THE DECLINE AND FALL OF WESTERN ART

 

An Art Project For Primary Schools

While retaining a soft spot for some modern art, mainly where the modern artist is still a real artist exploring alternatives from the solid base of talent and technique, I have come to realise that I was largely conned by it and went along with the con for the distinction I believed it gave me; making me an insider who appreciated iconoclastic impulses and the hidden depth of meaning only intellectuals can find in random brushstrokes or panties glued inside a frame and splashed red. A distinction was found, but alas, that of pseud and dupe.

Finally coming to my senses, I wish to record a thanks due to Mr Heard for writing an important book, THE DECLINE AND FALL OF WESTERN ART (see link), about this phenomenon; which, in exposing the vast cultural con that is so much of modern art, led me back to a proper view of reality.

In describing the fascinating history of this decline from high standards and intuitive appreciation of great art, one comes to understand the role of subversion in degrading European art and replacing it with trickster garbage which intentionally mocks us. If you have found yourself perplexed by the apparent high regard (and prices) given to trivia, joke-works, degeneracy and assorted output of low technical merit, thinking that you had a problem in perception and appreciation, this book can set you right. And know that your perception and appreciation is working fine, as are your bullshit detectors! You should feel confident in calling out garbage art for what it is, and seeing con-artists for who they are.

Importantly, this work demonstrates the revolutionary intent of those, mostly tribal*, prolix intellectuals and scamsters who have championed the replacement of European good art with cosmopolitan bad art. Their reason for doing this is to be found in the end effect of this project – a world filled with life-denying garbage which they control and, importantly, us native Europeans severed from wonder, beauty and the pride of kinship with our art. And demoralised and confused thusly! Our senses being degraded by this attack primes us for even more of the same in other domains, as anyone with a TV knows.

By bringing beauty and craftsmanship back into an understanding of art, one also brings balance and sanity. Mr Heard’s book is a contribution to this process. By bringing light to the darkly-motivated degenerate spirit of much modern art, this book is also a significant contribution to the debate on our wider European woes.

Respect too, for the courage it took to write this work. In going against the tribally controlled modern art establishment, he has made enemies who famously hold a grudge.

Would that the artistic sensibility that great art awakens be encouraged in our schools. This would not require the cash burning workshops that typically accompanies a school development, for such art speaks for itself; this, alas, and this cost saving of costless condemns it to official rejection.

Here, though, the individual teacher can be a secret art rebel for the transcendental power of great art to delight, inspire and heal. That’s a teaching job worth doing.

What think ye?

 

* Yes, that tribe whose name cannot be mentioned.

NOTE: I have intentionally made no reference here to the role of junk modern art in the various money laundering, tax dodging and other assorted money magic tricks that those who monger in such worlds utilise. Nor to the international cover that such art and its curation provides for other darker interests.

SETTLING IN

 Considering all the new P1s settling in (or not) into their new regime, the mind naturally revisits my own first days for a compare and contrast. What think ye?

 

My Old School

What it didn’t have,…

 

Computers, equity, school bomb plan
Cut and Paste, core values, walls falling down ¹
race bad-think, school website
 
adverts and propaganda (aka lesson resources)
pupil peanut allergy plan, Adderall
individual i pads, hate crimes, Ritalin
 
smartboard, gender action programme
learning powers focus, enterprise
love of cultural enrichment, Epipens
 
learning protocols, photocopiers
BBC Newsround, folios of excellence
targets, anti-bully policy, UN rights
 
inclusion, schizophrenic enemy press
parental twits and tweets, FGM,
ILPs, PPSs, QIOs, EALs, PSAs, ASLs, PPKs ²
 
tolerance, saving the environment
GTCS - enhancing professionalism³
WWW, overcoming stereotypes
 
Self-harm, neglect, poverty,
Anti-radical and suicide awareness
‘Failing our Families’, ADHD
 
pupil i account closed:
inappropriate content search
contact administrator
 
learning conversations, dojos
safe spaces, pupil hydration strategy
resilience super powers, fidget toys
 
gender corrected environment
army of chiefs at Council HQ
3^rd World guilt, 66  67  68 passwords
 
WALT and WILF (although yes to Walt and Wilf) ⁴
Islam, steps to growth, active learning
toxic male awareness, joined up thinking
 
password updates, download,
uploads, security warnings,
access denied, cannot contact server,
 
Excellence.

NOTES

1.       A poorly constructed wall in a modern school in Edinburgh suddenly fell down and tragically killed a child. Many schools similarly constructed had their pupils decanted to other older schools built at a time when they knew how to make walls that stayed upright. The relocation, effective while the problem walls were fixed, was a major undertaking and reflected well on all concerned. Although, the pupils relocated were naturally very disappointed that they didn’t just get the time off school.

