AGILITY: A CRUCIAL QUALITY

 

The Lovely Trivium of Childhood; Optimism, Grace, Agility.

I recently noticed a schoolboy of around ten years old attempting to climb over a fence of about five feet tall. What a palaver, he had no idea how to do it; finally, leaving defeated. I was tempted to demonstrate the jump, lean over and flip that would accomplish this, but desisted on realising that I would likely complete my explanation of the technique to the sheriff court. 

When I was this child’s age, such a fence would represent a delay of seconds to me and the small commandos that made up the schoolboy cohort then. And if I was this child’s teacher, Monday would be devoted to acquiring this essential skill, disingenuously disguised as studying angles or a transitioning workshop. 

This got me thinking about agility, and comparing the antique child’s environment which placed a premium on it, to the now – where it is near non-existent and anyway disapproved of.

Agility is a quality that if it is not acquired young, is not acquired. It should be a defining feature of being a child (see, graceful entry), but, except for those children who are specifically trained for it via an adult-led sport, has been replaced with digital dexterity. This is a poor swap. And one of great consequence, beyond being able to climb a fence to escape PC. Murdoch! For this loss feeds into lifestyle and health options, and particularly future ones. The wheezing stiffy at ten is being trapped into a life of wheezing stiffness.

The school solution is obvious – running in the corridor and leaping up and down stairs. Teachers could lead by example, perhaps chasing slow pupils along corridors, or tigging them at their desks to encourage a counter-tig around the classroom. The recalcitrant slow should be chastised as necessary: Ha, ha, cannae catch me!

And: Excuse me, you know the rules. No walking in the corridor. Now get going – quickly!

Imagine how cool it would be to have a headteacher that was agile, instead of one that (excuse me, while I select a diplomatic phrase) seemed like the personification of a icing bun.

Classes could sprint out of the classroom at the playtime and lunch bell (Last out is a silly sausage!), and skip or hop back afterwards. Barriers and water-courses could be introduced throughout the corridor. Swing bars could be fitted to corridor ceilings to encourage arboreal agility. A large water jump should be placed in front of the headteacher's office. CRT ‘wokeshops’ could be replaced with Race Theory workshops, where teachers learn how to lead by example with high hurdles and the steeplechase. Certain suitable sections of the school building could be converted to parkour standard with money recovered from the class laptop budget scam.

Weekly awards for top traceur in each class. Tig would be a subject studied, hopefully replacing IT lessons. Kids would love it. Younger female teachers would fit into hot pants again; and what sort of man would object to that!

What think ye?

PS. I've just had a flashback from years ago: Once, coming along the school corridor, I passed a wee P1 girl skipping. How wonderful is that? I think this illustrates that lovely trivium I referred to above. Despite being transported with delight at witnessing how a little sprite can make anywhere a forest glade in sunshine, I had the wherewithal to compliment her skipping. The HT in that school would have censured her. 

 

SCOTLAND'S SAINT

 

The Message

 

 Once forgetting who he worked for

Columba found out the hard way

not to cross his employer’s plans

for Scotland.

 

He found out too that

beautiful accommodates ruthless

the angel appearing not as

the expected cherub but

 

an SS Sturmscharführer with Iron Cross

and Gold Oak Leaves

an angelic enforcer who lashed

the miscreant saint for three solid days

 

the brothers could hear the whipping

and cries inside the saint’s hut but

daren’t interfere for fear that

the holy hit man might ask:

 

D’ye want tae try some as well, Son?

 

And find themselves going to vespers

with their face in a towel.

 

Columba bore these scars

for life and carried the

experience into his dealings

with recalcitrant Scottish kings

 

When asking, Don’t you think

that in all the lands of the world,

God couldn’t find another king

for your people?

 

It was hardly a question and

the kings, taking note of the holy man's

scarred back, knew this was a god 

with a message they could appreciate;

 

My way or the highway!

Perhaps, seeing in the mind’s eye,

the downstairs accommodation

and God’s war band waiting

beyond the palisade

with whips and heated tongs

they took the baptism

for Scotland’s sake.

