Review of Social engineering of education, dumbing down Mona McNee & Alice Coleman: The Great Reading Disaster: Reclaiming Our Educational Birthright
Important issue treated with passion, but ..., Sept 3, 2008NOTE: If you have a 'dyslexic' child, or child discouraged from reading, or know an adult who has been damaged by crap teaching of reading, try www.phonics4free.org -- Mona McNee's website.
Alice Coleman wrote on the architectural disasters of British tower blocks, and how to cure them, and deserves very considerable respect for this. Mona McNee was/is a teacher. (Google and search for videos of her; she by the way is promoted by the BNP).
The claim made (2007, significantly, by a small Exeter press—www.imprint-academic.com) is very very important, namely that children weren't taught to read properly, which means by identifying letters as the—so to speak—atoms of words. When this was done most kids could read by, say, 7. (I'm talking of the English or 'Roman' alphabet). The authors maintain the 'look say' method was introduced by 'progressives', starting with Fred Schonell whose views ruled from 1945-1975, in which children were shown the shapes of whole words. Unsurprisingly they failed to learn and the result was decades—from say 1970—of near illiterates. Fascinating idea. In addition there's a lot on the official experts of what they call 'progressivism' and indeed one could guess what happened purely from analogous cases. E.g. not answering, legal threats, sackings and non-promotions, not reviewing books, pretending the issues were debated in the past, etc.
The question of whether this was deliberate isn't really gone into—but after all it's entirely possible that social engineers wanted other people's kids' education held back.BUT
[1] This book is a perfect example of how not to write a revisionist-type text. There is no summary anywhere of what claims they are making, or what evidence they have. It's a long long book and the reader has the burden imposed of trying to extract the message. They know what they're claiming—they should say what it is clearly!
[2] Some of the material seems simply incredible, such as trying to teach the outline shapes of words. For one thing, there are numerous typefaces, so the shape of words isn't fixed. The authors don't consider this. *** What I meant is, if there's such a naff system, why didn't people react? ***
[3] Not much international comparison. The one striking example is a page of Arabic script, with the comment that English looks like this to a child. It's clearly absurd to memorise words.
[4] Lots of deeply-felt criticism of opponents. This is understandable, and important, but should be kept in subservience to the aim of the book.
The book deals with a hugely important scandal in Britain, and perhaps elsewhere, and its thesis ought to be discussed and hard decisions taken about what to do. (Gordon Brown's appalling bunch of nonentities, including Balls, will of course prove useless). **BUT** in my view the failure to get to the point is a huge drawback of this volume. The authors should ask intelligent people, many from outside the education industry, to read it as consumer research. With luck it could be reshaped to make unanswerable and essential reading. It's unlikely they'd get any government funding for this, however, since the official experts will no doubt strongly advise against.
Incidentally the Daily Mail a British newspaper of typical UK quality has helped promote this cause, as has Civitas, a think-tank which unlike most seems not to be funded by Gordon Brown's unelected clique.
NOTE 1: There is an outline of Mona McNee's teaching method; anyone with a child with reading difficulties might do well to buy this book for that, and the background information.
NOTE 2: The authors believe that dyslexia is a genuine condition. But they say children taught by the sensible alphabetical method, even if liable to be dyslexic, should not ever manifest dyslexia. In other words, the huge epidemic of dyslexia was caused by 'look say'. This of course allows the teaching 'profession' to absorb more money correcting their own errors. At the cost of unruly and bored classes, frightened of never getting a grip on literacy.
NOTE 3: It follows there's a class issue here—in the societal sense! Obviously households of a middle-class type have books and magazines as a matter of course, and in any case the parents are familiar with reading and can teach it themselves. In effect the losers are the lower echelons. And these are the least likely to get any sympathy.
NOTE 4: P. 266 goes some way to quantifying the waste: school education cost £36 billion in 2005, some time before this book was published. Shockingly wasteful for a substandard product. The authors seem slightly naive in not perceiving that the people getting all that money may see it differently...
Are would-be reformers serious? October 2012
Deliberately-planned but secret damage to education is an off-topic thread on 'nukelies' (clearly a dumbed-down unscientific population is not much of a threat; on the other hand it will not create much).
Two topics are the 'look say' method for not teaching you children to read and write - part of the critics being by (ex?) BNP member Mona McNee, along with Alice Coleman (who is or was famous for her excellent work opposing some tower block design errors). These two don't see anyone behind systematic attacks on traditional education (though they are aware of paedophile rings).
I'm asking the question: Were Jews - as education ministers, 'gurus', promoters, publishers of articles, publishers of books, promoters of think tanks, funders of this or that, supporters of damaging teaching union leaders etc the moving force behind 'look say'?