 

2.       Female Genital Mutilation, Individual Learning Plans,…blah, blah, blah, …

 

3.       GTCS: General Teaching Council for Scotland. Formerly a simple creature, but lately suffering from such an excess of excellence that it has become, through its various self-serving councils to simpleton-government ministers, a blight. A perfect example of mission over-reach!

 

4.       WALT and WILF: ‘We are learning to’ and’ What I’m looking for’; a fad in pedagogy whose exponents believe that learning is almost impossible without these being made explicit again and again,…and again. Naturally, in order to further inure our children to clickbait, these are presented as little cartoon avatars. In real life there are many ways to make an intention explicit. And sometimes, o the apostasy, you don’t even need to!

This entry is adapted from my Relentless, which is thoughtfully linked at the top of the page.

BBC Newsround: How do I Hate Thee?

  

BBC Newsround   

 

How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.

For nearly six months most primary age children, by virtue of being off school, will have inadvertently enjoyed a little psychic freedom from our national mental breakdown delivered via classroom TV news.

In most primary schools after playtime, pupils watch BBC Newsround, a child-focussed news programme. Typically, they have their snack and drink while watching it; this somewhat recreates the anti-family TV-meal feel, which tragically describes too many family domestic meal arrangements.

The justification for bringing even more TV into our children’s lives is that Newsround keeps them informed about the world, and better able to ‘understand complex issues’ and be ‘proactive in the fight for justice’, sustainability, equity, tolerance, inclusion, etc, etc – you know this good list, as you hear it every day. Perhaps you are fed up hearing it, or have just simply ran out of tolerance for ever-needful swarthy ingrates, or have come to realise that the Western media is not always impartial in its presentation of events. Should this describe your feelings, you have the option of using your adult’s sensibility to dismiss lies or propaganda – or even better, switch the TV off!

The child in class, however, does not have any of these options. And is thus daily exposed to the full-blown globalist, racialised, sexualised, misery porn, popworld garbage that is stressing us adults with its relentless imagery, degeneracy and complaint. In Newsround, this assault is somewhat balanced by ‘child-friendly’ celebrity trash and product placement. Consider the effect of all this on a child, less able to filter and understand what they see? This is not, as claimed, informing them or keeping them up to date with events, but rather a demonic combination of inuring them to trivia and trauma, and conditioning them to the Brave New World of gender complaint, perpetual racial outrage and endless charity – soon to be rebranded as reparations.

In this screen world everyone is celebrated and praised, except us! Our glorious history, achievements and traditions only referenced to illustrate the multicultural agenda (e.g. the Somali refugees who are learning Welsh, the immigrants who rebuilt Britain after the war, etc). Never is femininity and motherhood celebrated, or masculinity and fatherhood. Consider the templates held out for approval to watching children; faux child activists, popfluff UN ambassadors for 3^rd World charities, Come Dancing celebrities for gayrights, tragic youth transformers – dystopia’s whole panoply.

Alas, true, it is preparing them for the future world; but one mandated by UN-Amazon-Microsoft-Netflix-Faceborg represented by Shekelstein Global Services Inc.

Where is the parental hate for this monster? Here's mine in verse:

 

 How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways…

 

Teacher-dupes building brand loyalty

for TV news with 7 year olds

prepping them for the correct attitudes

of tomorrow today, as defined by the BBC.

 

Apparently, just what they need nowadays!

More screen time in the toxic digital world

of the adult, honeyed up to sweeten

this bitter pill by child friendly ‘fun features’

 

like the pronouncements of sexed-up

teenie UN ambassadors fighting for

women’s equality while semi naked

or product placement as news features.

 

Legitimising the lifestyle choices, dress

and posturings of celebrity airheads

while embedding deep into

this innocent limbic landscape

 

the essential features of our Gen Z;

the drug addiction to the screen,

surreal jump cuts, emotions feminised

the validation of the pop world,

 

the fawning over attention whores,

poptarts showboating compassion

and socially destructive delusions

presented as truth to gullible young,

 

with event and tragedy that reinforces

their narrative of world truths, normalising

the madness of the media with

every episode, encouraging fragility;

 

Click on the links below if you’re upset!

 

masquerading as concern and support

by making little neurotic dependence bots

(subliminal message-you should be upset!)

out of formerly robust innocents

 

creating future clients for pharma

but inuring them to their future truth

as TV-addled drones by state monopoly,

an implacable enemy in a squeaky voice;

 

the Newsround newsreader.

