Layer 449 . . . Dignity, Justice, Human Rights, Protests and Peaceful Revolutions

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One of the Egyptian protesters said, "This is not just a revolt to topple the regime. This is a revolt for our dignity and for justice."

Meanwhile, on TV yesterday, a reporter said, "Outside Tripoli he (Gaddafi) has no control whatsoever."

When people start to demand the right to some dignity and social justice, then it becomes more unlikely they will replace one set of ruling bastards with another set that's pretty similar, as has happened in Britain. If people have overcome apathy and fear, and come out on the streets to demand the right to be the rulers and not the ruled, they have reached a different level of consciousness. Awakening a higher level of consciousness is like letting a genie out of a bottle. What sort of trickery (or power) might be required to persuade it to go back in the bottle?

This past month has been amazing. Last weekend the Gaddafi regime lost control of all areas of Libya apart from the capital city. What's it going to take to put that genie back in its bottle? Incredible. At the same time the regime in Bahrain, of all places, was forced to withdraw from the central square and allow the protestors to occupy it. It was also a symbol of what's now happening that the regime was also forced to cancel its forthcoming Grand Prix - a lucrative part of the biggest capitalist circus on the planet, the benefits of which reach NONE of the Bahraini people, except maybe a handful employed at the racing circuit on minimum wages.

The previous weekend had seen the beginning of the challenge to the regime in Algeria.

The weekend before that we saw, of course, the downfall of Mubarak in Egypt.

From protest to revolution

Anger at inequality isn't confined to Tunisia or Egypt - where uprisings give a blueprint for other nations.

by Dan Hind

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/02/20112131580638716.html#

The popular uprising in Egypt is still less than three weeks old. We still cannot know how it will end - whether the ruling party will make some concessions and cling on to power within a new government - or whether a united opposition will sweep away Mubarak's apparatus. And we cannot tell what kind of regime will emerge.

The revolutions that overthrew the Soviet system in Central and Eastern Europe did not always empower the dissidents who risked the most in the struggle for freedom. Former secret policemen and their allies in organised crime often proved more adept in the years that followed than the idealists they once tormented.

But for all the uncertainty, Egypt has already shaken the region and the world. For those watching in Europe and the US, it has put an end to any lazy notion that the alternative to corrupt dictatorship in the Middle East is chaos or Islamic extremism. The worldly realists, with their regretful talk of the need for moderation, now stand exposed as power-worshipping fantasists. The Christians and Muslims crying "one hand, one hand", as they call for an end to Mubarak's tyranny have made a farce of decades of Western commentary and analysis.

Standing as one

The regime itself did all it could to encourage sectarian tension in the country, while its supporters in the West pretended it was a bulwark against religious violence. But, despite all the efforts to destroy civil society through torture and the organised suspicion of a police state, people have found each other.

Millions are being transformed by the experience of a public life without fear. In the words of one of the protestors, Wael Gawdat: "At Tahrir Square you see different Egyptians from the ones you see on the subway or the bus. No fights and no discomfort from the crowded setting. In short, Egypt is more beautiful in Tahrir Square."

The decision of the Egyptian people to take responsibility for their future - their decision to become citizens - enlivens, even delights. This is a movement that isn't being orchestrated by leaders in the way we have been led to expect. People are acting as though they are free and so becoming free. 

The Egyptians, like the Tunisians - like people all over the world - want a share in the vast wealth that their rulers and a handful of insiders have hoarded for themselves. They want dignity and a life they can call their own. For the moment they are not afraid and they are united. They are showing us the truth of David Hume’s remark that our rulers 'have nothing to support them but opinion'. The Egyptian people no longer believed the Mubarak regime was as good as any other that might be established. They have seen for themselves that there can be stability without torture.

Rejecting injustice

They do not believe that the distribution of property is just and they do not accept the legitimacy of their government. They have changed their opinion of what is possible and right. Every day of freedom they enjoy is a message to the rest of us; things do not have to be as they are.
So the Egyptians and the Tunisians have swept away the prejudices that have so long confused and corrupted the understanding of people in the West. More than that, they have also reminded Europeans and American what political action can achieve - and what it feels like to be free.

We have long been entranced by the idea that shopping and voting once every four years for one wing or other of the pro-business party would be enough to give us the good life. Vast public relations campaigns fostered the sense that a better future could be had, if only we chose wisely from the list of approved candidates. All the while the rich have taken more and left the rest of us to struggle with insecurity, anxiety and mounting debts. The people in Cairo didn't look to charismatic politicians or party machines to do the work for them. They moved faster than their leaders.

You can do it, too

In the West, there have been stirrings of dissent as the scale of the economic crisis becomes apparent and the reassurances of the mainstream media - that good times are just around the corner, come to sound ever more threadbare. Students, and young people in particular, have already shaken off the wishful passivity of the previous generation. But for the most part the outrage and sense of betrayal have expressed themselves in ways that pose no real threat to the governing establishment or the opulent minority who control it.

The Tea Party in the United States and Conservatives in Britain promise change while working to ensure that everything that matters stays the same. The right in both countries has benefited from the failure of their centrist opponents to address the fundamental causes of recession, unemployment and social breakdown. It is as though the entire political establishment has adopted the stultifying uniformity of a one-party state. There is a bankruptcy of policy and of principle that will, perhaps, finally compel us to take matters into our own hands.

In the presidential campaign of 2008, Barack Obama never tired of telling voters they were the change they had been looking for. The people of Tunisia and Egypt have turned a clever slogan into an undeniable fact. They did not wait for permission to take action. If we want another world we must all learn from them.

Can we look beyond the stereotypes offered by our media, and see that the Egyptians and the Tunisians are now daring us to be free?

Yes, we can.

Dan Hind has worked in publishing since 1998 and is the author of two well-acclaimed books: The Return of the Public and The Threat to Reason. He is also a regular contributor to The Guardian.

Follow him on Twitter: @danhind

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Al-Jazeera:

Social networks, social revolution 


Youtube, Facebook and Twitter have become the new weapons of mass mobilisation.


http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/empire/2011/02/201121614532116986.html


Information is power, but 21st century technology has unleashed an information revolution, and now the genie is out of the bottle.


Youtube, Facebook and Twitter have become the new weapons of mass mobilisation; geeks have taken on dictators; bloggers are dissidents; and social networks have become rallying forces for social justice.


As people around the world challenge authorities, from Iran to Tunisia, Egypt to Yemen, entire societies are being transformed as ordinary citizens see the difference, imagine the alternative, and come together to organise for a better future.


So, are social networks triggering social revolution? And where will the next domino fall?


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Reflections: Egypt Revolution


Egypt's Uprising is only the first in many steps,the challenge ahead is to build a society on fair principles.


http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/02/201121414422998168.html

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What makes a revolution succeed?


While the aspirations are different, Egyptians could take five lessons from Iran's 1979 revolt.


http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/02/201121393446561799.html


On February 12, 32 years this week, Iran proclaimed its revolution a success: the Shah was gone, the military had been decimated, and a new era could dawn.


Although what followed turned out very differently than what the Egyptians are hoping for, Iran's was one of the great revolutions of the 20th century, and Egyptians might well look to it for inspiration in their effort to oust an entrenched regime and gain new rights.


Today, the Egyptian military has assumed command, with promises of free and fair elections. Does this mean the demonstrators can go home and trust their army? Egypt and Iran are very different, their aspirations and media eons apart, and, one hopes, the future the Egyptians construct will be more democratic and safe for those reaching for popular victory.


Nonetheless, for those along the Nile facing quickly changing events, the Iranian revolution offers some useful lessons.


Lesson one: Revolutions take time

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Egypt's revolution has just begun


The transition to civilian rule will not be easy - if the military are capable of delivering on their promises.


http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/02/2011213134458448460.html


"Whatever happens, nothing will ever be the same again" – Tahrir Square demonstrator.


