Nationalization of Education: The Best Way Forward?

The grand majority of Western civilization lives under a capitalist government, meaning that the means of production are predominantly owned by private corporations operating for profit. The pinnacle of Capitalist society would, of course, be the United States of America, a society so inherently vehement against all forms of social community and corporate responsibility. This is probably the reason that it has carved it's place as the world's largest economy.
Closer to home however, privatization of public services gained a huge victory when in 1993 the British Conservative government, led by John Major, passed a legislation allowing the privatization of British Rail. Since then it's been an uphill climb that has continued with the Labour Government (AKA New Tory), allowing more private corporations to actively contract themselves for various elements of public services.
While we can't deny that in some cases, privatization has done varying degrees of good, there are various problems that we receive when we accept privatization into public services.

Education

The privatization of national education poses several major problems, the most predominate being:

• The fact that anyone can found a private school, regardless of their previous experience in the field of education. These schools can be founded for many reasons, one such worrying reason being personal profit and capitalization on the necessity to obtain an education in modern society.
• Privatized schools have the ability to abstain from any kind of national watchdog such as Ofsted, meaning that if a private school so choses, they can avoid any type of national scrutiny concerning the management of their budget, the competence of their staff and the general standards of the school. On the upside, most private schools are indeed very good schools where the level of education is considerably higher than their nationalized counterparts.
  

As a slight bracket, I'll relate my previous point to a personal experience of mine when I was living in Rome. I attended St. George's British International School in Rome for five years. My father taught there, as well.
The principal of said school (though not the founder), a Mrs Bridget Gardener OBE was somewhat of an eccentric personality, though the school went to the dogs during her tenure. First of all, the induction rates were amazingly high. In fact the fees are the following:

1. A one-time registration fee of €1,200
2. An additional induction fee that ranges from €9,150 (nursery school) to €17,250 per year per child
3. A lunch fee of €1,030
4. A re-registration fee of €450
5. A book-deposit fee of €400

Teachers at this school were payed around €1500 a month. So where did the rest of this money go? The school was (and still is) heavily in debt, over the course of five years they sold the swimming pool, the nursery complex (taking up more space in the Junior School campus), half of the exercise field and a good part of the school grounds, all to pay debts.
Secondly, Gardener would employ teachers even though they didn't have the sufficient qualifications required. My German teacher was hired simply because Gardener had a 'thing' for him. Luckily for me, he was a great teacher.

• Privatized schools do not have to follow a national education syllabus. This means that they could be teaching children that Jesus Christ made dinosaurs, and it wouldn't matter. Example: Reg Vardy, former used car salesman, now a founder of several christian schools

So what exactly would be the benefits of a widespread nationalization of all schools?

• Nationalization cuts out the need of ridiculously high school fees: the schools are provided for and financed by the government, meaning that taxpayer's money is being put to good use securing an education for future generations. Parents would instead be paying the things that are really necessary, such as school lunches and a book deposit. This also means that schools won't be in financial trouble, as they can rely on the government to provide for them.
  
• Nationalization also forces every school in the country to undergo regular inspection by an independent government watchdog such as Ofsted in order to determine whether or not a school is performing up to national standards.
• Nationalization obliges schools to follow a national syllabus laid out by the Minister of Education. Having said that, a syllabus is only as good as the Minister of Education who plans it.
• And perhaps the most important reason of all: schools in a national network are not founded for profit. They are there to help your child gain the best possible future and to help them develop a cultural and social education.

While both sides have strong points and weak points (and please be aware, this is a biased article), I do believe that nationalization is the most sensible way forward, and one hell of a kick in the gonads to the capitalist society we now live in.

Save Our Schools! French Edition

As you may or may not know, there have been various controversies in Britain lately over new government schemes (they asked me to stop calling it a 'plot') to up class capacities, making as little as one teacher and three assistants to have to deal with seventy children in one class. How do they plan to do this? Well, by putting giant TV screens in the classrooms. TV Nation indeed.
Anyways, this is a preposterous plan. We all know from our days at school that it only takes one pupil to start being an arse in class and the rest of the class stops paying attention to the teacher. Now, imagine a class of 70 sugar fueled children all chattering. Yes, Dante didn't know the half of it.
Anyways, it's been a turbulent few years for the French Education system. For two years running we've had student strikes against the CPE, causing havoc and turmoil to people everywhere. Now the teachers have decided that they're pissed off too and are causing major headaches for institutions all around France.
While the French labour system may be one of the best in the world (I.E. short hours, high pay), it holds many flaws; cracks which have become more than apparent since September of the previous year. At my school in particular, teachers have been giving us flyers detailing the various problems they're having. At first glance, they're pretty shocking:

-Classes will always be overflowing, new plans are being put forward to introduce at least 34 students per class.

