Previously incorrigibly naughty six-year old Joshua Cohen was permanently cured of his bad behaviour by being briefly placed by his desperate parents in a local Catholic school. When they asked him what the nuns had done there to effect his miraculous reform, Joshua replied, ‘ Didn’t you see what pictures were on their walls?’
I was put in mind of this rather feeble Jewish joke by a report in today’s newspapers that a 5-foot gilt and wooden crucifix that for the last half century has adorned the wall of a Torquay council crematorium has become the latest casualty in a concerted campaign to rid the nation’s public places of all Christian symbols and artefacts.
Last week it was the turn of bed-side bibles in NHS hospitals in Leicester. This week it is the turn of crucifixes in council crematoria.
The feeble joke was brought to mind upon reading about the crucifix by the thought that it can now surely only be a matter of time before some bright spark calls for all representations of the Passion to be removed from churches on the grounds the sight of them might frighten children or encourage them to emulate its example on some poor child.
We seem to have entered into a new Puritanical age, only this time inspired by secular multicultural zeal rather than religious enthusiasm.
Prominent Catholic MP, Ann Widdecombe is reported as having remarked of the removal of the crucifix, ‘This is yet another cretinous and pointless surrender of our heritage.’
Ms Widdecombe is not the only one lately and rightly to have become concerned about the threat to Britain’s cultural heritage posed by so-called ‘progressive’ forces.
Yesterday's papers carried reports of a speech made the previous day by the Prince of Wales to a group of teachers in which he voiced concern about how Britain’s cultural heritage is in danger of failing to be transmitted to schoolchildren in the name of the need for contemporary relevance.
According to a report in yesterday’s Times, what prompted the Prince’s remarks was the recent decision of the examinations board, Edexcel, to replace a requirement for students preparing for examination in English literature to study ‘classic texts by authors such as Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare in favour of focussing on slang, the language of digital communication and reality television shows’.
Edexcel is reported as having been motivated to make its decision by concern ‘to make English more accessible to students, particularly in cities’.
The mind boggles: one would have thought the decision bound to have exactly the opposite effect!!!
One of the few remaining whole texts that children studying English are required by the National Curriculum to study is George Orwell’s fabulous 1984 which becomes daily ever more prescient.
Let us hope children will not be distracted by their English home-work assignments to watch ‘Celebrity Love Island’ or web-footage of ‘Phone Chicken’ to prevent them reading Orwell’s novel through to the very end. There they will find an Appendix which outlines the history and principles of ‘Newspeak’ in words that ring all too chillingly true today:
‘Newspeak was the official language … devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism.
'The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible.
‘When Oldspeak had been once and for all superseded, the last link with the past would have been severed. History had already been rewritten, but fragments of the literature of the past survived here and there, imperfectly censored… In the future such fragments, even if they chanced to survive, would be unintelligible and untranslatable….Take, for example, the well-known passage from the Declaration of Independence:
‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness….
‘It would have been quite impossible to render this into Newspeak while keeping to the sense of the original…. A full translation could only be an ideological translation, whereby Jefferson’s words would be changed into a panegyric on absolute government.
‘A good deal of the literature of the past was, indeed, already being transformed in this way. Considerations of prestige made it desirable to preserve the memory of certain historical figures, while at the same time bringing their achievements into line with the philosophy of Ingsoc. Various writers, such as Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, Byron, Dickens, and some others were therefore in process of translation: when the task had been completed, their original writings, would be destroyed.’
Present-day Ingsoc Party members have found a short-cut solution to the problem posed by these potentially embarrassing politically incorrect elitist works. Destroy any vestiges of national pride on grounds of its being offensive to minorities, and thereby remove any vestigial traces of prestige that these canonical works of English literature might once have enjoyed. Thus, they can cheerfully be consigned to the incinerator along with yesterday’s embarrassing newspapers cuttings.
How double-plus un-good [= Newspeak for 'well-wicked'] a solution is that?
Comments (2)
If English people were to move to Islamic or Hindu countries I cannot imagine the people of those countries abandoning their religion or heritage just to please a few people. The ethnic minority people in this country are NOT stupid, they know that if they come to this country they are entering a whole different culture. This whole anti-Christian policy is hurtful to Christians and patronising to ethnic minorities. Religious hate crime is committed against Christians all the time and no one does anything about it but there is a public outcry if the same thing happens to Muslims or Hindus. I expect the political correctness police/ Race Relations Board will come after me now I've written that.
Posted by Sharon Noviss | June 17, 2005 11:30 AM
Posted on June 17, 2005 11:30
I can't help thinking that these developments represent nothing less than a complete denial of a British culture (Christian foundations, liberal) and all that goes with it in favour of absolutely anything that is perceived to represent a culture amongst any section of the population.
Thus absolutely anything that perhaps does represent those dim and distant days when there was perceived to be a British culture amongst backward, unenlightened Britons is relativized away as soon as it comes to the attention of busy-bodies who having capitulated instantly to local or national government 'guidelines' see it on public display.
Are these people so lazy of the mind that they cannot think about the implications of what they are doing? Are they weak of character that they don't stop for a minute to question whether what they are doing is a good thing? Far easier to simply say "we're powerless", "our hands are tied!".
Surely there must be people who can see exactly this and play the system to keep the interfering state off the back of their institution by ticking the boxes at the appropriate time and then doing everything to support the country they love during those times when even our bloated civil service cannot impinge on our lives in these ways to the detriment of us all.
Posted by AW | June 10, 2005 12:25 AM
Posted on June 10, 2005 00:25