Mubarak has fallen. February 11, 2011, has inscribed itself on the page of world history. Now the struggle for the 'heart and soul' of the revolution begins. It's a testing time, and all will be tested.


Test 1: Procedural and institutional change – the establishment of legality


At what point will the uprising be sufficiently secure from counter-revolution to begin construction of a truly transformed democratic polity? What are the minimum security requirements for its immediate defence and subsequent extension? What structural changes will have to be demanded - and fought through to a successful conclusion – in order to neutralise and dis-articulate the still formidable powers of the Mubarak state and its - temporarily silenced - backers?


Test 2: The shape and boundaries of revolutionary democracy – the contours of freedom and the struggles surrounding inclusive or exclusive participation 


How will the emergent revolution realise itself, consecrate itself? What shall be its core tasks, boundaries and limits? Who is to be included, who excluded? And on what basis, what grounds?
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Layer 376 . . . Human Rights, Truth, Torture, Bush, China, Waterboarding, and Lessons to be Learned

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"Truth is the first casualty of war."  -  Aeschylus

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There are another 100 million people throughout the world living in poverty since the great banking crisis took place. Western-style so-called democracy and capitalism do not, and have never, guaranteed prosperity. Various countries in Scandinavia, South America and Asia have long ago woken up to the fact that capitalism needs regulation, that societies benefit from greater fairness and equality, that poverty is intolerable where it is avoidable, and that a free press in itself is no guarantee of better public information, understanding and enlightenment.

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Cameron in China: What does Beijing think of us? Let's start with hypocrisy

Alleged British war crimes in Iraq and George Bush's comments on waterboarding have weakened David Cameron's hand 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/nov/10/cameron-china-beijing-hyprocrisy

As David Cameron vowed to raise human rights as a topic of discussion in Beijing, it became the subject of two other international news stories.

One was a report that British troops may face trials for war crimes in Iraq. The other was the insistence by George Bush – who enjoyed British support throughout his "war on terror" – that waterboarding is not torture.

Despite Downing Street's dismissal of the former president's claim, the conjunction is likely to feed the perceptions of some in China that western concern about human rights is at best selective and at worst downright hypocritical.

Beijing has embraced such ideas. In its annual riposte to the US state department's country reports on human rights, official news agency Xinhua wrote this spring: "The reports are full of accusations of the human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions including China, but turn a blind eye to, or dodge and even cover up rampant human rights abuses on its own territory."

"There is no better example than Guantánamo Bay of abuses committed by governments that say they uphold rights both at home and abroad," said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director of Human Rights Watch. "But if we sat around and waited for a government that had a pristine record to raise other governments' rights records, we would be standing by watching gross abuses take place on a significant scale."

Campaigners also point to Beijing's deliberate elision of foreign governments and other foreign entities – portraying activists or critical media as part of a coalition of hostile forces intent not on reforming China, but containing or even destroying it. In this view, expression of concern for human rights is not just hypocritical but a ruse.

"The Nobel peace prize … is part of a concerto supplemented by various NGOs, economic identities and international organisations orchestrated by the developed countries. They hope to harass China's growth, and press China to surrender more economic interests. They even hope that China will one day collapse under the west's ideological crusade," the People's Daily article said.

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Waterboarding is no basis for truth

George Bush's defence of torture relies on a belief in information that our intelligence agencies treat with deep scepticism

by Richard Norton-Taylor

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/nov/09/george-bush-waterboarding-torture

Bush cannot be allowed to get away with making these kind of claims about information based on torture, information that Britain's security and intelligence agencies treat with deep scepticism and – as far as the supposed links between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein's Iraq are concerned – incredulity.

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George Bush's torture admission is a dismal moment for democracy

When again will the US be able to direct others to meet their human rights standards?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/09/george-bush-torture-admission-democracy

by Philippe Sands

Although it comes as no surprise, George Bush's straight admission that he personally authorised waterboarding – an act of torture and a crime under US and international law – marks a dismal moment for western democracies and the rule of law. When again will the US be able to direct others to meet their human rights standards? Certainly not before it takes steps to bring its own house in order.

Unlike the UK's coalition government, which has announced a judicial inquiry on allegations of British involvement in torture, Barack Obama's administration has apparently ended the practice – but has done nothing to investigate the circumstances in which it was used by the Bush administration.

Bush claims that the use of waterboarding on Abu Zubaydah "saved lives", including British ones. There is not a shred of evidence to support that claim, one that falls into the same category as the bogus intelligence relied on to justify war in Iraq.

Indeed, waterboarding and Iraq appear to be interconnected, as torture-induced information was relied upon to justify the invasion. Torture may produce information, but it doesn't produce reliable information, as every experienced interrogator I have spoken with repeatedly tells me – on both sides of the Atlantic. It produces the information that the subject believes the interrogator wants to hear.

What is accurate – up to a point – is Bush's claim to have acted on legal advice.

Bush fails to mention that the advice prepared by Yoo and Bybee – which did not go through the normal inter-departmental consultations – has been subject to devastating criticism. The DOJ's own office of professional responsibility concluded that Yoo "put his desire to accommodate the client above his obligation to provide thorough, objective and candid legal advice and … therefore committed intentional professional misconduct".

It found that Bybee had acted in "reckless disregard" of his professional obligations. Both men escaped sanctions only because an associate deputy general counsel, David Margolis, later concluded that both men had exercised "poor judgment" but did not knowingly provide false advice. Margolis nevertheless concluded that Yoo's "loyalty to his own ideology and convictions clouded his view of his obligation to his client".

This is the dismal, bogus legal advice on which Bush relied, and the fact that he continues to invoke it today says much about his judgment. He would do better to take on board those with first-hand experience of what the embrace of torture might mean for Americans abroad, who recognise that its use by the US will justify its use against the US.

When Bush first authorised waterboarding, says former US Centcom commander General Joseph Hoar, "he sent America down the wrong road, battering our alliances, damaging counterinsurgency efforts, and increasing threats to our soldiers". So much for saving lives.

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No charges over destruction of CIA interrogation tapes

Videos showed harsh interrogation techniques used on two al-Qaida suspects at secret CIA detention centre after 9/11 attacks

by Ewen MacAskill

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/09/no-charges-destruction-cia-interrogation-tapes

The US justice department announced today that there is to be no prosecution of CIA officers who destroyed videotapes of the interrogation of two alleged terrorists, both subjected to waterboarding.

The 92 tapes covered the interrogations of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who was accused of being the al-Qaida mastermind behind the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, and Abu Zubaydah, who the US claimed was a senior al-Qaida operative involved in the bombing of two US embassies in East Africa in 1998.

The interrogations took place at one of the CIA's "black sites", a secret detention centre, in Thailand. The tapes were ordered to be destroyed in 2005 during the Bush administration by the head of CIA clandestine operations, José Rodriguez, but it is not known if he was acting on his own initiative or on orders from higher up. The tapes had been held in a safe at the CIA station in Thailand.

The justice department offered no explanation today why no prosecution case would be forthcoming or why the tapes were destroyed.

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Servicemen at 'UK's Abu Ghraib' may be guilty of war crimes, court hears

Evidence of alleged systematic mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at JFIT facility near Basra submitted to court

by Ian Cobain

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/08/servicemen-uk-abu-ghraib-court-iraq

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British military interrogators may be charged as war criminals

Videos produced in court appear to show Iraqi detainees being abused at secret prison

by Ian Cobain and Richard Norton-Taylor

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/10/iraq-prisoners-abuse-british-military

The Ministry of Defence is at the centre of a new crisis over the abuse of prisoners after it was disclosed yesterday that a number of British military interrogators may be charged as war criminals.

The development comes after videos submitted as evidence to a high court case appeared to show members of a military intelligence unit threatening, abusing and humiliating Iraqi detainees at a secret prison near Basra.