-Five teachers are retiring at the end of this year, the worst part being that their positions will not be replaced meaning that teachers will have to work more, regardless of their existing schedule.

-Suppression of hours from the weekly timetable, 25% of existing school hours are to be scrapped next year. To give you an idea of exactly how much that is, over the course of seven academic years, students will have lost over a year compared to today.

-In the college (french equivalent of Junior High) plans are being made to scrap Sports and Art, meaning that children won't get any exercise or cultural education.

-The Careers Advisor will be sacked, this is actually all across France, meaning 4500 posts will be scrapped.

-Substitute teachers will not be provided, many cleaning and caretaking positions are also being scrapped. This has already taken effect, as I myself have noticed that classrooms aren't being cleaned as regularly as they once were.

-The library/IT room staff are being sacked, well most of them are. The library is, for some, the only way to get some aspects of work done, where internet access is required. It also serves as a safe haven for those actually wanting to get work done in a calm and peaceful atmosphere outside of school hours.

The reason for these cuts? A gaping budget deficit in the French Education system, meaning that less money is being supplied to schools for our future. This doesn't just affect teachers, it affects us too.
So why aren't we taking to the streets and actually DOING something? Simple scaremongering tactics are being employed by the administration. Over the past year, the Minister of Education has now made it a sanctionable offense for pupils to:

-Have political discussions in school. That's right, we're not allowed to complain about the government inside school grounds, or we could get detention, even be suspended.

-Protest and/or go on strike, as it falls into the above

-Wear religious items, such as crucifixes or headscarves in public schools, as it breaches the law of secular education.

In effect, the majority of our basic civil rights, most importantly freedom of speech and freedom of expression are being suppressed.

French education is fucked.

Anarchy has a chuckle

"Hi, mum? Yeah... It’s Mark... Colonel Gadafy, semtex, AK-47, Hezbollah, Martin McGuinness, Jerry Adams, the UDF, the UDA, Swampy, peace protesters, Delia Smith, shipment of arms, British aerospace, nuclear fuels, " the short man in the duffel jacket pauses for a second, a large puff of hot air makes the hot-air balloon he’s travelling in rise slightly, "No, I’m not smoking mum; it’s a balloon... I swear, it’s a balloon!"

When you think about British stand-up comedians, you immediately think of Frankie Boyle, Hugh Dennis or Mitchell and Webb; the guys who appear on the telly every night. And while there’s no doubt that these guys are indeed very funny, I yearn for a comedian who’s willing to do more than just make people laugh.
The scene detailed at the beginning of the paragraph is from the third season of the Mark Thomas Comedy Product. Mark is flying over the top secret US spy-base Menwith Hill in a hot air balloon, as he’s just found out that there are no air restrictions over the base. This is but one example of his many political endeavours, as he’s not content just standing back and slagging off the government... No, he’s creating anarchy.
The first series of the MTCP concentrated more on crazy antics aimed at trying to put various corporations and government bodies to shame. Thomas’ antics included creating havoc and chaos at a McDonald’s drive in, nearly giving the manager a brain embolism; projecting a massive message in front of the MI5 building, proudly proclaiming it was such in order to, as Thomas put it, "make sure people don’t get lost" and even betting the final show’s budget on a horse race.
One of the most memorable of his schemes was driving a tank-come-ice cream van around London trying to find various government ministers who had relaxed the arms dealing laws to Iraq, wondering if they could help him get the tank out to a mate in Iraq, in order to "give him an edge on the ice cream competition".
The third series shifter more to a purely political aspect of Thomas’ comedy. The show took on a much more serious tone, delving into the many ways of how our government are fucking us over. Why, in the very first episode, Thomas posed as a PR company at an arms fair in Greece and managed to get the Indonesian head of army Major General Widjojo (spelling?) to confess to the use of torture in the Indonesian army. Other ploys included showing the complete incompetence of the British rail system, exposing corporate fraud and even hounding MP Geoffrey Roberts after exposing his incompetence.
My point? We need more comedians like Mark Thomas.

http://www.markthomasinfo.com/

Enjoy,
James.

