When Ruth Kelly, then Communities Secretary, made a speech publicly questioning the multiculturalist orthodoxies that, for so long, had acted almost as a test of virtue among "right-thinking" people - and asked if he had been impressed by Kelly's speech, he is reported as having said that she was only a politician, a bird of passage, minister of education one day and minister of communities the next, and like all politicians liable to say whatever was fashionable or useful to her career at the moment. (my emphasis)
It is perhaps pertinent to repeat the last words of Theodore Dalrymple, writing in city Journal:
"If we had only listened to Ray Honeyford, we should not have sown what we are now reaping and what we (and others) shall reap for many years to come."
3 comments:
RIP Mr Honeyford. I remember you now, and apologise for forgetting you for so long.
I took a look at the original piece in the Salisbury Review by Mr. Honeyford, and I can see why what he was attempting to relate would have been considered inflammatory at the time. This was the high point of the "race relations" industry (as Peter Simple used to call it).
As is usual in the "pressure group" industry, people... no matter their colour or creed... emerge who's sole reason for their action/s is the advancement of their own careers and to hell with the subject matter, in this case… children in need of an education… aka a one time opportunity.
At the end of his piece, he writes:
"I suspect that these elements, far from helping to produce harmony, are, in reality, operating to produce a sense of fragmentation and discord. And I am no longer convinced that the British genius for compromise, for muddling through, and for good natured tolerance will be sufficient to resolve the inevitable tensions."
The British genius of which he writes, comes from the British people…. Not from the local mosque, church or town hall… If those people are told what they can say, how they can teach, who they can teach, what they are allowed to believe by such careerists, it is bound to go wrong.
As ever, the right wing libertarians have the right idea, let people make their own decisions about how they educate their own children and they will eventually come up with the right solution, they are the only people that actually want the best for their own children.
The education system has been failing ever since it was hijacked by the state. Even Mr. Honeyford was failed by it, he had to make his own decision (as an adult) that he wanted to be a teacher, and that to do this, he would have to go back to school and get some bits of paper behind him.
So the answer, as always, is to take government out of the system, and let people make their own decisions. If they think that sending them off to a madrassa is a good thing, then so be it. When it fails their children for a few generations and they emerge blinking into the real world without the tools that they need, those failed children may well make a different decision with their own children.
Government ought to come with a "government health warning"...
GOVERNMENT KILLS!
GOVERNMENT SERIOUSLY HARMS YOU AND OTHERS AROUND YOU!
etc. etc.
r_w: Thank you for a thoughtful and erudite comment - one with which I agree.
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