A newspaper headline this morning in the local rag reads, "Kids drive home their environmental point." The text of the article tells us that grade four and five students at a local elementary school put on a little skit or something in support of the idea that people should not idle their vehicles while waiting to pick up and drop off at the premises. It's not a bad idea to shut down a motor while waiting anyplace. Who wants to breathe the fumes? Their teacher made the connection to the global warming hysteria. No, she didn't call it hysteria. for her it's an established fact. It was her opinion. And instead of helping her students explore both sides of the controversy and try to understand the issues involved she preferred to use them as little puppets to promote her own ill-informed judgement. This kind of behaviour by the teacher seems to me a testimonial to not only her competence but to her sense of morality. Are children nothing more to her than props for her own ego?
Our courts don't seem to understand why children should not be used by teachers for propaganda purposes either. A few years ago the teachers union used their students to propagandize the union demands. The parents who brought a lawsuit against the union lost.
"This is a tribute," says the teacher, "to the students from the school, who came to the board last month and told us how important it was to make the school properties idle-free zones..." Right. It began during conversation during a lull in skate board practice when some of the guys started talking about how important it was to combat global warming and pretty soon they had a study group set up and... whaddya know. We all know this is not what happened, so the teacher is lying. It was a class project organized and prepared by the teaching staff. No contrary views were allowed. The class had to toe the line. So this whole exercise had nothing to do with a spontaneous demonstration before the city council; it was a case of the teachers using their students as remote controlled puppets to promote their own opinions. There is an advantage in doing it this way. As adults making a presentation they might be challenged on their logic or their facts. But you can't make mincemeat of a ten- year-old's arguement without looking like a cad.
"We are on the forefront of this," she said, because "We are the first school district on Vancouver Island to use biodiesel..." One presumes this is what she said to the reporter not to the council. The reporter was probably already vetted to make sure he didn't ask any awkward questions. One such question would have to do with the affect of biofuel use on the price of food. There are already indications that it has raised the price of cornmeal in Mexico, and may raise the price of meat in Canada. This is elementary supply and demand. If the owners of SUV's are able to offer a higher price for the corncrop than poor Mexican peasants, guess who loses out. Somehow I doubt if any of these considerations were raised in the classroom.
And since when does a skit or a demonstration, ie stupid looking people dressed up in funny looking outfits, contribute to rational discussion? This is in itself a form of dishonesty, stupidity or both. Whenever I see a parade of such idiots, and we have a lot of them in Victoria (both parades and idiots), It makes me think the world of modern civilization is not dangerous
enough...otherwise these nitwits would have been long ago eliminated from the gene pool. So it really bothers me to see teachers teaching their students how to be idiots.
The effect of all this imbecility is to dumb down public discourse to the level of imbecility. It's absolutely impossible to find anything said by a politician on some of these issues. Plain speech is verboten. But why? Why can't we have a politcian run for office that comes right out and challenges all the BS? I thought Harper might have that ability but I'm quickly losing hope.
Of all the idiotic displays of public stupidity it would be hard to beat that British cleric who paraded down the geographical unit formerly known as the Island of the Mighty wrapped in chains and bearing a sign on his chest that read, "I am so sorry." When the Iranians saw that I'm sure that was when they realized they had nothing to lose by taking a few British Marines hostage. You know that song with the verse that says, "Britons never ever ever will be slaves" is so 19th Century.
But of course this is straying from my theme. One that includes my ongoing theme of "As above, so below," is that seemingly minor details like an elementary school presentation orchestrated and masteminded by a bunch of adult control freaks can connect up to a much bigger picture. In another newspaper, one with national pretensions, we are informed that the cost of Kyoto is recession. Innocuous word, recession. Well, I've been through a few recessions and have personal experience of such. They are not pleasant, although there are always people in the know who do very well during recessions. I was never one of those. The most recent one was pretty much the result of stupid policies by a socialist provincial government that drove away investment money. The econazis who are closely allied to our local NDP are infinitely more dangerous.
I don't use the expression econazi lightly, but I think of them as much more closely akin to the Bolsheviks. I don't mean this in the sense of them having well though out Marxist doctrines. Far from it. They don't have much at all in the way of doctrines, except that they think that humanity is invariably evil and is a contaminent on the face of the earth. By contrast, the Bolshies at least had a theoretical allegiance to improving the lot of the working class. What they most have in common is arrogance. They think they know better than anybody else what's good for us all. And it's very good to look at where that arrogance led when the Bolsehviks took over Russia. One of their bright ideas was that if all the serfs on the farms took the land away from the owners and divided it up among themselves then more food would be grown more efficiently and everyone would be happy. This process was called collectivization. It resulted in death by starvation of millions of Russians and Ukrainians. Are these lessons taught in the classrooms of our local schools? I don't know for sure but I seriously doubt it.
And yet this terrible, terrible experience of the Russian peasantry should be learned and understood by every single one of us. Personally, I think the econazis are potentially far worse. And I say this even though I know that most of the rank and file enviroactivists are sincere and caring individuals who only want the best. That was also true of most rank and file Bolsheviks but that didn't help them when Stalin launched his reign of paranoia. Once the beast is loose it's very hard to stop it.
Remember the Crosby, Stills and Nash song, "Teach your children well"? It was kind of a nice song. Unfortunately many teachers confuse teaching with indoctrination and now that we are confronted with some potentially lethal dangers to our way of life these youngsters are very poorly prepared to confront them.