By J T Coombes www.globalmagnacarta.com @GMagnaCarta
Images and beliefs planted during the educational process, particularly in junior school, are a powerful tool with which to shape future society, something religious institutions have recognised and used for centuries. Within state schools education has been a political ‘football’ as successive governments, like religions, have sought to impose their vision of how to nurture our young.
Just like a football the direction of education has bounced back and forth, leaving teachers and pupils at the mercy of whatever fad our ‘career’ politicians have hit upon as a means to win fame and fortune. Sadly this political manoeuvring is driven by a lust for power and lacks both vision and depth of thinking. Each successive Education Minister reacts to the opinion polls, or worse continues and ill thought out strategy that lowers the morale of the teaching staff because no one direction can be sustained for very long.
This is particularly pertinent where religious teaching is concerned because it has been the cause of more human suffering to our species that any other type of belief system. Great power can be achieved over many people through religious belief and the manner in which this power has been exerted over the centuries has cause the deaths of millions of innocent people as one belief system vies with another for control of our species.
In Birmingham it has reared its ugly head again as reports offer that Islamic fundamentalists seek to take over and control the agendas of schools in the city. Their intent is to introduce their own narrow belief system with the intention of shaping future society in Birmingham and, hopefully the rest of Britain. The outcry their actions have evoked suggests their beliefs have little or no credibility in a free society that will not tolerate any reductions in that freedom. Sharia law will not gain acceptance across a multi-cultural society that is seeing the growing emancipation of women, the odds are too great, as women enjoy the fruits of their hard won battles for gender equality.
In an era where the status quo of our entire species is undergoing radical change the like of which is unprecedented in our history, with the communications explosion, globalisation and multi-culturalism, society is struggling to cope and that has a devastating knock on effect to our children!
Education has to be the central rock upon which we guide our young through these times of vast social upheaval and must be the conduit through which thinking, data and guidance on these changes must travel.
For this to happen effectively our education policy must be put in the hands of a government who has and understanding of what is now going on and the vision to drive the ‘School Bus’ safely along its journey to global emancipation and understanding. Reacting to another burst in the dam, as has happened over the Trojan Horse affair, by calling for ‘British values’ is indicative of someone wholly out of their depth and relying on the shallowness of sound bites to resolve a serious problem.
Our children and the teaching establishment deserve better and this must be reflected in how we vote next year. I believe we should vote for minority parties to send a crystal clear message to parliament that we have had enough. The country will not grind to a halt because it is the Civil Service that runs things, politicians merely point them in a particular direction. What it will do is scare the hell out of the main three parties and knock the arrogant smile off the faces of the leadership.
We are in too much of a mess now through shallow political values, closely aligned to the corporate world, that have created debt, fracking, surveillance, unemployment, the rape of our healthcare services and so much more. Voters have the real power and government has to be brought back under control by voters increasingly calling the shots. They can do it they just have to wake up and realise it!
