over time those PTSD patterns become ‘normal behaviour’.

I will address this aspect a bit further down this piece.

Last week, Democracy Now reported on these issues, and there was a specific report on the Evangelical Churches in the USA which I found very interesting.

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/5/8/protestant_church_faces_new_sex_abuse

The news team interviewed Kathryn Joyce, a reported and researcher, who had some really interesting comments to make, one of which I wish to point out, whilst at the same time I recommend listening to the whole Democracy Now report on this link.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ (newsteam): We turn now to a new exposé that asks if the Protestant world is teetering on the edge of a sex-abuse scandal similar to the one that has rocked the Catholic Church. The person trying to address the problem may surprise you. As sex-abuse allegations multiply, it is Reverend Billy Graham’s grandson who is on a mission to persuade Protestant churches to come clean. Kathryn Joyce’s cover story in The American Prospect profiles Boz Tchividjian, a law professor at Liberty University, a school founded by Reverend Jerry Falwell, and former prosecutor who has worked on many sex-abuse cases. He used his experience to found an organization called GRACE: Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment.

AMY GOODMAN (newsteam): GRACE made headlines in February when the famous evangelical school, Bob Jones University, hired it to interview faculty and students about their experiences with sexual assault, then fired it before it had a chance to report the results, only to hire it back after a public outcry. Well, reporter Kathryn Joyce joins us now to discuss this major exposé, "By Grace Alone: As Sex-Abuse Allegations Multiply, Billy Graham’s Grandson is on a Mission to Persuade Protestant Churches to Come Clean." Kathryn Joyce is also the author of The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption and Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement.

and then the interview starts: 

Joyce outlines the Grace case with regard to the Bob Jones University and other details she has researched. This part is at 43 minutes on the play timer. She makes a very point about Authoritarian settings and predatory behaviour.

AMY GOODMAN: And the missionary kids?

KATHRYN JOYCE: And for the missionary kids, these were the subject of GRACE’s two first investigation, two different very large international missionary groups, where the children of the missionaries being stationed in foreign countries, known in Christian culture as MKs, missionary kids, they were enduring just kind of epidemic levels of sexual abuse in a number of different countries. GRACE’s reports focused on two in particular, on the New Tribes Mission and their boarding school in Fanda, Senegal, and also ABWE, another missionary organization, and what happened on the mission field they had in the 1980s in Bangladesh. And two different situations, but a lot of similarities, in some ways, in that these were both kind of very authoritarian atmospheres where children were expected to do what any adult kind of in their world was telling them to do, and this made them, sadly, kind of very vulnerable to abusers who came by.

AMY GOODMAN: And you’re talking about the missionary kids. What about the people in the communities they come to, for example, in Senegal or in Bangladesh? What happens to them?

KATHRYN JOYCE: I’m sure that there are stories there, as well. GRACE’s two reports in these situations focused on what happened to the children of missionaries, but I’m sure there are even more untold stories in terms of the children already living there who were, in many ways, much more vulnerable

.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In some of your writings, you’ve dealt with the issue of patriarchy and its relationship to religious thinking. Any sense on your part whether there are structural or philosophical directions in the churches that allow this kind of stuff to be covered up?

KATHRYN JOYCE: Well, I think, absolutely. And obviously, not all very conservative Christians or all members of the self-described patriarchy movement are going to be abusive. But reading all of these reports and looking at all of this and speaking to dozens of people, it kind of does become clear—and GRACE’s assertion—that a main factor contributing to abuse and the silencing of abuse, of victims, is authoritarian structures that focus much more on rigid rule following, on hierarchies within a church or within a community, on the subordinate role of women and children. And when you have all of these things coming together alongside a culture that sees it as imperative to cover up mistakes so that you can still promote the cause of Christ, that you are being a good evangelical witness, a lot of these things conspire to make abuse not just more common, but much more invisible.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, what most surprised you, Kathryn Joyce, in your investigation?

KATHRYN JOYCE: Well, I think what surprised me the most was watching in real time this pattern happen of GRACE going and starting and doing this investigation, getting a year into it, having spoken to dozens, a hundred of people, and then having the institution back out. This had happened once before with the mission group ABWE, and then it happened again with Bob Jones. And it was very interesting to see that. And it raised this interesting question about whether or not there is a catch-22 at the heart of GRACE’s incredibly admirable mission, that they are being hired by the groups that they’re investigating. And I think that that’s a really interesting question to ponder, but I think we also have to look at their work and say that this is very well—very much needed.

----------------

“a main factor contributing to abuse and the silencing of abuse, of victims, is authoritarian structures that focus much more on rigid rule following, on hierarchies within a church or within a community, on the subordinate role of women and children.”

