[1998] where were you in march

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[Click to play - it goes with the post.]

It is to be fervently hoped that:

amantium irae amoris integratio est

... or to put it another way:

Perselisihan kekasih adalah memulai lagi cinta

The much underrated Nunyaa has inflicted upon this blog the question of where the Higham was ten years ago.

Now that's an interesting coincidence because last evening two former flames were seated at a huge bay window overlooking the teeming traffic, nibbling turkey and reflecting on where we were at that time when love was young and we were at each other's throats.

So let me consult the diary to doublecheck. Hmmm, Russian diary entries for March, 1998:

Grippe [flu epidemic] in the town

next day ...

She's sick

next day ...

Wild night

next day ...

Hot night

next day ...

I came down with grippe.

So, nothing too romantic in there, it seems. Snow was everywhere and those were the days when cold was cold and brass monkeys abounded. Just looking through the rest of that year - my mother died, I lost my girl, got her back, lost her again, sent her away, got her back and so on. Must have been crazy in those days.

I note that 10 years earlier I'd written a bit of doggerel:

Never so alone
When once we were not alone
Only then can we truly feel
The sad, severe nothing of loneliness

We also touched, last evening, on the utter pointlessness of hankering after someone you're never going to have or never going to regain, like Bill Yeats, for whom Maude was truly Gonne. On the other hand, Tennyson's words [In Memoriam: 27, 1850 are apt:

'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all

Truly nothing changes but we're due for an upcycle, of course, all misunderstandings cleared up and all things turning out to be well.

Tuhan rela, Inshalla.

[I pass this meme along to the Twelve Most Recent Visitors in MyBlogLog in the left sidebar. This post is dedicated to Nunyaa, Anya and one who knows who she is, peace be upon her.]

[teachers] imparting which values

Off topic but methodologically, this girl needs to be taken to one side and taught that:

1. the teacher has time to do all the board work before the lesson [which she may well have here], that shoddy board work is an invitation for children's shoddy work;

2. one never turns one's back on the class - if you need to write on the board, then you turn side on and keep the class in view through the 180 degree vision you've developed. This is as fundamental to teaching as to the acting profession.

This is also why OH projectors and powerpoints were developed but that's another matter.

However, that is not the point of the post of this post. There were some interesting statements made here:

[Megablogger] Welshcakes Limoncello posted:

"Yes, but if the teachers feel that the flag is being paraded for racist reasons, don't they have a point?"

I disagreed with this and you stated further,

"Anon, I have a right to express my opinion, just as you do. Despite a a life spent in education, I'm afraid I don't know any "pc communist maniac" teachers. I wish I did, as they might be rather refreshing!"

Teachers do not have a right to do anything other than teach what they are supposed to teach. If everyone did as they pleased what would result? Of course teachers often do not stick to their remit, i.e. they "innocently" throw in comments about English "racists" and the English empire (It was the British empire. That includes Scotland, Wales and Ireland too).

Teachers are NOT guardians of England's children. Teachers have no right to tell parents what to do either!

Seriously, your view that teachers "have a point", i.e. you mean the right to take action, if they "feel" that the cross of St George is being paraded for racist reasons is fascist! Why can't I also "take action" if I feel certain groups are not acting appropriately? Come on lets have a free for all.

So, in nutshell, Anon says that the teacher has no right to impart "values", an argument I feel he's just being devil's advocate for. On the other hand Welshcake's never having seen a Marxist teacher" - well one has to smile as she's surrounded with them at secondary level and this constitutes the majority political view of virtually all teacher training, from the selection of set texts to recommended booklists.

When I read Economics Politics, the required texts included Tawney, Sorel, Shaw and so on - evolutionists and revolutionist. The whole thrust was humanist/atheistic. Thus we have the keynote address [April 1972] to the Association for Childhood Education International, by Chester M. Pierce, Professor of Education and Psychiatry in the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard University, proclaiming:

"Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances toward our founding fathers, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being. It's up to you, teachers, to make all of these sick children well by creating the international child of the future."

... or the quote [Feb. 10, 1973], by Catherine Barrett, former president of the National Education Association, who writes that:

"dramatic changes in the way we will raise our children in the year 2000 are indicated, particularly in terms of schooling. We will need to recognize that the so-called 'basic skills,' which currently represent nearly the total effort in elementary schools, will be taught in one-quarter of the present school day. When this happens - and it's near - the teacher can rise to his true calling. More than a dispenser of information, the teacher will be a conveyor of values, a philosopher. We will be agents of change."