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British troops may face Iraq war crimes trial

Interrogators at secret jail dubbed 'UK's Abu Ghraib' referred to chief military prosecutor

by Ian Cobain

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/09/british-military-iraq-war-crimes

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War crimes charges against military interrogators would put MoD on trial

Human rights lawyer in high court action that aims to force an inquiry into 'systematic abuse' of detainees in Iraq

by Ian Cobain

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/09/war-crimes-charges-military-interrogators-iraq

The revelation that a number of members of a secretive British military intelligence unit could face war crimes charges threatens to put the Ministry of Defence's entire interrogation regime on trial.

The high court heard today that the cases of three men have been referred to the Director of Service Prosecutions, who has been asked to consider war crimes charges under the 2001 International Criminal Court Act. Possible charges, the court heard, included "committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment" – a war crime under article 8 of the act.

But as the Guardian reported last month, men and women who undergo training as interrogators at the Intelligence Corps headquarters in Chicksands, Bedfordshire, are instructed to do just this. Among the training material upon which last month's report was based are PowerPoint slides and training manuals telling trainee interrogators that they should aim to provoke humiliation, insecurity, disorientation, exhaustion, anxiety and fear. The material also suggests how this can be achieved.

One aid, created in September 2005, tells trainees that prisoners should be stripped before they are questioned. "Get them naked," it says. "Keep them naked if they do not follow commands." Another manual, prepared around the same time, advises the use of blindfolds to put prisoners under pressure.

A manual prepared in April 2008 suggests that "Cpers" – captured personnel – be kept in conditions of physical discomfort and intimidated. Sensory deprivation is lawful, it adds, if there are "valid operational reasons". It also urges enforced nakedness. Prisoners should be "conditioned" before questioning, the material says, with conditioning defined as the combined effects of self-induced pressure and "system-induced pressure". Harsh questioning – or "harshing" – in which an interrogator puts his face close to the prisoner, screaming, swearing and making threats, is recommended as a means to provoke "anxiety/fear". Other useful methods include "insecurity", "disorientation" and "humiliation".

This material was created for the instruction of "tactical questioners", who conduct initial interrogations of prisoners of war, as well as for the instruction of servicemen and women from all three branches of the armed forces who conduct "interrogation in depth".

The material suggests not only that British military interrogators have employed techniques that may be in breach of the International Criminal Court Act, but that the MoD has spent a considerable amount of time and money training them to do just that.

Subsequently, hundreds of men who were prisoners of JFIT between 2003 and the end of 2008 alleged that they were subjected to mistreatment, including sleep deprivation, starvation, beatings, sensory deprivation, threats and humiliation.

Phil Shiner, a Birmingham human rights lawyer, has brought proceedings at the high court aimed at forcing the MoD to concede a public inquiry into the men's allegations.

Many of the former inmates complain that they were severely beaten when arrested, usually at their homes. Many allege they were again beaten in transit, in the backs of trucks or aboard helicopters.

On arrival at a British base, most of the former inmates say they were photographed and examined by a military doctor who would take no interest in their injuries. Many say they were forced to kneel upright for long periods on arrival. Many also say they were hooded or blindfolded and forced to run in zig-zags before interrogation.

For reasons that remain unclear, the interrogators filmed themselves while conducting these interrogations, and 1,253 of their recordings have now been seized by military police investigators. Those recording are expected to be central to any prosecutions.

The former inmates say the most severe mistreatment was meted out while they were not being filmed, however. In all, Shiner's team has documented 59 allegations of detainees being hooded, 11 of electric shocks, 122 of sound deprivation through the use of earmuffs, 52 of sleep deprivation, 160 of sight deprivation, including 117 using blackened goggles, 132 of the use of stress positions, 39 of enforced nakedness, and 18 allegations that detainees were kept awake by pornographic DVDs played on laptops.

In bringing proceedings on behalf of 222 former prisoners, Shiner's team argued that a public inquiry was needed to examine the systemic issues and the lessons to be learned. Anything less, they said, would fail to meet the UK's obligations under the European convention on human rights.

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Layer 336 . . . The Politics of Education, Graduates, Sweat, Debt, and Disillusionment

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Oh well, it's back to keeping up with politics, beginning with the politics of education.

Peter Preston, loud-mouthed supporter of SATs and league tables, and scourge of trendy lefty teachers, as he imagines them, is suddenly concerned about children and students actually enjoying life. Why? Well wouldn't you know it - he's been awarded an honorary degree (why?) and he wants us to know about it. Being at a graduation ceremony has caused him to focus on real students and their experiences of the education system.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/25/university-not-just-exam-slog

University: learning to enjoy life

Witnessing the hope of a graduation day, I remember that education is about more than sweat and debt

He remembers!!! At last!!

Actually this piece is only concerned with university students, and I suppose it's too much to expect him to think laterally to what also goes on in schools, and whether pupils enjoy their lives within them. To do that he'd need to actually go into a school, having been awarded an honorary GCSE or maybe an honorary Level 4 in English.

So what does he have to say about learning and enjoying life?

University isn't a mere staging post to a well-paid job . . . Nor is it just an investment in Britain's future, so we can compete with Beijing by 2020. It isn't wholly a practical slog, either, a skill box of computer or engineering skills. University is an experience, often a life-changing one. You leave school a spotty child, and three years later, you're sort of grown up. You have friends you'll probably never lose. You've looked after yourself. You've sweated through exams. If you're lucky, you've learned how to think – the best boon of the lot.

Yes Pete, old duck, IF YOU'RE LUCKY. Because even at undergraduate level there's still no priority given to learning how to think. What we have is still a grim determination to force young people to swallow a curriculum, memorise its content, and regurgitate it in exams.

In fact, this happens even at postgraduate level! A friend's very bright son decided to bale out of his Masters course as soon as he realised that there was still no scope for self-directed learning and research, and it was still a bloody boring exam treadmill.

Pete goes on:

When did we begin to forget such things?

When did YOU forget, you old bastard? Some of us have been saying this stuff forever. Beginning with primary schooling.

He goes on to blame education ministers for making "degree courses seem like tests for national survival."

This is the man who talks about Primary tests and league tables as though they're essentials to national survival!

And there's more. He concludes:

Is school, and then college or university, there as an obstacle race, a slog of tests and hurdles? Is it just a rehearsal for 50 years of frustration, sweat, debt, disillusion and staffroom tears?

The danger is making education seem unutterably grim. The hope – see that beaming [graduation] queue of something achieved – is that happiness has a part to play. For learning in this crunched, short life means learning to enjoy yourself, too.

Thanks to people like Peter Preston, Melanie Philips, Chris Woodhead and their politician friends, schools and universities HAVE become unutterably grim results factories where pupil and student wellbeing, as well as their social, emotional and spiritual intelligences, have been increasingly neglected and marginalised - in the rush to "drive up standards".

Learning to enjoy yourself? How can you enjoy yourself when you're racking up debt doing stuff day in and day out that's basically cramming for exams, with little or no opportunities for self-directed creative experience?

What a fucking idiot.

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There's more evidence of the university system being useless and actually harmful to young people's life chances reported in the education section of the Guardian this week.

Should universities teach students how to find a job?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jul/27/graduate-job-crisis

Sarfraz Manzoor has been following the fortunes of six young people who graduated last year. How well do they feel that university prepared them for today's economic realities?

The class of 2009 left university knowing they were facing the toughest battle for jobs in a generation.

That was, at least, the dire prediction, but what was the reality? I have spent the last year documenting the post-graduation lives of six students who are among the class of 2009. The six studied at the University of Leeds and Leeds Metropolitan University, and agreed to keep audio diaries throughout their year in which they recorded their hopes for the coming year as well as their reaction to the reality.

By the end of the year, the six students were scattered around the world and were far more cynical about the value of a university education than they had been on graduating.