 

…but don’t worry, everyone will be looked after!

 

…I hate thee to the depth and breadth and height 

My soul can reach;

I hate thee with a hate I seemed to gain

With my newfound saints.

 

I hate thee with the breath,

pain, tears, of all my life;

and, if God choose,

I shall but hate thee better after death.

 

(with apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning , if required)

[ This claim that exposure to TV news is generally toxic to a child’s intellectual and emotional development, and that our national TV news serves agendas which do not find acceptance in the parent population – and rightly so – is partly explored in my Relentless - The Death March to Educational Excellence, which can be looked at via the attached cover link.

Admittedly, this book adopts a somewhat eccentric view of all the dysfunction, but all the better to have a laugh at it. A more serious take will appear in my soon to be, The Hateful Seven – The Good Ideas Ruining Our Children. ]

 

START OF TERM

 

[Head in hands, Hamlet crosses the stage in silent agony.]

...in sympathy with those who feel thusly, and persevere; I salute you.

ENIGMA

The school Pharisees try to trap Scotch Jesus, but he flips their script with a clever conundrum and has them reeling at the thought of their racial apostasy being exposed.

One day, as Scotch Jesus was encouraging his class to feel pride in their ancestors’ technical and artistic genius  by teaching them about the development of the European cathedral while gently listening to some Bach religious music, the chief diversity teachers and department anti-racist  scribes, together with the school Babylonian lifestyle advisors, came up to Him. "Tell us by what authority you are doing these things," they said. "Who gave you this authority?"

“Let me ask you a question first,” He replied. “Half the diversity – is it still twice too much; or is twice the diversity, half of what it should be?”

They deliberated among themselves, but found that their brains addled by repetitive tweeting could not reach a conclusion, and so said, "If we answer wrongly all the pupils will stone us, and we will become infamous as racists and lose our high salaried jobs.” So they answered that they did not know. And Jesus replied, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.” And the pupils were amazed, never before had they heard such wisdom.

NB. With thanks (and apologies, if required) to Luke, the evangelist and saint. See Luke 20:1-8

(This is an entry from my soon to be published A-Z of Educational Nonsense. I would like to blame the virus for the delay- my enemies will do anything to hold me back!)

Follow, follow,..we will follow Rang..eh,...BLM!

The Tale of the Golliwog: Part 1½

 

In considering the second part to the tale of the golliwog, I was gifted by Providence an illustration of the wider point I was hoping to make. Although outside the domain of school education, the example seemed so apposite that it justified the interpolation. And so, I set aside Part 2 temporarily to address this issue with a Part 1½:

A friend was telling me about a recent Rangers game which took place in France to an empty stadium- as per Covid guidelines. Prior to the game the team were obliged to ‘take the knee’ in an act of obeisance to, ostensibly, BLM and their racialist claims. This ‘protest’ was clearly divisive for the players; the Whites mainly ignoring it and the ethnic and mixed-race others enthusiastic, some to the point of raised fists - Black power! A message directed, one can only suppose, to (or against?) in order, football fans, Rangers fans and their fellow players. 

One can imagine how quickly any expression of disagreement between players will segue to the usual accusations and become divisive; thus damaging of team unity.

Many fans objected to this display on social media, arguing that this issue is nothing to do with Rangers or Scottish football. In response, certain Rangers players accused their own fans of racism. The chairman became involved too, but not as a defender of the club whose purpose is football, nor of the fans attempt to distance themselves from the controversy of racialist arguments, but of the apparent principle that underlies the BLM protest.

This issue will run on, but note that the confrontation starts with an insult to fans – who are supposed to accept, as a given; the legitimacy of the BLM movement,  the premise of the racialist assumptions that underlie it, their own complicity in this alleged White racism and the rightness of Rangers’ involvement in it.  Leaving aside the temptation to explore these issues, and not least the various ironies involved in wealthy and privileged ‘black’ sportsmen pretending to be brave and principled at the expense of their own fans’ feelings, we return to our thesis.

What does this tell us with respect to our argument regarding racial justice and school education?

Firstly, by being in a completely different societal domain it reinforces what we already know about the destructive impact of this collective, anti-racism madness. Namely, that no institution is safe from accusations of racism, regardless of the relevance or ridiculousness of such claims, and that the interests of those affected by such claims are ignored. That those who should protect us from such have got no intention of doing so; indeed, so important is it for them to appear on-board with the anti-racism mission, that they will willingly, sometimes gratuitously, alienate shareholders, customers and (in the case of Rangers) those supporters whose loyalty gives life to the institution. Suddenly, the fans find that their club has been repurposed to a political end; and that although they might be the club, they don’t own it, nor enjoy the proper respect of those who do!  Such for Rangers - and the same for any other sports club, organisation, or school!

