The Blogger’s attention was caught by a report posted on Bristol 2007’s Weblog about a recent brief debate on the issue of black only schools for Bristol. Here’s a part of it:
Cllr Peter Hammond [a key member of the Abolition 200 Steering Committee] was not keen on the idea of black schools. Since he believed school was a place we went for the opportunity to meet other cultures that lived around us.
There you have it. The city’s dominate liberal-left consensus view of education. And what a load sanctimonious wishy-washy liberal drivel it is. Hammond is openly admitting that our city’s education system is virtually a vehicle for an experiment in multiculturalist social engineering. And where exactly has this got us then?
Are we to believe that the rich, influential and powerful send their children to Eton “for the opportunity to meet other cultures that live around them”? Of course they don’t. They send their children to the best schools to get the best results and then get the best jobs so that they can inherit the country’s wealth, influence and power and continue to run the show for their own benefit.
Hammond’s leadership and mongrel vision provide no threat to this order whatsoever. Rather than seeking aspiration, achievement and success in our schools, Hammond is more interested in promoting nice-sounding multiculturalist banalities and using our education system to deliberately foster divisions between our children and then demand they spend their school days engaging in endless bouts of navel gazing about it.
Wonderful. And what do you get at the end of all this? Probably a load of happy multiculturalist Morrisons wage slaves just about capable of commanding £6 an hour in perpetuity.
Sod these differences the likes of Hammond want to construct for us, where petty choices over things like diet and dress and a few minor quibbles over religious belief are blown out of all proportion to form untouchable and venerated cultures demanding special treatment. Meanwhile those powerful and consuming social, economic and political realities that actually bind us together are quietly shunted to one side and ignored.
If you really want to look at the root causes of why Bristol’s schools are failing, look no further than to Hammond and his gang of liberal multiculturalists whose ideas now dominate the management of our education system. They couldn’t give a toss whether your children succeed or fail in conventional terms, so long as they’ve had their dose of fashionable multiculturalist, anti-homophobic, anti-obesity medicine.
Bristol 2007 is a bit unsure where to turn when confronted with the idea of these distinctly anti-multiculturalist black-only schools:
In our 2000s mentality in the UK, it doesn’t sound right to the ear. Surely that’s what we’ve been fighting and legislating against isn’t it? Leaving us all confused.
Indeed. On the one hand there’s Hammond’s multiculturalism. It’s been rammed down our throats at school; it dominates HE (and teacher training) and it’s all over the BBC and most other government institutions too. How could it possibly be a problem? Besides, isn’t rejecting multiculturalism the same as being – gulp – racist?
On the other hand lies reality. The reality of failing schools and, even – despite this obssession with multiculturalism – failing races. What is to be done? Continue to fail people because it feels good for white liberals?
Do you at least try to give kids a real chance at success or do you continue with a feel-good ideology of known failure? Bristol 2007 probably already knows the answer to their quandary. They just haven’t thought to apply it as a solution to this problem:
By any means necessary, comrade. By any means necessary . . .
Although can you imagine the furore if someone were to suggest white only schools?!
As the long suffering parent of two kids at a
Bristol comp (although we cant call it that anymore, it’s now a “college”), seems to me that the one thing that never gets considered is the significance of class in this whole debate. Black kids are the latest underclass, treated like the lowest common denominator, expected to be good at sport and music (bring on the stereotypes), with low expectations from staff and LEA alike. If they weren’t black, they’d be from Knowle West or Southmead. I’ve met loads of my children’s teachers – one or two actually seem to like kids – the rest treat them like something they find on the bottom of their shoe. As for the LEA and councillors, a more clueless bunch of twats you’ve never had the misfortune to meet. I’ve been a parent governor for 2 or 3 years and we’re on about the 27th new and exciting initiative to to turn the school around – and meanwhile the kids go to MacDonalds if they need to use the loo, the books in the library have been there since the 1960’s and last time I was there for a meeting I saw rats scurrying around the playground. Any wonder Bristol’s at the bottom of the marvellous “league tables”?
I did make an allusion to class:
Although I understand class is out of fashion these days. It hasn’t been taught in higher education for over a generation now. Which, coincidentally, is about the amount of time that the comprehensive system in this city has, er, comprehensively been collapsing accompanied by the inexorable rise of the multiculturalists.
As for white only schools; we already have them. They’re called private schools. Note the lack of clamour from Hammond and the rest of the idiot brigade to get rid of them these days. (They’re now the examples of excellence to be copied – unless you’re black of course).
I’ve met teachers that seem to hate the kids too. This is all the more surprising when you consider it’s supposed to be quite hard to get a teaching job in Bristol. Does this mean the main qualification required is to be a hopeless middle class snob?
But then we can’t have Bristolian teachers any more because we can’t educate them to that standard can we?
The truth is in some ways private schools are more egalitarian than schools like Redland Green, St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School
and Cotham. Its nothing to do with race, religion or class, its just money. If you have it and your kids is average or above and you have the cash then there is a private school for you.
In the state system if your parents don’t believe in a particular omipresent metaphysical being, or your parents can’t afford to live in the right areas then tough, you can’t even buy your way in.
An aside, if almost all Bristol schools are going to become academies will Heather take a pay cut?
Also a quiz question: On an average day what proportion of kids 11-16 living in Bristol will be in a Bristol School?
45%, 50%, 60%, 80% or 90%?
I think I remember reading somewhere that 20% are educated privately in Bristol, 20% use the services of neighbouring authorities and 10% play truant.
Leaving Bristol City Council with 50% of 11-16 year olds to educate in their area.
One point Dave!
would you mind listing the benefits of having black only schools, and explaining why multiculturalism gets you so heated? I’m not on a wind up or anything i’m just curious
I have no idea precisely what the benefits of black schools might be. Although I do know there’s research that shows young black men’s school performance improves considerably if they’re taught by black men.
To be honest I’m simply supporting people who are putting forward positive proposals to support and work in the interests of young working class men in the city rather than people more interested in promoting a failed system that “feels right” to liberals.
To turn the question around, perhaps you wouldn’t mind listing the benefits of multicultural, comprehensive schools for young, working class men (black or white).
On multiculturalism I said this:
Multiculturalism seeks to divide the working classes into sets of competing interest groups. Divide and rule innit?
Have you not noticed that since multiculturalism became the official state explanation for inequality that inequality has actually increased?
Elsewhere I’ve also mentioned about the relations between multiculturalism and relativism and how it demands we give equal consideration and weight to anything that wants to call itself a culture. This is quite destructive.
You seem to suggest that an objective view on culture is both desirable and possible. Hmm, let me think…what sort of people have thought ‘our culture is best’ or ‘these cultures are savage’: imperialists, nazis and fascists…
I’m uncertain about relativism but objectivity on culture is surely highly problematic to say the least.
Black only schools are a non-starter.