For a start off it's interesting that none of the six was interested in using knowledge gained from their degrees - they all wanted to pursue careers in areas like sales, journalism and the media - careers that had nothing to do with the subjects they'd been studying. Given the likelihood that they'd originally chosen those subjects for their interest and enjoyment, what does that say about the universities making them somehow utterly tedious and uninspiring?

Page and Ali both left the country to seek work in Cyprus and Saudi Arabia, while Del Core found the soul-crushing business of being rejected hard to take. "I've looked for jobs in newspapers, at the job centre, on the internet, and by word of mouth," she says. "I've had several interviews, some of which I got to the second stage, but I never got past that. It has been quite disheartening – some positions I applied for were more the dream job than a means to an end, and I was very upset when I didn't get those. I was in tears."

Having spent time with the graduates, I was struck by how much they seemed to have believed, at least at the start, that they were entitled to a well-paid and fulfilling job simply because they had been to university. "When you look at the people who are going to university," explains Professor Kate Purcell, of Warwick University's Institute for Employment Research, "they have been encouraged to think that education has given them employability skills, so as well as learning about history or English or business studies they are also learning problem solving, developing communication skills, so they are pretty confident about themselves."

This confidence is not necessarily well founded.

A lot of people go to university for the sake of it because they think it is the right thing to do. So that makes lots of graduates. Universities are still selling the idea to people that if they go to university they are guaranteed a great job at the end of it, and that is just not the case any more.

The increasing number of graduates entering the job market has meant that employers are often insisting that prospective employees pass psychometric tests as a way of selecting candidates, and it has also led to claims that too many young people are being herded into university.

"When I think about a university course, I think of something that teaches people a skill so that they are qualified to do a certain job," says Gerrard. "But, in reality, after my degree I don't feel qualified for anything – degrees don't indicate someone's common sense or people skills, and I don't think you can get through many interviews without a little of both."

Just a little? It's pathetic really - these young graduates aren't even properly aware of what they're lacking. Common sense? What's that? People skills? Such as?

What's more, it's not their fault. They've been told since Primary school that high attainment is all that matters - and too late they find it isn't. What's more, they don't really know what does matter. And they're not the only ones. Politicians and university bosses don't know either. Their assumption is always that a first class honours or a 2.1 degree will get you anywhere in life. Beyond that, they haven't a clue. Well - that's what got them a meal ticket to their high status, was it not?

And it's no wonder that employers put more trust in 'psychometric tests' than university attainment in subjects whose facts and figures they won't be using anyway. The poor bloody students think that having a degree tells people they're "bright". Actually it doesn't. It's just as likely to say they're a dull swat, a boring little library-goer, a self-regarding 'academically able' nonentity with little experience of life, proper work, or real people. Possibly a dull conformist who's unable to think for themselves, unable to think creatively and imaginatively, unable to work well in a team, or communicate effectively, or write well, or show any empathy, intuition or instinctual intelligence. Common sense indeed.

The New Learning Revolution is about developing all of these intelligences and skills. How come the people who run education in this country don't realise that yet? How many more generations of our young people will go through our education system deprived of the sorts of learning that are taken for granted in countries much smarter than ours?

What's more, they're deprived of their human right to enjoy learning for its own sake, and to be free of undue pressure and stress within the education system.

This country used to be known for its creative and innovative approaches to teaching and learning. Not only have other countries overtaken us, we've actually been going backwards for the past 20 odd years.
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Layer 324 . . . The LRB, Dreyfus, Zola, Truth, Justice, Blind Faith and Constructive Criticism

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I’ve said this before, but for people who enjoy having their minds stretched and their thoughts stimulated by writing which has depth, clarity, wit, insight and originality the London Review of Books is a fortnightly treat.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/

Non-subscribers can access a fair amount of its content on-line, such as this superb article by Jacqueline Rose, which can also be viewed on the LRB website as a video lecture:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n11/jacqueline-rose/jaccuse-dreyfus-in-our-times

Her main concern is with the recent events involving Israel and Gaza, and with (mis)uses of State power generally. She uses the case of Alfred Drefus, and the subsequent trial of Emile Zola, to illustrate the way in which individuals can be persecuted by the State, and the way in which brave individuals can, and should, stand up for truth and justice in the face of overwhelming State power and public prejudice.

These quotes will give a flavor, but the piece ought to be read in its entirety.

What is a collective passion? And is it something we should want, or get excited about?

It remains to be seen whether [Obama’s] rhetoric can fully triumph over the crushing anomie of state bureaucracy and the realities of political power. And that is not to speak of the lethal counter-enthusiasm, the ugly, race-tinted hatreds also provoked by the election of the first black president, the dogs baying on the White House lawn.

Our era seems only rarely to be capable of marshalling collective affect in the direction of the common good. As Tony Judt has eloquently argued on several occasions over the past year and in his new book, Ill Fares the Land, the sense of mass belonging which characterised European and American politics from the late 19th century well into the last, doesn’t seem to be there any longer.

In an interview with Kristina Bozic in this paper, he laments what he sees as a failure of political vocabulary, the absence of a language that could inspire ‘collective ideals around which we can gather, around which we can get angry together, around which we can be motivated collectively, whether on the issue of justice, inequality, cruelty or unethical behaviour’.

One million marched against the war in Iraq: it made no difference. There is a fundamental ‘disconnect’ between the people and those who claim to represent them. As the last 18 months have so brutally testified, the anti-globalisation movement, though it is testament to something of what Judt is calling for, has had no effect on the clout and corruption of international finance across the world. Action on climate change seems to be in freefall. With no apparent awareness of the irony, we will save the banks before – or rather instead of – saving the world.

We have lost our capacity for political rage. Can passion be stronger than power? Do we want it to be?

Imagine now the Palais de Justice in Paris in February 1898. Emile Zola has been charged with libelling the army in his famous letter, which we know today under the title ‘J’accuse’ (it was a stroke of genius of the editor of L’Aurore, the left-wing paper in which it appeared, to splay these words in a bold headline across the front page). Zola wrote the letter in response to the acquittal of Major Esterhazy, a low-life womanising swindler, who had been exposed as the true author of the bordereau or missive that had precipitated the affair. Discovered in a wastepaper basket at the German Embassy in Paris by a cleaner working for French intelligence, the bordereau revealed that classified military information was being passed from France to Germany. Wrongly – wilfully, as it turned out – it had been attributed to the young Jewish artillery captain, the rising star at the headquarters of the General Staff of the French army, Alfred Dreyfus.

To put it simply, Dreyfus had been framed. In 1894, he was court-martialled, convicted of treason and then in 1895 deported to Devil’s Island, the tiniest of three tiny Iles du Salut, or Salvation Islands, off the coast of French Guiana, where the climate was so intense that to be sent there was considered a death sentence. By the time of Zola’s trial, Dreyfus had already been languishing on the island for three years, in inhuman conditions. It almost killed him (he had also been kept in complete ignorance of the campaign to free him). He would remain there for more than a year until he was brought home for his 1899 retrial, at which he would be reconvicted ‘with extenuating circumstances’ by a court set up by the army to vindicate itself. Given that by then everyone knew he was innocent, this was in many ways a more shocking conviction than that of 1894.

Zola was sparked into his famous protest when Esterhazy walked free. As the world watched the events in France with growing dismay, Zola, along with the rapidly expanding number of Dreyfusards, had believed that the inevitable conviction of Esterhazy would be the beginning of redemption. Instead, it was a whitewash for Esterhazy and for the army.
Dreyfus would finally be pardoned in 1899, fully exonerated and reinstated in the army in 1906, and made an officer of the Légion d’honneur in the First World War . . .

What can the whole affair teach us in the process about public passion? I will track the main strands of the affair as I see them: the struggle for justice, the corruption of state and army, the outpouring of anti-semitism and the fate of the Jews. But the lessons I draw from them, the ways I see them combined, may not – by the end – be those most obviously expected.