As an example, here's a BBC blurb for a radio programme (22nd October 2012): Michael Gove [Jewish Minister of Education, under Jewish Prime Minister Cameron plus Jewish Clegg] is a fan of E.D. Hirsch, the American educational thinker. Fran Abrams explores Hirsch's radical ideas and how they could transform schooling in England. A similar issue is: were the post-1945 attacks on grammar schools (but not public schools, as expensive schools are called in Britain, and not Jewish schools) orchestrated by Jews? Or (if you dislike grammar schools) were comprehensives designed to produce bad results?
There are many other issues - dumbing-down of universities, failure of universities to back free speech, altering of syllabuses - and I'm just interested in raw evidence. Were they or weren't they, or to what extent were they, Jewish designed?
Review of America's Secret Establishment - Skull and Bones Society Anthony C. Sutton
Downloadable as a free PDF file. sandiego.indymedia.org/media/2006/10/119639.pdf
Review of Jews and Educational Dumbing-Down Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt: The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America
Lots of frantic rhetoric about commies and mind control, but no analysis of Jews Jan 2013
Kevin MacDonald's evolutionary 'social identity theory' predicts (I take it) that Jews in the USA would have intentionally damaged the education of 'Gentiles'. In view of their 'intellectual' predominance, based in my opinion on Jewish control of paper money, Iserbyt if serious would investigate their effects. She doesn't; there is no mention of Jewish influences anywhere in this book.
Review of Miseducation, but blamed on Germans and US industrialists Paolo Lionni: The Leipzig Connection (1980)
Short book mostly based around 1900 putting the blame for 'dumbed-down' education onto Germans.
Some material on much higher standards in 19th century USA, though the evidence is sparse. A scientology book; the same material on e.g. suspicion of Wundt (and other psychologists) and Rockefeller, but with a Jewish pro-immigration slant, and a fundamentalist dislike of evolution is widespread on Internet. But there's nothing about Jewish influences on ideas and education. Such issues as race integration, anti-Christian views, sex education, American and world history (to name just a few) cannot be understood without understanding Jews.
Your post, in reply to an earlier post on Jan 7, 2013 6:52:14 AM PST Rerevisionist says:
I'm inclined to think this reviewer is right. Someone sent me a copy of this book in the post; it's striking that the cover design doesn't say what it's about; the review extracts give no clue; the cover photo conveys nothing; there's no index; the chapter headings convey little. My personal view is that the US (and European) education systems have been deliberately damaged, notably at the level of ordinary people as opposed to 'elites', and I'm inclined to think this must be the work of Jews, acting as per immigration, deliberately intended to damage host countries. Many supposed psychologists were Jews, of course. This is an hypothesis that ought to be considered. But this book isn't much help; it's mostly based on the 1920s epoch in any case.
Review of Miseducation John Taylor Gatto: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
Someone please write about Jews and education..., January 7, 2013
I haven't read Gatto's book; judging by the reviews it's not worth reading.
It's well established (see e.g. MacDonald's The Culture of Critique) that Jews in the USA have been in the forefront of promoting immigration, concealing the truth about Jews in the USSR, concealing the fact that Jews have huge influence because of the paper money fraud, and that this money filters down, so Jews own all the media, and control most assets.
Therefore it makes sense to assume Jews have had a huge impact on education, since naturally they want their rivals to be as dim as possible. Mixing in blacks, promoting useless schemes like 'look say', all forms of dumbing-down, writing junk textbooks, starving serious universities and colleges of funds, discouraging languages, encouraging truancy etc etc are the sorts of things to be expected from Jews.
Someone (or some group) ought to write a well-researched book on this topic.
To: Campaign for Real Education (October 2012)
Dear Chris McGovern---
I found your website (while searching on 'Campaign for Racial Equality' I think) and would like to pose a question. (If your organisation is no longer functioning, apologies).
In view of the fact that Jews have had a systematic long-term campaign to damage Britain through immigration and increased crime and (for want of a better word) perversions of various types, has the 'Campaign for Real Education' made any attempt to check for Jewish influences in movements which damage education?
For example, the 'look say' method may have been promoted by Jewish 'gurus'; the downgrading of standards by e.g. Jewish 'experts' in education, publishing houses, and what have you; the faking of history by disallowing history teachers to teach wars etc except in ways approved by Jews; economics weakened by insistence on Jewish influences studiedly being ignored. (These examples are not of course intended to be exhaustive).
Since you're presumably serious about the need for real education, obviously you must have considered this issue.
Regards