Secondly, a template is held out to school children, irrespective of their interest in football, of how to behave and think; your favourite team apparently recognising the truth of White systemic racism by kneeling and black fisting for racial justice. And those who query, however slightly, the legitimacy of this movement are cast into darkness by social media, news media, celebrity puppet-activists, even club chairmen.  How could this NOT be seen as operant conditioning?*

Finally, and most importantly, it illustrates the power which lies behind this racialisation of social life. This has largely been invisible within the school context, as it may have seemed to arrive on the back of the citizenship elements of the curriculum. Concerned adults and parents could perhaps dismiss this development as a passing phase or a minor issue.

But when we consider the case of BLM and Rangers as a representative of this racialisation of seemingly everything, we realise that we are dealing with a force much more powerful than a mere foreign protest movement. And that has implications for the development of racial grievance politics in our schools.

How can it be so, that a newly, and supposedly spontaneously, founded foreign, political-activist organisation - predicated on issues that have no connection to us – can arrive in Europe fully-funded and able to instantly exert such influence?  How can it be so, that our native football teams are obliged to do homage to, largely, career-criminal Black Americans repurposed as saintly innocents. Try to get the football league, or your own favourite team, to take the knee as a protest for injustices that concern you or us in Scotland and see how far this gets you? You already know the answer!

In thinking this through we can see the intent and gigantic power behind this phenomenon in its ability to subvert, divide and co-opt accomplices, even to the point of them destroying their own organisations and businesses. We must surely, then, fear its potential within schools, faced with much more innocent minds – not least the already gulled, fem-bot teachers.

If only we could discover which group may be behind this phenomenon; they would have to have international access to massive funding, control of social and news media and have global political leverage. Hmm!,…this does not seem to describe Black people. Perhaps someone will work out the answer?

What think ye?

*  Repeatedly modelling behaviour to the target to get them to copy it without even thinking. By encouraging certain behaviours, this technique also legitimises the associated thoughts or theories behind it -  also without thinking about it.

JOHN GRIEG: RANGERS CAPTAIN

Possessed of too much dignity and respect for the team fans, I can't imagine him taking the knee. Nor allowing the team to openly display, prior to a game!, their division over such an issue. A fun thought - Jock Wallace coming into the Rangers dressing room prior to the cup final against Celtic, " Right lads, I've just spoken to Billy McNeill, and baith teams will be taking the knee for ****** in America."

We’re still here!

 

Commemorating the Day After.

Today, the 23^rd of July, was a day of national reckoning for our ancestors in 1298. For this was the day after Wallace’s Scottish Commons Army* suffered a defeat by their national enemy at the Battle of Falkirk on the 22^nd July. The English, led by their great king, Edward 1, the ‘Hammer of the Scots’ himself, utilised for the first time the irresistible tactical combination of massed archers (the arrow storm) followed by an armoured cavalry charge, then infantry to finish off survivors; it was a set-piece battle we had little chance of winning anyway. The scale of this defeat is hard to know, for then, as now, both sides had an interest in spinning the result for advantage, but regardless it was still a solid defeat. Any Scots who did not escape were not offered the option of surrender; no POWs in the 13^th century! After the triumph at the Battle of Stirling Bridge the year before, this defeat could have been psychologically crushing and politically breaking.

But it wasn’t. Our ancestors picked themselves up, dusted themselves down and started all over again. And this is why I am writing commemorating this, rather than the battle, which I am happy for our English cousins to celebrate if they wish.

Although the examination of this episode makes fascinating history, it is not my intention to do this here, but just to salute the fortitude of our ancestors on this date in holding fast to their identity and independence, as Scots – for this is how they referred to themselves. Without this belief, which they proved to be true in the profoundest sense, I would not have written this, nor you read it.

And I do this too as a reference to the political and cultural chaos that is encroaching ever nearer to our wee corner, with a reminder that we have in our heritage that stuff which will enable us to ride it out and see it off. We need to remind ourselves of this, as no-one else does.

 Dae richt. Fear nocht.  

  *    The commons army, so named because its command and structure was not dependent on the compromised Scotch nobility and their retinues. In other words, it was the common us!

[My Wallace bio covers this topic should you be interested in exploring it further. This can be obtained by clicking the cover at top right which will take you to the Amazon page, or visiting my website where you can buy it directly from me.]