What happens if . . . we run the line: because of Dreyfus, therefore justice, or rather the struggle for justice, crucially for the Jews a universal and endless affair? Today, following Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2008-9, the question of justice in relation to Israel has become a burning international issue. What happens if, like Bernard Lazare, a key player in the affair, we make justice a defining priority of what it might mean to be a Jew?

The affair has three heroes: Zola, the less known Colonel Picquart, one of Dreyfus’s few defenders inside the army, and Bernard Lazare, the Jewish socialist-anarchist and critic who was the first to speak out publicly in Dreyfus’s defence. But we should also add a fourth: the radical, little-known literary journal La Revue blanche.

Dreyfus knew that he had been framed because he was a Jew. ‘My only crime is to be a Jew,’ he stated to the Cherche-Midi prison director, Commandant Forzinetti, as Forzinetti led him back after his first conviction; the fact that he looked like a ‘madman’ and could not be calmed persuaded Forzinetti, before anyone else, of his innocence.

The publication of ‘J’accuse’ in 1898, and Zola’s subsequent trial, were the occasion for the most vicious outpouring of anti-semitism across France. The day after the letter was published, anti-Jewish riots, attracting up to 4000 people in each town, broke out in Nantes, Nancy, Rennes, Bordeaux, Moulins, Montpellier, Angoulême, Tours, Poitiers, Toulouse, Angers, Rouen, Châlons and Saint-Malo, as well as in Paris. Jewish shops were attacked, synagogues besieged, Jews were assaulted in the street, effigies of Dreyfus and Zola were burned.
Imagine then the extraordinary spectacle of an army officer – a colonel no less – who had previously been considered an anti-semite, stepping to the defence of Dreyfus, and pressing his innocence at the General Staff. If Zola’s courage is remarkable and duly famous, Colonel Picquart, less known to posterity, can equally be described as a hero of the affair. It was Picquart who discovered that the writing on the bordereau, the sole piece of evidence against Dreyfus, corresponded with Esterhazy’s. He had originally believed in Dreyfus’s guilt, but faced with the evidence, he put prejudice to one side. When General Gonse said to him, ‘What do you care if that Jew rots on Devil’s Island?’ Picquart replied: ‘What you are saying, General, is abominable. I will not in any event take this secret with me to the grave.’

From the moment of his discovery, Picquart stopped at nothing, including, for ten years, jeopardising his own career, in his attempts to redeem an injustice which he saw as threatening the integrity, if not the existence, of France as a nation. For that he was hated, far more indeed than Dreyfus himself.

For Picquart, blind faith in army and/or nation was the enemy of justice and truth. If he did not quite raise this opposition to the level of an abstraction, nothing makes its import clearer and more powerful than the Dreyfus affair. Nor, given the army’s final and total climbdown, does anything show quite so clearly the price it had to pay for its own machinations, cover-up and self-deception. The army lied. And once its prestige and standing had been compromised by the first lie – the wrongful accusation of Dreyfus – it became even more important for it to lie over and over again. Crushed by defeat in the war with Prussia and the loss as a consequence of Alsace-Lorraine (home to both Dreyfus and Picquart), the army had to be infallible. That is why many anti-Dreyfusards believed that, even if Dreyfus was innocent, there must be no second trial. Reading the accounts of the affair is to watch an army dig itself deeper and deeper into a morass of its own making . . .

When we consider the issue of justice in relation to Dreyfus, a central question must therefore be – as it still is today – whose justice are we talking about? Under interrogation at Zola’s trial, Major Ravary of the Paris military tribunal declared in an extraordinary outburst: ‘Military justice does not proceed like your justice.’

There were indeed two justices, two conceptions of duty and honour, two mentalities, two nations of France.’ This distinction between summary military justice and the due process of law still has its advocates. In the words of Scott Brown, the Republican elected to Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in January: ‘It’s time we stopped acting like lawyers and started acting like patriots’ (he was arguing against court trials for alleged terrorists).

The contemporary parallels don’t stop there, and certainly reach British shores. On grounds of national security, the state prosecutors argued that the most incriminating evidence against Dreyfus, which in fact did not exist, could not be revealed in court. David Miliband recently used exactly the same argument to justify withholding details of Great Britain’s policy on and, the evidence suggests, complicity in rendition and torture. National security as the cover for the erosion of civil liberties is something we have all become familiar with since 9/11. This is to take matters one step further, however: national security, more straightforwardly, as the brazen cover for state secrecy and – I think we can confidently say – lies. (Begley gives a stunning account of these parallels with Dreyfus in relation to torture and whistleblowing.)

In all of this France’s humiliation by Prussia in 1870 was crucial, since it had insinuated the idea of treachery into a nation which, like any other nation, could not bear to see itself as responsible for its own defeat. That was why having someone who could be accused of treason was such a consolation. Idolisation of the army was the cover for catastrophe. This is also an essential lesson of the affair. There is no army more dangerous or ruthless, more prone to internal corruption, than one haunted by failure. It is often under conditions of disaster, past or threatened, that an army turns into a god.

‘I thought there was a better way to serve a cause than to wrap oneself in blind faith’: Picquart’s words at Zola’s trial received the strongest support from what might appear at first glance to be an unexpected quarter. La Revue blanche, an eclectic literary journal, founded in 1889, was home to some of Proust’s earliest writing and boasted Blum as one of its foremost contributors. Up until 1898, it seemed to share no aesthetic or ethical principles, no communal identity, except, perhaps – for some of its writers – the sense, in the words of one historian, ‘of belonging to the race of Israelites’. Thadée Natanson, its proprietor, was a Jew and friend of Reinach’s. Its writers included Gustave Kahn, Julien Benda and Bernard Lazare. On 1 February 1898, two weeks after the publication of ‘J’accuse’, the Revue published a ‘Protestation’ of its belief that Dreyfus was the victim of a judicial error and of its ‘nausea’ at the affair. La Revue blanche, one of the few public forums in which Jews were willing to speak out in defence of Dreyfus, provides a context which allows me to ask two questions which are, as I see it, among the most important legacies of the affair: what is an intellectual, and what is a Jew?

Almost overnight, the Revue went from being a literary journal whose only manifesto was not to have one, to a publication in the service of a political cause. In an outburst that nothing could have led one to anticipate, La Revue blanche picked up Zola’s baton and ran with it.
In the eyes of the Revue, it was the writer’s role to redeem the political disaster engulfing France: ‘Justice, like charity, like solidarity, must always be able to count on writers.’ It knew it was sticking its neck out. A basic mindset had taken hold of the country: unconditional faith in nation and army; a belief that any challenge to the army threatened the stability of all national institutions and would fatally weaken the country; and finally, the deepest suspicion of intellectual life, a hatred, in the words of Robert Gauthier, key chronicler of the affair, ‘of free inquiry masquerading as a call to action’ (to my mind, this is just about the best definition of anti-intellectualism you could hope to get). ‘To tolerate that an external force of intellectuals, professors, writers and unaccountable journalists – that is, the force of mere opinion – be allowed to exert pressure on decisions taken by our authorities, is to open the door to subversion,’ Gauthier wrote. For any public intellectual, a huge unintended compliment.
To write like this in 1900 was to attack a sacred object. More than a century later, there are parts of the world where it still is. ‘The famous special honour of the army,’ the Revue retorted to the anti-Dreyfusards in 1898, ‘is a cover for the privilege of lying, of treachery, of thieving with glory and assassinating with impunity’ (amazingly, they were not sued). France had become a military state: ‘All at once, we can see the state, in its terrifying power as military state … The rule of law is over … The despotism of the sword has begun.’ The government was no more than a ‘vain shadow, fading away in the face of the generals’. The Revue could already discern the seeds of a totalitarianism which would come to fruition in 1940 (the Israeli historian Ze’ev Sternhell has described the anti-Dreyfusard League of Patriots as the first proto-fascist organisation). France had submitted to the yoke of its generals. The rule of law was in thrall to the army, which had been raised to a ‘theocratic’, ‘sacerdotal’ principle, idealising itself in direct proportion to the violence it was meting out, and not just to its own soldiers: ‘To prove our indomitable courage, we go off and kill defenceless negroes … prey to the murderous insanity that fatally seizes a man with weapons.’ ‘Scrape beneath your national patriotism,’ Lucien Herr wrote in an open letter to Barrès in 1898, ‘you will find haughty, brutal, conquering France, pig-headed chauvinism … the native hatred of everything that is other.’ There was no way to stand back, the Revue insisted, ‘without degrading parts of the soul’. I think this can fairly be described as ‘counter-hegemonic’ discourse blissfully running away with itself and I found myself silently cheering in the British Library when I came across it.