Today, the 9th June, is the day of Columba's earthly death in 597 on Iona, after a long life of converting pagans, curing the sick, banishing demons and other still enjoyed benefits of his blessings. This little poem is written in gratitude for the protection our nation's saint has provided (as promised) to us. It seems to be working – after all, we're still here, while better appointed others have long took the road to oblivion. The poem is actually from a little book, Epiphany in Azure, which you can download free if you click on the Big Ride link.

HAPPY DEATHDAY, GYORGY

 

This week’s destroyer-general: Georg Lukacs¹ (1885-1971)

Consumed with hatred for Gentile society, this ugly imp and fraud philosopher used his birthright pilpul and tribal chutzpah to sell the cultural Marxist ideas that have led us to our on-going cultural destruction. His stated ambition was to kill the Western spirit, and for this reason his tribal cohorts ensured that he was always able to find an audience, sinecure and publisher. His operating principles are taken from the same Talmudic playbook that has led our art to embrace garbage (see Sept 2020 entry), our media to be immersed in racism and sex, and our politics to be about endless wars and intrigue on behalf of…?...O, yeah, democracy.

Of course, he was from a family of banking barons (literally), the ‘class enemies’ he wanted to destroy² were, in fact, people like you. The Soviet experiment, especially in the twenties and thirties, with a Jewish-Bolshevik elect crushing Mother Russia’s (and especially, Ukrania’s) Orthodox children like insects, gets near to his idea of Aliyah.

Typically, and you might have noticed this pattern elsewhere, he was rather too interested in radical sex education; correctly seeing this as a double lashing of pleasure – destroying the European ethnic family while (O,…wild guess!) indulging his obsessive dirty mind.

However, we must give credit where it is due, and he well deserves it as a major figure in promoting the academic and political culture that have led us to the abyss. This is why he headlines this series in a blog on Scottish education, even though he’s a Hungarian (actually, ‘Hungarian’). We are swirling round the lavvy pan because of tribal radicals like him casting a hex over us. And their power is very great in academia.

The word salad gobbledygook of his major works is just misdirection from his real role as a destroyer-general. His work is not really philosophic, but operative in intent³ – leading to the ‘cleansing of false consciousness’. Now that I know what this actually means and who it references, I feel so foolish getting taken in by it. O, to have the time returned that was wasted on trying to make sense of this Gollum.

Yet, you don’t even need to know him or his work, even by repute, for the miasma to spread its contagion, for his type are legion and the end result is always the same for us.

If only he was alive, he would love the way things are turning out. He wanted a culture of pessimism (for Western Christians) and a world abandoned by their God; let us hope that in the afterlife he is getting these wishes returned.

I recently came across his name again in connection to the fiftieth anniversary of his death. This got me thinking that the source of much of our woes can be traced to miserable sociopaths, like Lucaks, too clever for everybody’s good. It might seem a far stretch, on first meeting the idea, that such obvious dystopian fraudsters, writing nonsense that few even read, could have caused our current madness; but on further reflection, one sees that these intellectual Lucifers planted the poisoned seed in academia which, as we see, is the foundation crop for all the sickly ideas harvested in our schools.

1.     As per Phoenician O.P., this is not his real name.

2.     Destroy is not used euphemistically by him. And in case you were wondering: note too, that it was class enemies that were to be re-educated, mainly by bullets, so this does not count as a genocide; nor is worthy of memorials, endless movies or reparations.

3.     By this I mean that he was not primarily motivated by a spirit of philosophic enquiry, but that his work's true inspiration was to destroy the Christian West. This makes his work polemical and political, rather than scholarly. To be fair to him, he hardly hid this desire

NB. Three Os in this piece – I surpass myself for…O,…exclamatory excellence.

THE KANSAS CITY EXPERIMENT

 

From fevered veins of angry teacher rads

And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay

We’ll lead you to the zealous halls of learning

There to hear our professors of education indulge

Their fantasy in equal scale and appetite

To the lofty stash of stolen public money

There to whip their impatient dream to shape 

Or not, as your eyes see it.