These sorts of people are the ones who define the cognitive aspects of CurrR&D - the think tanks behind the textbooks and have you ever considere who the authors of these books, such as Headway, Cutting Edge and so on are?

Of course values are transmitted by teachers and of course it's all done politically with the naive girl in the pic above not even aware most of the time just how political she actually is being. As a former paid up Fabian, I can add to the body of opinion which recognizes the school curriculum as a key area in society for the propagation of "values".

They've always been the battleground for ideologies, schools. Here are some references supporting the notion that the dumbing down of education is a very real thing. But for what purpose?

‘There are really not enough words to describe the absurdity of so-called "liberal" educational theories that this blogger came across during his teacher training: false dichotomies between different forms of learning that I would expect one of my brighter senior pupils to spot within about four minutes; the ludicrous notion that telling a pupil they're wrong represents an "authoritarian theory of knowledge" - are just a couple of the symptoms of the other-worldly disconnection with reality that so disfigures our educational system.’

Portals for further reading here and here.

Which still leaves us with the question on whether values should be imparted at all in schools. Well, rather ask the question: "Is there any way values cannot be imparted or can be prevented form being imparted?"

So the issue then becomes which values? Well, the values of the deeply committed and organized, of course. As U.S. Senator William Jenner of Indiana, took to the Senate Floor, to speak in support of the Bricker Amendment [February 23, 1954], he addressed the nature of these people:

"The important point to remember about this group is not its ideology but its organization. It is a dynamic, aggressive, elite corps, forcing its way through every opening, to make a breach for a collectivist one-party state. It operates secretly, silently, continuously to transform our Government without our suspecting the change is under way... It conducts tactical retreats but only the more surely to advance its own goal."

Ron Paul estimated [August 2003] that there were about 25 000 of them in key positions in the U.S. alone. [O/T but interesting then that the neocons decry Ron Paul who is actually on the side of True Conservatism and Truth. :)

And as for pressure groups in and out of education, the great Tom Paine [blogger] once said:

Before their political and economic projects failed, by means of their iron grip on our educational institutions, the Left in Britain managed to socialise two or three generations to defer to certain allegedly oppressed groups. Just as our ancestors would have instinctively have tugged their forelocks at the aristocrats of old, so now do we at these new ones.

Therefore, those who would reassert the values of G-d, Queen and country need to get off their collective butts and counter the hatchet job done on us all in the last four decades alone, before absolutely everything has gone.

No small task.

[Post dedicated to Welshcakes Limoncello and Lord Nazh]

[the new chivalry] blueprint for the coming age

A woman upset at being made to feel inferior

The Great Anon refers to my "recent" sense of spirituality and idealism:

Now. I'd be the first to admit that what you are struggling to say has validity, and I equally have to say that while ever you try in the spiritual way to explain, you will fail, and maybe if you'd looked where I've looked, you'd realise the extent of that statement ... Your search, your dreams/praises, etc, all have validity. They were hijacked 2000 years ago, and this has perpetuated to this day. Your historical like thinkers were branded heretics and burned at the stake, or drowned at the ducking stool.

... and places a rationalist slant on it all:

The Magdalene companions, Mary Salome (Helena), and Mary Jacob, (wife of Cleophas), are said to be buried in the crypt of Les Saintes Maries in the Carmague. Long befor the ninth century church was built, its predecessor was called Sanctae Mariae de Ratis, and near the present main nave is the remains of a sculpture showing the Marys at sea.

I am the first to say that the presence of the eternal Anons on this blog raises the intellectual tone in many cases but there are other, more naive, young and idealistic words referring to the phenomenon of love, which is what Pascha is, after all, a testament to.

Narrowing the field to love itself and in particular, man woman love, a young Indonesian lady recently gave a unique perspective on today's My Rights relationships:

At the end, I'll be safe behind his shield. I will lay on his shoulder and took his helping hand.

Sigh. That's so sweet. When I read that, I was more than curious how the lovely and talented JMB, Welshcakes and Ruthie would respond. Ruthie has now put [not actually in response]:

I know I’ve mentioned this before—this pervasive idea that a woman needs to be redeemed by a man—but it drives me crazy. It isn’t as widespread as it once was, I’m sure, but it’s still there. There is a very urgent, very real pressure for a woman to validate her adulthood by marrying. That same pressure does not exist for a man.

Yes, Ruthie - indeed this pervasive idea that a woman needs to be redeemed by a man is just and fair, just as the parallel pervasive idea that a man needs to be redeemed by a woman is not only equally valid but both should underpin the correct ordering of human relations on this earth.

Both together, side by side, in balance and harmony.