Although many of the writers at La Revue blanche, as well as its proprietor, were Jewish, they did not write as Jews. ‘It was in spite of his origins,’ Proust’s biographer Jean-Yves Tadié writes, ‘that a Jewish intellectual took the side of Dreyfus.’ The fight for justice, the critique of ethnic hatred, the case for Dreyfus, were all mounted in the name of universal humanitarian values in which we can already see the outlines of today’s human rights discourse.

What happened in France at the turn of the century was in many ways a forerunner of Vichy. But it is not the only story, and those who tell it risk blinding themselves to what Israel as the nation for the Jewish people did to the Palestinians in order to become a nation, and no less to what Israel has become. If the only lesson we learn from anti-semitism is more and more anti-semitism – of necessity, eternally, and as the core and limit of Jewish life – then we have learned nothing. A different version of the story would instead take from the Dreyfus affair a warning against an over fervent nationalism, against infallible armies raised to the level of theocratic principle, against an ethnic exclusivity that blinds a people to the other peoples of the world, and against governments that try to cover up their crimes.

Judge Richard Goldstone . . . was chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda between 1994 and 1996. In 1991, at the request of Nelson Mandela, he chaired an inquiry into South Africa’s political violence. None of which requires us to excuse his actions as a judge under South Africa’s apartheid regime (of course detractors who seek to highlight this era make no mention of Israel’s deep military involvement with that regime).

[Goldstone and his co-authors have published Human Rights in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories – Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict.]

To my mind, the Goldstone Report . . . affords Israel a unique possibility, I would say an obligation, to take responsibility for its own actions and to recognise the injustice of those actions, not just during Operation Cast Lead in the winter of 2008-9, but on a daily basis against the Palestinian people. There will always be a better way to serve a country ‘than to wrap oneself in blind faith’. All comparisons are invidious, but we could say that we already have our Zola. We already have ‘J’accuse’.

‘I belong to the race of those,’ Lazare said, ‘who were first to introduce the idea of justice into the world’:

All of them, each and every one, my ancestors, my brothers, wanted, fanatically, that right should be done to one and all, and that the scales of the law should never be tipped in favour of injustice. For that, over centuries, they cried out, sang, wept, suffered, despite the outrages, despite the insults spat at them. I am one of them and wish to be so. And that being the case, don’t you think I am right to speak of those whom you haven’t even dreamed of?

For me, there is finally no more important lesson to be learned from the Dreyfus affair.

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In this week’s LRB there’s another article that has some relevance to the above.

Overstatements

Diarmaid MacCulloch reviews:

Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England by Anthony Julius
Oxford, 811 pp, £25.00, February 2010

Having given a positive review to the first part of this book, which does exactly what it says on the label, MacCulloch says this:

So far, so admirable in Julius’s long account; yet already one is struck by the difference between medieval murderousness, Tudor literary stereotypes of a people far away, and the later uncomfortable relationship between a majority Anglican culture and the minorities which it found itself forced to tolerate – Jews alongside Protestant Nonconformists and Roman Catholics, who made matters even more annoying for Anglicans at various periods with the swelling crowds of alien immigrants who were still more obviously not One of Us. Indeed, Roman Catholics have been much more consistently feared and abused in post-Reformation England than Jews. If everything that Julius chronicles over the centuries is anti-semitism, then anti-semitism starts to resemble that definition of a camel as a horse designed by a committee.

Then at p. 441 the reader encounters a turn in Julius’s book: ‘And so we come to the fourth of the English anti-semitisms.’ The rest of his work is devoted to directing the feelings of revulsion aroused in any right-thinking reader by what has gone before towards an equal revulsion from any criticism of the modern state of Israel. [My emphasis] Some of that criticism might indeed be seen as anti-semitic: it comes from Islamist groups who echo the malice of President Ahmadinejad in denying the truth of the Holocaust or advocating the annihilation of Israel. But Julius seems to regard any criticism of the policies of Israeli governments as impermissible. It is difficult to see how one could make any pained remark about the ‘Security Wall’ or Israeli settlements in the West Bank or the behaviour of the IDF in Gaza without incurring his censure; in fact, even Jews who criticise such episodes are classed as anti-semitic in Julius’s taxonomy. Plaintively, in his long and commendably confessional introduction, he remarks that the anti-semitism of which he seeks to construct a portrait ‘overstates, on every occasion, and beyond reason, any case that could be made against Israel’s actions or policies’.

Yet Julius’s own assumptions seem the mirror-image of this bogeyman: on his extended argument, there can be no reasonable case for criticising Israel constructively. Surely, given our species’ record of folly, selfishness and stupidity stretching over millennia, no polity in the long history of humanity has been in the enviable position of standing beyond criticism. Julius, who is nothing if not a superb rhetorician, is fond of the rhetorical device of concessio: that is, stating his opponents’ case in order to give an appearance of balance, and then ignoring it. He is, additionally, not above using the subset of that same rhetorical device which dismisses a strong counter-opinion as a ‘tedious riposte’ – what may be termed the ‘that old chestnut’ gambit.
There seems no place for a candid friend of Israel in this account of a long history when a territorial state of Israel did not exist, followed by a very different period when it has existed. Recently, as I dealt with a large volume of mail reacting to my presentation of A History of Christianity on television, it became apparent that one of the greatest sources of offence that I had given was to stand in Auschwitz-Birkenau and remind Christians of the centuries-old heritage of anti-semitism festering in the memories of countless ordinary 20th-century Christians. This poison led not just Germans but Lithuanians, Poles and many others gleefully to perpetrate bestial cruelties on helpless Jews who had done them no harm. Without the Christian centuries of characterising the Jews as Christ-killers, the Nazis would not have been so easily able to manipulate otherwise decent people. Many viewers, otherwise sympathetic to some of my criticisms of the Christian past, found this too much to take, and said so, often forcefully; equally forceful was my response in providing them with chapter and verse on the subject. Might I have saved myself the bother, and simply referred them to Anthony Julius’s account of anti-semitism? Regrettably, I couldn’t, at least not without a health-warning that in this long book a good deal of sound historical analysis is spoiled by a non-sequitur.

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SATC2

On a much lighter note, but still on the theme of constructive criticism:

Sex and the City 2 may just be the most radical and challenging film of the year, says Victoria Coren in the Observer.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/06/sex-city-david-laws

What have you heard about Sex and the City 2? That it's bad? Let me tell you: this may be the most radical, challenging film ever made.

The first oddness of the film comes from the fact that the creators of the TV series were evidently kidnapped, bound and hidden in a cupboard while the entire project was taken over by the hardline, religious right.

Misogynists . . . have been quick to explain how much they dislike the characters in the film: venal, vacuous slags, the lot of them. Commentators have written this up as though it is their own unique take. But this is Hollywood, the great manipulator: if your misogyny is tickled, that's because it is an intensely misogynistic movie. If you despise the women, it is because the film wants you to despise the women.

It would be impossible not to. Samantha (Kim Cattrall), once a confident, funny female character who enjoyed casual sex, is, in this film, demeaned, humiliated and punished like no woman has been since the great days of the Victorian novel. She is made grotesque.

Meanwhile, her friends race around in an unnecessary fleet of gas-guzzling Mercedes, shrieking and salivating over hotel suites and shoes. Their souls are gone; nothing remains but cold, hard acquisition.

This must all be tremendously satisfying for those who disapproved of the single, self-motivated and sexually liberated women from the series. Look how it all turned out! The married ones find some happiness, once they surrender to joblessness and stop questioning their husbands' lust for large-breasted young nannies, but the one who stayed single? Ah, yes, she has developed into a desperate, shameful old whore.

Hence my assumption of a takeover by the American Christian right. As an ending to the story of these women, it reads like an extreme Calvinist pamphlet.

In order to hammer home the women's vapid, degenerate existence, the story takes them out of New York and contrasts them with normal, right-thinking people . . . It takes them to the United Arab Emirates.

The film confirms the darkest prejudices of the man or woman who despises sexually liberated New Yorkers . . . In one stunning metaphorical moment, the four chums are trapped in a souk, endangered, and dressed insensitively in shorts and plunging tops. Their escape comes – freedom is theirs – when they climb into burqas. Thus, its message is both the most conservative and the most radical we have seen in a Hollywood movie, possibly ever.

This morality tale appears to have the enormous ambition, the brave and culturally groundbreaking aim, of building bridges between religious extremists of east and west.

Sadly, it will take more than a rubbish film with bad puns to bring those groups together.

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Layer 253 . . . Education and Employment

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Mark my words . . .

Channel 4 news last night:

"British and Nato forces pushing forward in their current operation (Moshtarak) have met little or no resistance from the Taliban."

Oxzen - Layer 248:
Here we have the Americans telling the Taliban they're massing forces and about to 'surge' into Taliban-held areas, having already said that American troops will be withdrawn from the country within a year ot two. So what are you going to do if you're a Taliban? Take to the mountains and hang out there for a while until the Americans and their allies have cleared off . . .
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Education and Employment

Brother B got in touch yesterday and let me know about this piece in the Sunday Times:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7034975.ece

February 21, 2010
Schools are churning out the unemployable

The latest unemployment figures are a shocker. Eight million adults are “economically inactive”. That means one in five people of working age does not have a job. A new and expanding group, poignantly described as “discouraged” workers, have even given up looking.

They are right to be discouraged but wrong that there is no work. A report out on Friday points out that a fifth of firms and a quarter of employers in the state sector are still hiring — despite the recession. Except they are taking on migrant workers — not our home-grown “discouraged” variety.

The managing director of a medium-sized IT company explained why. High-flyers — Oxford and Cambridge graduates — are still as good as any in the world. His problems come when he tries to recruit middle management. Last year he interviewed 52 graduates — all educated in state schools. On paper they looked “brilliant students”. Each had three As at A-level and a 2:1 degree. He shook his head. “There’s a big difference between people passing exams and being ready for work.”

This was obvious even before the interview began. Of the 52 applicants, half arrived late. Only three of the 52 walked up to the managing director, looked him in the eye, shook his hand and said, “Good morning.” The rest “just ambled in”.

The three who had greeted him proved the strongest candidates and he hired them. Within a year they were out because of their “lackadaisical” attitude. They did not turn up on time; for the first six months a manager had to check all their emails for spelling and grammar; they did not know how to learn. It was the first time they had ever been asked to learn on their own. Their ability to “engage in business” was “incredibly” disappointing and “at 5.30 on the dot they left the office”.

A CBI survey revealed that literacy and numeracy were not the only problems. More than 50% of employers complained that young people were inarticulate, unable to communicate concisely, interpret written instructions or perform simple mental calculations.

The Department for Work and Pensions says UK citizens are on the dole because of “issues around basic employability skills, incentives and motivation”. It is a pity it has not passed that insight on to the Department for Children, Schools and Families.

The DWP has made it clear: work is where the inflated claims for our state education finally hit the buffers. At every stage we have a system in which the expediency of politicians and the ideology of the educational establishment take precedence over the interests of pupils.

We have children who can barely read and write scoring high marks in their Sats because it makes the school, and therefore politicians, look good. We have exam boards competing to offer the lowest pass mark because it allows heads to fulfil their GCSE targets. We have pupils pushed into easy subjects at A-level — which excludes them from applying to a top university — because it benefits the school.

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None of this comes as any great surprise. In 1998 Daniel Goleman wrote a book called 'Working With Emotional Intelligence'. Chapter 1 begins with these words:

The rules of work are changing. We're being judged by a new yardstick:not just by how smart we are, or by our training and expertise, but also by how well we handle ourselves and each other. This yardstick is increasingly being applied in choosing who will be hired and who will not, who will be let go and who retained, who passed over and who promoted.

[This has] little to do with what we were told was important in school; academic abilities are largely irrelevant by this standard. The new measure takes for granted having enough intellectual ability and technical know-how to do our jobs; it focuses instead on personal qualities, such as initiative and empathy, adaptability and persuasiveness.

In a time with no guarantees of job security, when the very concept of a "job" is rapidly being replaced by "portable skills", these are prime qualities that make and keep us employable. Talked about loosely for decades under a variety of names, from "character" and "personality" to "soft skills" and "competence", there is at last a more precise understanding of these human talents, and a new name for them: emotional intelligence.

IQ takes second position to emotional intelligence in determining outstanding job performance.

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I'd again urge everyone interested in these issues to follow these links:

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2009/12/layer-233-we-are-people-and-all-our.html

http://www.youtube.com/user/WeAreThePeopleMovie

http://www.youtube.com/user/WeAreThePeopleMovie#p/a/u/1/Zw_7_r-D5Kk

http://www.youtube.com/user/WeAreThePeopleMovie#p/a/u/2/Vr7-IWR_mos

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Politicians who have anger management issues might want to have a careful read of Goleman's book - for example, on Page 9:

"Where earlier [a manager or a Prime Minister] might easily hide a hot temper or shyness, now competencies such as managing one's emotions, handling encounters well, teamwork, and leadership, show - and count - more than ever."

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Strong Foundations?

Without wishing to sound patronising, since I think Estelle Morris is a decent human being, I think it's good, in a way, that the Guardian continues to let her write a weekly wishy washy New Labourist column in its Education section. Estelle was never particularly strong on passion, it seems to me, and never disloyal to New Labour.

This week's column is worth taking a look at.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/feb/23/foundation-degrees-future-model


Foundation degrees offer a strong vision for the future

Those offering traditional degrees could learn a lot from the diverse entry routes and patterns of provision offered by foundation courses

It's not often that announcements about skills and vocational education are covered by the media, let alone written up as a real success story. There is no doubt it is a historically weak part of our education system: we seem to have an inability to stick to any vocational qualifications framework for any length of time, and vocational education has faced wave after wave of repackaging.

The recent announcement, therefore, that the number of students study­ing for foundation degrees had risen by 40% in the last two years and that the 100,000 target would be reached a year early makes good reading.

These degrees have called for new ways of working between higher and further education, and between academia, business and industry. Employers and students are in the driving seat of course design, and strong links between universities and colleges mean it is easy for students to complete an honours degree.

The temptation is always to do less when money is scarce, but Lord Mandelson makes a good case for doing things differently. His call for more two-year courses, greater flexibility and a sector that has the ability to respond better to the demands of its students is worth heeding – and subject courses may learn something from their vocational neighbours.

These courses are "packaged" in a different way from other degree-level courses. There's more contact time, fewer holidays and the chance for paid employment. Compare that to what seems like a continuing reduction in contact time in straight subject courses and not much change to the traditional three 10-week terms.

If the choice is between cutting student numbers or reshaping university education, I'd opt for the latter.

There have been changes. More places are part time, modular courses are on offer, and partnerships with further education are delivering degree-level teaching in communities. But the national debate about student funding and places still too often focuses on the pattern of study dominant when only 10% of the population went to university.

It isn't just the financial crisis that means we need to rethink, but the consequences for people's lives and the changing demands of employers. It calls for diverse entry routes and patterns of provision across higher education.

Foundation degrees will never be at the top of the academic tree, but their record of innovation might be a lesson from which others could learn.

In response to a CIF comment by cmsdengl, Oxzen said this -

I'd say that increasing numbers of people being drawn into higher education because the courses on offer have appeal and relevance to the needs of students is a very good reason for expounding their success. Especially when no-one's trying to claim that they're the same as, or equivalent to, honours degrees.

Who cares whether those taking foundation degrees go on to do three year degrees? If honours degrees have no appeal and no relevance to potential students then they won't do them. Especially if they're not affordable.

And who's to say that employers won't, both now and in the future, prefer to employ those with vocational as opposed to purely academic qualifications? There's plenty of evidence to show that the smarter companies are seeing the error of employing those who are academically able but also, in some cases, arrogant and complacent, especially when many of those people lack any practical or vocational skills, any creativity, any social or emotional intelligence, any interest in lifelong and on-the-job learning, and little or no ability to add value to the workplace.

The possession of an honours degree does not automatically make people more suited to a commercial work environment, just as it doesn't automatically make them a better human being.

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Anyone with any interest in education and politics, and the politics of education, must have a good look at this piece in the Guardian -

Labour's teaching strategies were a burden, say inspectors

Ofsted report says national strategies programme failed to eradicate poor teaching

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/feb/24/national-strategies-a-burden-ofsted

Oxzen's comment on CIF is -

    "A flagship New Labour education reform has failed to eradicate poor teaching and become a burden for schools, inspectors said today."

    "The programme was obsessed with monitoring, but rarely evaluated how well initiatives worked."

    "The schools and local authorities visited were often overwhelmed by the volume of centrally driven initiatives, materials and communications."

Oh dear. I think we already knew this. How come Ofsted have only just discovered it? That's what I call a failing inspection regime.

The first thing to say is that with such an unsatisfactory Ofsted report as this one the government and the DCFS should now consider themselves, as failing authorities, to be in Special Measures, and the schools system should be handed over to more competent authorities - trained and experienced educationalists for example - for direction and management. Fortunately this seems to be happening.

Naturally enough, the schools minister, Vernon Coaker, says the government makes no apologies. They never do, and they never will. Which is one of the reasons they've become so despised.

Coaker claims that the government and its strategies are responsible for "the highest ever school standards" - again, without the slightest shred of evidence. Leaving aside the fact that high tests scores say nothing meaningful about whether anyone has had a good all-round education and is well equipped for future employment and for life in general, let's be clear that the teaching profession, left to its own devices, and left well alone by a bullying ("robust") regime of target-setting and "accountability", would have continued to strive for greater excellence these past many years and in all probability would have achieved both better results and a more balanced, more rounded, more innovative, more creative, more relevant and more enjoyable education for all pupils. I can't prove that this would be the case, but then again Coaker can't prove his claim that his government and its strategies deserve all the credit for improvements and the teaching profession deserves none.

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The well-known educationalist Zoe Margolis has an interesting column in today's paper.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/23/sexually-confused-sex-education-faith-schools

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It's worth taking a look at the current Lib Dem ideas on education, as set out by their education spokesman, David Laws.

What's the policy we might vote for?

Readers interview David Laws, the Lib Dems' education spokesman

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/feb/23/interview-david-laws-lib-dem

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And finally . . . .

This is wonderful -

Justice begins at home

More and more schools are aiming to put human rights at the heart of their curriculum

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/feb/23/human-rights-amnesty-competition

For several years, Villiers high, a comprehensive secondary in Southall, west London, has been taking a global view of its mission to prepare its pupils for the modern world. And increasingly, its international education has focused on human rights issues. Attempts are also being made to embed human rights values into the fabric of the school's daily life.

Robin Street, the assistant head, is responsible for the programme. Street and his colleagues are aiming to educate a new generation that will have a clearer understanding of threats to human rights across the world.

The school is now working closely with Amnesty International, which has linked up with 15 schools in 14 countries to create the Human Rights Friendly Schools project.

A similar scheme known as the Rights Respecting Schools Award has been run for the last six years by Unicef UK, a charity that promotes the work of the United Nations Children's Fund. Now running in more than 1,000 primary and secondary schools across the UK, this project aims to help children learn more about the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

At Villiers, education about basic liberties is incorporated into geography and media studies lessons, as well as citizenship, history and RE. Over the last 15 years, says Street, increasing numbers of refugees have settled in the school's catchment area, so a study of local geography must involve learning about the reasons why people seek asylum in the UK.

Last October, the school hosted a two-day international students' conference, inviting pupils from schools in Denmark, the Czech Republic, Israel, Mongolia, Germany and Northern Ireland. With the help of artists, musicians and media advisers, the pupils worked together in a series of workshops to explore ways in which greater awareness of basic rights can be integrated into every area of a school's life. Meanwhile, staff from Villiers and the visiting schools received training from Amnesty and Unicef about the development of human rights education.

Street says: "The conference allowed our students, other students from across the UK and from across the globe to share thoughts and ideas about the importance of knowing about their own rights and, by definition, their own responsibilities."

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Layer 229 . . . Domestic Violence, Government Nonsense, Born Free, Human Rights, Olympic Stories and Hackney Wick

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Domestic Violence and Education

Our bloody bogus government is at it again. This week's education initiative is to announce that every child in England and Wales is to be taught that domestic violence is not acceptable. What! This is a scheme that a psychopath would dream up . . . for dealing with other psychopaths. And even then it wouldn't work. It wouldn't make a jot of difference.

Even psychopaths KNOW that hurting other people isn't acceptable. Neither is manipulating, threatening or deceiving. However, it doesn't stop them hurting other people, because they have an inability and an unwillingness to empathise with others, and a total lack of concern about anyone except themselves. Besides, many of them actively enjoy hurting other people - especially people who annoy them, or refuse to bow down to their demands, or fight back.

We all KNOW that domestic violence isn't bloody acceptable. We all KNOW that bullying isn't acceptable. Neither is unkindness, or rudeness, or unfairness. KNOWING these things, however, isn't the issue.

The problem is that our school system doesn't even set out to seriously address social, emotional and spiritual intelligence. Teachers are not trained in how to help children develop these key intelligences, though many teachers do their best to persuade children to be kind and thoughtful and reasonable - for instance during token 'circle times' and assemblies slotted in between literacy hours, numeracy hours and PE.

The government's initiative won't do anything to help matters either, and may make things worse if more and more pupils become pissed off with having to sit and listen to platitudes and statements of the bleeding obvious and decide that giving someone a good slap would be an act of rebellion and therefore 'cool' - in the same way that they deliberately go out and use drugs after a tedious session of anti-drugs 'education'.

The government's announcement is pathetic and bogus and totally worthless. As if teachers don't already make clear to kids that ANY kind of violence is unacceptable in a civilised society. The point is, what kind of schooling is required in order that from the very beginning of their time in school children learn not only that violence is unacceptable but also have opportunities every day to develop the skills and attitudes required to become non-violent and emotionally, socially and spiritually intelligent?

Don't bother asking Ed Balls that question. He wouldn't have a clue. And in any case he's far too busy pursuing the only educational agenda that New Labour has ever really had: attainment, attainment, attainment.

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We Are All Born Free

Julian Rhind-Tutt and an all-star cast narrate an animated film about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/video/2008/oct/31/amnesty-human-rights-film

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Olympic Stories – Hackney Wick

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/davehillblog/video/2009/nov/19/2012-olympics-hackney-wick

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