 

A Shining City on the Hill

That which cannot be referenced in educational discourse, although it is the endpoint of our hubris. 

Imagine all educational fantasists were given a blank cheque and the instruction to do everything they can to make education work for our disadvantaged children – as it should. Whatever the complaint or deficiency in our school system, fix it. Plan it deep, get the best, rack up optimism. Prove your arguments that disadvantage, and not culture or intelligence, or dare you think it, race, lies behind historical lack of achievement. At last enlightenment dreams meet political will: Individual PCs to take home, personal mentors, limitless resources, after school activities by the bucket-load, free breakfasts, free this, free that and the next thing, Olympic-size swimming pool? – you got it. Disadvantaged parents not forgotten either with vouchers galore for everything, excepting alcohol. Every incentive dreamed by man or god made manifest in this one place. Failure was made impossible by this power of righteous imagination married to educational science.

Spent, built, remodelled, recruited, encouraged, provided, indulged. And the result; a complete failure. A COMPLETE FAILURE by any metric. Well beyond the bounds of the darkest gainsayers. Indeed, outcomes were inversely proportional to expenditure. It has to be independently confirmed to be believed. Do so.

Of course, the meeting with reality only slightly set back the educational fantasists for their faith is made of sterner stuff. Perhaps they a missed heartbeat when faced with the ruin of their hopes, plans and literally the founding stock of their Utopian future. The lesson to them; there was no lesson to them! Their Jacobin attentions to the educational system were doubled down, the inconvenient fact silently, swiftly transited to the memory hole. Any who dared to mention it were,..well, you know what they were called! Institutional racism was apparently to blame, even for the blue on blue stabbings. 

The lesson to us: our fantasist enemies do not operate in the rational realm. Their complaints and programmes (and pogroms) are not about fixing things, but breaking them. And us. And your children, who are not their children.

It is these parasite-professors and destroyer-activists and suchlike creatures that stand in the shadows behind too much of our educational ambitions.

You did not read this. You do not know about any such experiment. Nor do you want to. Is Kansas City even a place?

PS. And should they be required, apologies to Marlowe. Such thievery has its impulse from deepest admiration.

HOMAGE TO CHAUCER

 

Whan that May with his sonne sa bryght
 

Whan that May with his sonne sa bryght

Maketh ye earth warm and setteth alle to ryght

Then shal lytel byrdies mak melodye

And giveth preyse to him wha sitteth on hie.

 

Then cometh tymme wi langre dais

And man to womman turnes hys gais

Wi amorous thochtes of futur blyss

Yf onlie she wad chuseth to be hys.

 

Quod he, I love thee marvellyss welle

be my guidwyf and with mee dwelle.

I am but a sympell churl, tis treue

but seeeth eternitee in a lyf with you.

 

Now womman thinketh to be wyse

Picketh a mate with lovynge eeyes

And thee shal everr blesst be

By loveth hym as he loveth thee.

 

Based on The Canterbury Tales prologue*, I’m hopynge that this explains itself, and does not seem like a mock of the great parent of our world-encompassing language. 

With a little effort (and a modern font) Chaucer’s Middle English comes alive and reads quite easily. It is great fun all round having children read it out and they can, using rhyming couplets (as above), reproduce their own homage. The vocabulary and spelling has to be supported, of course, but the only tricky bit is getting the first line. After that’s done, it more or less writes itself for the first couple of verses. And then you've done it; your primary pupils have written in Middle English! We did it recently for April (hence the prologue reference) to meikle delyghte and som pryde tae.

After such a lesson, there's only one direction; onwards and backwards to Beowulf! Kids love this, Beowulf slays Mylie, Nikki, Ariana and all the other swamp-owned succubi.

 

*

 Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote

              When April with its sweet-smelling showers
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
               Has pierced the drought of March to the root,
 And bathed every veyne in swich licour
               And bathed every vein (of the plants) in such liquid
Of which vertu engenderéd is the flour;
               By the power of which the flower is created

...............