What she says speaks for itself. It also mirrors James Prescott's findings and insights from his 1975 Paper : Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence.

Here’s a two page outline showing his findings in a .pdf form. 

Comparison of Social Behavioural Characteristics of Low and High Nurturant Societies 

It provides a peer reviewed anthropological narrative that accurately describes a variety of emergent social or cultural structures over time and distance, ranging from Egalitarian Nurturing Communities to Hierarchically Violent Controlling Communities. 

And the same pattern persists as Kathryn Joyce describes :  that within this range of cultures the predictor of violence as an emerging trait, or sustained pattern of behaviour of any given culture was always the degree of disruption to the child mother bond, and or the degree of control or inhibition imposed on emergent adolescent sexuality and the presence and enforcement of rigid gender power roles. 

These are resonant with post trauma behavioural patterns, where the trauma remains unresolved, where the pain remains, coping with internal pressure or conflict drives much behaviour. From the individual to the collective, aspects of the coping mechanism or strategies are internalised as within the range of ‘normal’ or expected behaviour. 'Boys don't cry'. 'Women are more empathetic'. 'Boys will be boys'. 'Girls seek out powerful men'.

The reality is of course that everyone caught up in trauma related social structures is to some degree affected by the situation, and most will have internalised aspects of it, it’s negative values and prejudices as part of that affect, and this makes for some confusion when boundaries are broken what ought to remain explicit.  The roles played out in that dynamic are hardly markers of optimally healthy human behaviour.

Kathryn Joyce's last point, about what can happen when Survivors groups get too close to the Institutions whose intent to remain and retain their power, and is less than honourable, is also very interesting, because there is a fairly well documented history of Institutions who are liable for harms caused offering an apparent ‘olive branch’ to survivors, where it becomes clear that the intended primary beneficiaries of that ‘olive branch’ is those proffering it. 

That there is a pattern of powerful institutions manipulating Survivors groups, individual survivors and NGOs through offering forms of ‘support’ favoured by the Hierarchy of that Institution. 

I think that Survivors groups need and deserve more support - and respect!- from the wider Society in confronting this situation, a necessary confrontation which has been in full flow in the public domain for nearly 30 years of public reporting of allegations, on matters than have been harmfully adverse for many hundreds of  thousands of children …  it’s narrative of Power and abuse matters for all of us, and how we deal with it will be part of the estate we pass on through inheritance. We intend to give this the focus, energy and commitment it demands.

Kathryn Joyce (And Democracy Now as ever) also bringing a much needed clarity and calm, a de-hyping of the story, a humanisation of the narrative, which is maturing the discourse and is therefore  incredibly valuable.

The main element I wish my readers to take up in why I wrote this piece, is to look at the Kathryn Joyce’s description of how an Authoritarian situation is that much more vulnerable because it has within it many of those compliance behaviour dynamics that suit predatory activity, where there is fear of The Hierarchy as much as there is respect. That fear permeates the entire issue. And it is all too often a fear and respect of distal power, a power one cannot touch or see or even influence, a power that holds life or death power over all.

That fear, that the power of life and death might be exercised upon The Vatican, drives the irrational behaviour of The Vatican, and for them that fear is so intense that it makes it rational in their mind-set to do what they are doing. 

That fear is the largest part of what really drives the ‘support’ The Vatican et al receive from their adherents, the Faithful. Who would want to lose that careful illusory safety net that blind faith, in any are of life, creates? Let alone walk right up to it and say “No! I will not stand for this!”

And it would be so easy to criticise those people for their compliance with the Institution, yet the Survivor in me has to go beyond that distaste and anger, and not to lose either sense, but to integrate them into a larger narrative, of my own life, and that of the Society into which I was born and into which I brought my own child, and it is for her and all her contemporaries and their children and grand children that I must address my actions.

The psychology, behaviour and outcomes of the activity of the Institutionalised Authoritarian Culture of Power and how these affect the majority of people alive to day have to be recognised, observed and understood. 

This psychology and behaviour needs to be observed where it occurs in all hierarchical behavioural structures, from the personal to the largest collectives. Transparency must exist in order to prevent such abuse occurring in the future, starting now. This is the ultimate precondition.

Transparency.

Authoritarianism breeds the fear that drives secrecy. 

Transparency removes it.

Privacy is not to be conflated with secrecy. 

Healthy boundaries are essential attributes in all living organisms. 

Transparency is not arrived at in an invasive environment of surveillance; it is a choice that permeates relationships, interactions and outcomes.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe