Civitas Blog

It seems Basil Fawlty has nothing on our country’s classrooms when it comes to avoiding hurting the feelings of supposedly vulnerable groups.

In a soon-to-be-published report on and entitled ‘Teaching emotive and controversial History 3-19’, commissioned by the Department for Education, the Historical Association found that many schools have quietly dropped teaching about the Crusades and the Holocaust -- despite the latter supposedly being a mandatory part of the National Curriculum -- for fear of offending certain groups of pupils.

To quote the report's conclusion, as disclosed in yesterday’s Sunday Mail, the Historical Association found that: ‘In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship.’

While having no wish to see either the Holocaust or the Crusades, or the both of them, exhaust the entire history curriculum, to teach neither for fear doing so might upset some pupils is not exactly the right way to go about wideneing their mental horizons or to create a cohesive community.

A report published today by the OECD confirms the EU’s position as the biggest aid donor in the world. Combined, the EU-15 gave away €48 billion in overseas development aid (ODA), or 0.42 percent of their GDP, in 2006. This represents a massive 57% of world development aid. The report also highlights how there is a hefty discrepancy within this chunk between the most generous member states, for example Sweden (1.03%), Luxembourg (0.89%) and the Netherlands (0.81%), and the stingiest, Greece (0.16%), followed by Italy (0.20%) and Portugal (0.21%). Significantly, the latter are all behind their EU aid targets. Putting this aside though, just how effective is EU development aid?

'Smith!' screamed the shrewish voice from the telescreen. '6079 Smith W.! Yes, you! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You're not trying. Lower, please! That's better, comrade. Now stand at ease, the whole squad, and watch me.'

A sudden hot sweat had broken out all over Winston's body. His face remained completely inscrutable. Never show dismay! Never show resentment! A single flicker of the eyes could give you away.

The government is expanding its scheme of ‘talking’ CCTV Cameras to various town centres around the country.

Today’s Times carries an interview with Ken Livingstone, spread across two pages, that is designed to reveal to Londoners what a dynamic and entrepreneurial friend of capitalism their once-ultra left-leaning mayor has become.

Continued at the Centre For Social Cohesion blog.

On the very day I chose to slate the EU for inconsistencies between its ‘world leadership’ in distributing aid to developing countries, and policies such as the Common Agricultural Policy and excessive tariffs that quite frankly screw the very same countries over, what does the EU go and do? Propose to: “remove all remaining quota and tariff limitations on access to the EU market for all African, Caribbean and Pacific regions including agricultural goods like beef, dairy, cereals and all fruit and vegetables [from 1 Jan 08]”. If it comes to fruition, this move should be applauded. Such tariffs currently cost the world’s poorest countries dearly, because it mitigates their ability to sell such produce at a cheaper price and, ultimately, make a decent living.

However, we should be guarded in our optimism...

The Office of National Statistics' release of the latest Social Trends report has brought the issues facing Britain about which we are most concerned into sharp relief. David Green was interviewed on Radio 4's Today program this morning on the consequences of increasing lone parents (listen again here).

Robert Whelan was interviewed by the Daily Mail, commenting on several problems that the social trends report highlights. He also commented on the dangerous trend, sanctioned by the government, of treating poor pupil behaviour differently according to their ethnic background. Minority children over the years have gone from feeling the stings of racism to experiencing the patronising stereotypes of so-called 'anti-racism'. All without even the brief respite of being judged equally as peers regardless of the colour of their skin or religious background.

And finally, Nick Seddon has an article published in the Guardian on local government leisure trusts and their misuse of charitable status to redirect funds from the voluntary sector into providing statutory services.

It is reported in today’s Times that, despite of music being a compulsory subject in school until age 14, less than an hour a week is devoted to it in most primary schools and that only 13 per cent of primary pupils learn an instrument. Apparently, a major contributing factor behind the current dearth of music teaching in our primary schools is the fact that student primary teachers receive no training in the teaching of music.

You may well be wondering, sad though the dearth of music is in our primary schools, what the early learning of music has to do with social cohesion. Well, Plato and Aristotle certainly both thought it has a great deal to with it.

Continued at the Centre for Social Cohesion blog.

The DfES ought to be proud: they’ve cracked the child psyche and come up with the best way to encourage good behaviour in formerly wayward and wild pupils, namely, for schools and teachers to offer ‘prizes’ and increase their use of ‘encouraging language and gestures’. This is some of the guidance offered by the Elton Report (something commissioned 18 years ago – which, incidentally, is a longer time than I’ve been alive!), that the government has just brought in.

The guidance also states that ‘a rewards/sanctions ratio of at least 5:1 is an indication of a school with an effective rewards and sanctions system’ - which makes me wonder exactly what constitutes an ‘effective system’ in today’s society. Though I’m all for teachers being encouraging and supportive, I’d like to point out that whilst we may be children, we’re not ‘dense’. It is painfully obvious when a teacher is being genuine in their praise and when false praise is used. Words may be cheap, but they are more ‘effective’ when used sparingly.

Britain’s children are the unhappiest in the developed world says UNICEF in its recent report, An Overview of Child Well-being in Rich Countries. Britain came bottom not only in Subjective Well-being but also in Family and Peer Relationships and in Behaviours and Risks. United Nations research findings should generally be treated with some scepticism. Nevertheless I think we all know that there is at least a kernel of truth in this report, writes Graham Cunningham.

Last Thursday, as at the time I commented upon here in a posting, the Times newspaper applied generous coats of whitewash to London’s Mayor Ken Livingstone in an effort to give the left-leaning trouble-maker a brand makeover that would transform into a paragon of responsibility and moderation. Today, it is the turn of that city’s Muslim population to receive the same treatment from this same newspaper.

Continued at the Social Cohesion blog.

The new Educational Conscription blog is chronicling the burgeoning opposition to government proposals to extend compulsory education up to the age of 18. The big shift in policy is not the increased availability of further education to young people, a long held and frequently frustrated government aspiration. Instead, it is the use of coercion, with the threat of sanction, to ensure young people comply with these objectives. Fearing that the value of their educational initiatives won’t be evident, the government wants to give young people an offer they can’t refuse. Hence, the correct approach is to examine this as a civil liberties issue – not as just another initiative in the myriads of education reforms.

So, there we have it, at last, a final admission by no less than the Labour Minister responsible for immigration, Liam Byrne, that the large-scale volume of net immigration his party has deliberately engineered with such machismo these last ten years has 'damaged the poorest communities and deeply unsettled the country’, to use the words employed by the Times yesterday in its account of what he has admitted.

Continued on the Centre for Social Cohesion blog.

BBC News Online reports this week that 'Penalty notices or on-the-spot fines for parents whose children play truant do not work’. According to a study by Kingston-upon-Thames LEA’s principal education welfare officer, Ming Zhang, the government’s truancy tackling strategies have failed. The main conclusion of Zhang’s report is that irresponsible parents, whom the current truanting mechanisms primarily target, are not to blame for truancy. Whether this is the case or not, one thing’s for certain: fining parents isn’t getting errant pupils to school.

All is not well in Romania. The country is currently in political turmoil, with the parliament’s move to suspend President Traian Basescu last Thursday by a vote of 322 to 108, and the impasse looks set to continue. But more concerning for the EU is that it is symptomatic of the Romania’s inability to proceed with reform along the lines set down in the final decision to admit the country – in particular that of tackling corruption.

The letters ‘ELM-LMC’ stand for the East London Mosque- London Muslim Centre. Situated in Whitechapel Road, the Mosque was opened in 1941, with the London Muslim Centre being opened in June 2004.

The current chairman of the ELM-LMC is Dr Muhammed Abdul Bari, who also finds time to serve as Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain as well as on the Organising Commitee of London Olympics.

Continued on the Centre for Social Cohesion blog.

Today the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) released guidance that calls on firms to help smokers quit, particularly in the run up to the public ban on smoking that comes into force in England on 1 July. This includes more uncontroversial advice such as employers providing information on where staff can go for help in quitting, and the possibility of NHS ‘stop smoking’ services being held on large firms’ premises if there is the demand. Evidence suggests that 3 in 4 smokers want to quit – if this is the case then making services to help them more accessible should probably help. One criticism also often loaded at the NHS is that it is too heavily focused on treating illness rather than helping to prevent them in the first place. There is little doubt that smoking is linked to any number of different, and serious conditions, that cost the NHS huge sums of public money. So, if such measures do help to prevent illness by stopping people smoking, then we may justifiably support them. Industry would also be glad – smoking is estimated to cost them £5bn in lost productivity, absenteeism and fire damage. Incredibly, evidence suggests that smokers have, on average, 8 days more off work sick than non-smokers.

But this does not justify NICE’s more radical proposal – that employers allow smokers to attend anti-smoking clinics during work time.

Dominating the sky-line of Regent's Park's Hanover Gate entrance is the now somewhat slightly tarnished golden dome of the Central London Mosque. Its leafy affluent environs are a far cry from the congested run-down streets of Whitechapel home to the East London Mosque which was the subject of last Tuesday’s posting.

Some of the messages being purveyed at the Regent’s Park mosque, however, are no less worryingly divisive than those being purveyed at its East End counterpart that formed the subject of Tuesday's posting.

Continued at the Centre for Social Cohesion blog.

Next month, Warwick Mansell is to bring out a book which will finally turn speculation and guesstimates about the extent of test coaching in primary schools into definitive, and above all, official figures.

There are already some voices calling for personal Sharia law to be applied in parts of the UK. Is it anything to worry about? Recent German experience suggests that any such calls ought to be firmly resisted.

Continue reading at the Centre For Social Cohesion blog.