FYI: There are many youtube examples for how to pronounce this; some are rubbish, but you'll quickly identify them. 

Happy Birthday, Will

 

Shakespeare, needed like never before

Nay, upon my word such gross forgetfulness
Betokens deserv’d calamity to this nation.

Just another dead White man?

Shakespeare's work is a crucial component of a child’s journey to full literacy, and love of their own language and culture. Not just for our time, but for all time. And it’s not just me that’s saying that!*

Properly taught, even young children love Shakespeare. Obviously, they love the tales told. But also, delighting in the parsing of even the most flighty of passages. And too, learning them to confident recital – what a power for a child to have and pride for their parent or teacher! I state this as a fact, directly known.

As part of the general educational plan for the English speaking West, it is equally crucial that Shakespeare is kept away from children and that teachers are ignorant, and perhaps even hostile, to our language’s greatest champion. This has largely been achieved, at least in primary schools. Alas, we lose more than Hamlet when we lose Hamlet. For not only is the delight and beauty, wonder and wisdom lost, but also that connection to the world's greatest wordsmith, which is ours by birthright as native English speakers, and thusly a mighty source of pride of kinship. And by the necessary form of this, strength. This is what they are trying to snuff out, and why.

'They' are always the same people. I appreciate that perhaps you cannot see them yet.

We’ve got a fight on our hands, ye celebrants of the numinous turned to word: Once more unto the breach, dear friends. Once more.

*   This learned reference for the delight of the many Shakespearians among the readers.

PS. Our many English readers can, of course, have a double celebration as this date is also Saint George's Day. 

Anonymous Teacher Calls for More Nietzsche in Scottish Primary Schools

 

Lighten Up

Nothing succeeds if prankishness has no part in it.

Looking through, Teaching Scotland, the GTCS’s professional journal, one is struck by the manic marriage of its unrelenting moral censure of Scottish culture with imminent rapture. Magazine after magazine, piling up like pancakes, berates us natives as racial bigots, while holding out the almost grasped promise of excellence to be at last achieved by multiculturalism; itself contingent on us natives removing ourselves from the future. O, and embracing digital solutions, kindly sponsored by the same global cabal that bring you viruses and vaccines. A small price to pay, Teaching Scotland implies, for us losing our patrimony and presence.

All this is very complicated and serious, however. And we wonder if this focus on social targets and political goals is taking light-heartedness and fun out of teaching, as it most definitely has out of the magazine? This observation has led an anonymous teacher* to call for more Nietzsche in Scottish primary schools, apparently as a counter to this seriousness. Despite that stern moustache, it seems that the German overman was a noted advocate of prankishness:

”Maintaining cheerfulness in the midst of a gloomy task, fraught with immeasurable responsibility, is no small feat; and yet what is needed more than cheerfulness? Nothing succeeds if prankishness has no part in it.” — Nietzsche. Twilight of the Idols.

Noting, not only its role as a fun increaser and balance to excessive seriousness, but as an intellectual quality in its own right. For it was ever a sign of intelligence and a lively spirit at work; naturally gathering to itself wit and ironies, self-depreciation and smiling eyes behind the rebuke.  Good old, Nietzsche, always looking for a laugh and in it finding a truth presciently apposite to our Scottish school circumstances. Such prankishness should be encouraged in schools, so naturally it isn’t! Perhaps, rather than more ‘conversations’ about the underlying racist and sexist structures of our schools, we need more prankishness. Especially when such ‘conversations’ begin.

It would be nice to think that Nietzsche would be added to the German wall in our primary class to keep Arminius, Wagner, von Manstein, Beckenbauer and Merkel company.

What think ye?

*   It was me (identity withheld to preserve anonymity).

NB. I’ve described Teaching Scotland as the GTCS’s professional journal, but really it is so much more than that. In fact, mere words cannot convey the vasty extent of my opinion. Perhaps, in a later post, assuming voluminous requests, I may do so. Consider me as Macduff, but yet without the sword.