The new Secretary of State for Education Margaret Spellings is arguing for a return to 'old fashioned educational values' and 'school discipline'. What's the big deal you might ask? Well, as one wise man once put it, "He or she or those who fails or fail to learn the lessons of history is or are doomed to repeat them or it."

Look back through history, you'll see that every tyrant whether it be Mussolini, Hitler or Jefferson , started off by changing the education system. Indeed, public education was not invented for the people. It was invented so as to allow the establishment to brainwash the masses with bourgeois propaganda.

Since the cultural revolution of the 1960s and the creation of modern 'progressive' schools and universities, standards have improved 10 fold. Whereas in the past lecturers were obsessed with minor nonsenses such as spelling, grammer, history, and numeracy... modern schools and universities encourage the growth of the inner student, like a flourishing flower.


The proletarian educational revolution of the 1960's was inspired by the ideas of the the French genetic epistemologist Jean Piaget. Piaget's revolutionary research revealed that children's cognitive development was gradual and continuous, but that all development would pass through a series of qualitatively different stages.

Piaget regarded the child as a scientist 'constructing his own reality', developing increasingly numerous and sophisticated 'schemas' (cognitive mental models of the world) through the assimilation of new information, and where new information could not be assimilated, the 'accomodation' of new information through the modification of existing schemas.

Only whence a certain volume of non-assimilative information has been absorbed by the child, can a new stage be reached, whence the child experiences an intellectual 'paradigm shift' essentially a fundamental re-structuring of his world view (the great Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky referred to this phenomena as 'cognitive revolution'. Each cognitive revolution leads the thinker to a higher intellectual plain, until he reaches proletarian consciousness)

Piaget argued that children learn from their own actions rather from observation and as such should be allowed to pursue tasks, rather than simply being a passive observer / listener / reader. As such, according to Piagetian doctrine, teachers must allow children to work things out for themselves, they should simply be left to 'get on with it'.

Why stifle creativity with one size fits all 'standards'? Why DICTATE to pupils the CORRECT way to spell a word? Why DICTATE to pupils warped concepts such as absolute RIGHT answers, and absolute WRONG answers? Who is to say what's right and what's wrong? Why should the state legitimate certain ideas, words and sentence structures? That's FASCISM, pure and simple. The aim of education ought to be to allow pupils to create their own world view, not to indoctrinate them with a pre-prepared one from shiney corporate textbooks.

Where once the education system was part of the bourgeois ideological superstructure, so ingeniously identified by Gramsci and Pink Floyd, indoctrinating and brainwashing the masses...

"We don't need no education.
We don't need no thought control.
No dark sarcasm in the classroom.
Teacher, leave those kids alone.
Hey, teacher, leave those kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall."

... it now serves as a revolutionary proletarian institution, liberating the minds of successive generations of free thinkers. A classic example of the new generation can be found in the form of the REAL President of the United States, John Kerry. The product of a progressive educational golden age, Kerry, like Foucault, realized that there are no historical facts, only passing perspectives. This is why he kept changing his story regarding his medals, purple hearts, SUVs etc during his Presidential campaign. He realized that there was no grand, all embracing meta-narrative to encompass his own life experiences, only fleeting reconstructive simulacra's.

As such, every child should recieve an A regardless of what they say, do, or write on any given day. To punish them for 'wrong' ideas is akin to the nightmare world depicted in George Orwells '1984', where proletarians are imprisoned for 'thought crimes'.

But the Republicans refuse to accept this. While in the past they chuckled as working class children failed, today they sneer as the working class children suceed. Schadenfreude has faded into its happiness-hating opposite, gluckschmerz.

These kids today don't know they're born! In my day everything was harder.

Orwell once wrote: "Freedom is the right to say that 2 + 2 = 4." He was wrong. Freedom ought to mean the right to say that 2 + 2 = 5. How else will our intellectual discourse ever achieve a Kuhnian 'paradigm shift' if not from experimentation?

As Nietzsche so ingeniously pointed out (before contracting syphilis and being sent into a mental institution for bestiality) it is the free spirit, the intellectual deviant who drives the evolution of human ideas.

By shaking things up, by challenging the rules, and rejecting the accepted intellectual order, the free spirit beats his own path, and paves the way for others to follow in new, innovative directions. The Republicans fear the free spirit, fear leads to hatred, and hatred leads to destruction. They seek a return to the bad old days of Fascist 'teacher centred learning', and 'school discipline'. Margaret Spellings must be stopped before it's too late.

We must start a protest to save our children's indoctrination centers so we can inculcate them with anti-capitalist propaganda and teach them what to think.

Comrade_Smirnoff,

How many fingers am I holding up? Four or Five?

Dear PC members (Peoples Cube of course), and Faculty of the New School

I agree tenfold with all stated! The first step to liberation was the eradication of Latin and Greek from the classroom. In fact, all the archaic languages must be expelled. Hence, as we all know, the need for a new, "user-friendly" language. By expelling spelling and groping grammar, we set the stage for the new "langue de guerre!" Of course my style of writing in not hypocritical, as it is a means to the end of all such writing, as you well know!

So what is this new brave language you say? "Plebonics!" Yes indeed dear Comrades, a language in constant evolution from the ground up! The first true pure example of plebonics occurred during a press conference held by Reverend Professor Albert Sharpton and his loyal client Tawana Brawley. After her kidnapping ordeal by a composite of white policemen and TV characters, she was unduly vilified, and many accused her of being manipulated. In fact, one reporter asked her, "have you been manipulated." She turned to Albert and then to the reporter and responded (in pure plebonics), "No one manipsinates Tawana Brawley!" How perfect! How emotive! How ultrapostdeconmodernalternative!

YES WE ARE ON THE PRECIPICE OF A TOTALLY EMOTIVE AND NEW MODE OF COMMUNICATION! No more nitpicking about the meaning of a word! No more incessant red marks on papers. Soon all will be within reach from day ONE of school! For surely it is the height of ageism to proclaim a baby's chosen tongue as "babbling!" Those same monsters would declare African dialects savage, don't you think? In fact, at my New School, we have granted tenure to two extremely talented toddlers, both of whom tag-teach baby speak! It is one of our most popular classes, although professorial turnover is likely to be a problem.

Yes my friends, at the New School, all is possible! We make a point of teaching the emotional side of science. After all, pure science gives us the bombs, while emotional science teaches us to hate them appropriately! In our classes, actual blueprints of weapons and machines are displayed, and our students let their emotions forth, and fingerpaint their inner selves on the blueprints! Several of our works have been used in Publicly funded art shows! Palimpsest would be so proud!

Dearest colleagues, POWER TO THE PEOPLE

Sincerely,

President Bob Kerry, The New School


I am proud indeed! "Plebonics" has proven to be a smashing success in helping us advance our subversive, subjectivist agenda. Keep up the good work.

--Dr. P