An excellent young blogger called Febra responds to the Saya piece with this:

This is my story about woman.

In Yogyakarta, a lot of husbands didn't gave permission to their wife
for working. The reasons are :

1. They think thats already woman destiny to stay at home and serve them, wife must be at home when they arrive home from their activities.

2. They afraid if their wife fall in love again with her partner or others people if working in some places.

3. Worried if the wife more success then them. As the lead in family, some people didn't like if thier wife more rich than them.

For me, thats wrong attitude. Because If woman only at home, with no activities thats will make them bored. Also in yogyakarta or in another place, a lot of woman have good education untull they graduted from university.

So shame if they didn't working. They cann't developed their ability. Ofcourse a lot of people have own bisnis also.

If you already married. You have commitment with him/her. So why you scare if your wife will fall in live again to another people? did u marrried because you believe her will stay together with you? trust her and let them show their ability.

Thats it James. I hope you like it. This is my experience when some of my friends share with me about their life.

That was the perspective of a young modern male in a Muslim majority society. Another excellent blogger, Anastarsiarta, asks:

Did they really marry because of falling in love? Possibly, yes they were married because of sex or money. I was considered possibly a dreamer because I still trusted an everlasting love, hoped the marriage could happen because of the love, and the harmony in the family could continue to take place because of the love that was maintained...

I believe this is still possible, quite possible.

Speaking with my former love last evening about Ruthie's piece, whilst the focus of my dreams is off on an extended sabbatical, I said that I'd love both ladies to put here on this blog how "oppressed" they felt and feel in the relationship and how "their rights had been infringed".

She laughed and we got on to who had broken up with whom and called it line ball but when it came down to the generally accepted story that I had pursued her back to Russia, she smiled and said: "I was always in the driving seat. I seduced you though you thought it was the other way and wrote it up like that."

I didn't actually detect any sign of inequality here [but maybe that's me] or in my current rollercoaster ride which has for now come off the rails [I'm still mopping the tears up off the floor]. I rather think that the girl is most definitely in the driving seat - though I appear to set the agenda. Dirty words in the west such as "feminine wiles", when in full flight, are more than a match for any man's "oppression".

As she said: "When we spoke this morning, you seemed close to tears. So what came over you this evening?"

That's easy. As that blogger said in her piece above about loving men, so I love women and the way they operate - complex, yes, often viewing truth as a political tool, yes, skilled in the art of achieving their ends, yes - but irresistible all the same.

In the Islamic guidelines for making love, for example, did you know it is not permissible for a man to wham, bam, thank you maam? So in one stroke, rape and disrespect are made anthema and consideration of the woman is decreed? That many men do not is a testament more to them.

So if women can love and appreciate men and men can love and appreciate women, why all this talk of being made to feel inferior?

That seems sad to me.

So yes, let's get back to chivalry, not as an article of oppression of the female but rather as a celebration of the correct ordering of life. Referring to the man:

a. Prowess: that combination of courage, strength and skill that commanded respect.

b. Honor: having a strong sense of morality, integrity and deference before those in the offices of authority.

c. Loyalty: meaning the pledged word, was chivalry's fulcrum. The extreme emphasis given to it derived from the time when a pledge between lord and vassal was the only form of government.

d. Courtesy: respectful behavior not only towards one's betters*, but also for those below one's own cast as well. "Do unto others what you would have them do unto you."

e. Courtly love: Designed to make the knight more polite and to lift the tone of society, courtly love required required its disciple to be in a chronically armorous condition, on the theory that he would thus be rendered more courteous, gallant, and society in consequence more joyous.

Now, if we can eliminate all talk* of "one's betters" and "below one's own cast" and allow that a lady and a gentleman are made, not born and that anyone can join the "elite caste" if it is their will, then we potentially have a bunch of men charging around on their white steeds being gallant and a bunch of damsels gratefully accepting a spot of assistance and providing their own unique variety in return, sparing the time whilst not busily engaged in their own affairs.

Everyone ends up giving to others and thereby receiving it in full measure in return.

Sigh :)

[pascha] western and eastern

Russian Pascha is in a few weeks in April. Western Good Friday is today.

The time leading up to today, for me, has been a personal rollercoaster of faith related matters and if the blogging has been distinctly strange, you don't know the half of it - devastating day in the Christian calendar and ditto on the personal front.

I still stand by the idealism and the chivalry though. I still believe they are better than the alternative.

I wish all of you living in the west the very best on your Easter break.

Ryan Campbell

MyHeritage: Look-alike Meter - Genelogy - Family history

Hannah Banana

MyHeritage: Look-alike Meter - Geneology - Roots