Go to hell, you BNP supporting, white trash cracker.

People are too quick to judge me and the people I know. The youth of today is fucked, there's no doubt about it. We live in an age where music containing lyrics that glorify misogyny and violence is increasingly popular among the impressionable youth. Music that teaches kids it's fun and natural to beat women, treat them like shit and kill other people. How has this example permeated itself amongst the youth of the world today? By associating it with money, of course.
I sometimes think that artists such as 50 Cent are far too quickly condemned however. People condemn their actions and their music, without trying to understand why they consider gang-banging and drive-by shootings permissible. 50 Cent began dealing crack at the age of twelve. This itself is ironic in a way, seeing as his mother was a cocaine dealer, until her death when the rapper was fifteen. It all stopped for him when he was caught dealing in school.
But this isn't about any rapper in particular. It's the culture as a whole. It's a vicious circle: the whites look down on the blacks, making a sweeping generalization, associating them with the rap culture so abundant in modern-day America. This then exacerbates hostilities toward the White community and the circle closes - then starts up again.

When will the segregationist fucktards see that it's no use blaming each other? We need to work together towards a common solution and I am sick and tired of people thinking I'm a naïve, pretentious little shit for trying to promote the message of racial cooperation. It makes me so fucking angry. I'm sick of seeing a world where there is still a race issue. We all live on the same goddamn planet, we all evolved from the same place, so why try to ignore that fact? Caucasian, Black, Asian, whatever. As far as I'm concerned we've all got two eyes, four limbs and a brain. Why not use it instead of giving into the idea that "oh crap, too many immigrants means that we won't be able to preserve the european or american way of life, where we get others to do our work for us!" Hell, without these so-called "illegal immigrants" we wouldn't have people to do the majority of jobs that we need done. You think people enjoy cleaning shit off a floor? No; but they do it anyway, and they stop bitching. So stop bitching and get fucking pro-active about it, you low grade chicken-dicks.

Thank you, come again.

Musical Philosophy

"Music, for me, is neither something that I create, nor a form of self-expression. All kinds of sounds exist everywhere around us, and my performances solely consist of picking up these sounds, like a radio tuner, and playing them so that people can hear them." -- Kawabata Makoto, founding member of Acid Mothers Temple and subsequent variants.

What is music? What makes it different from other sounds we hear in the course of our daily life? The world has a rhythm, whether you realize it or not. The rattling of a pipe, the ringing in your ears or the incessant banging coming from the little brats upstairs.
The question is; when is a sound actually considered to differentiate from other sounds, when does it become music? when people start listening to it? or maybe when people take an interest in it; gaining pleasure from listening to it?

Personally, I look for the strange, the odd and the out of the ordinary in my music. Bands that try and differ from the other run of the mill groups by truly expressing themselves in their work. For me, Acid Mothers Temple is a prime example of such a band, because their music doesn't consist of a ordinary ' get 'r' done ' recording session. From listening to their albums, with songs such as "La Le Lo", the listener is immediately assaulted by almost a dozen different layers of sound, each one playing a slightly different effect on the brain. I sit here listening to it for the seventh time in two days, and it still all sounds new to me, because my brain can't get a grip on the music, and I have to work to understand it.
And that's the magic of experimental music, while on the outside it may seem like half an hour of constant noise assaulting the eardrums, your brain is constantly working, examining the different algorithms hidden in the sound and trying to interpret them into a meaning that you can understand. While I don't believe in Moon cycles, the Zodiac and Spiritual Journeys, I believe that this music can provoke an intellectual journey, and helps to expand your mind and your underlying level of consciousness, so that you can better understand the rhythm of the world. You don't need mind-altering drugs for this, if a certain type of music can replace said drugs, then you're sorted. Fuck LSD, fuck pot, fuck all of it. If you're looking for something to alter your state of mind try goddamn music!
From listening to such music, I feel better about myself, and I've gathered my own personal meaning from it. This meaning evolves each time I listen to it, and it is never the same for two different people.

Mediocre rock bands such as Avenged Sevenfold, Dragonforce and various other acronymical tightwad cock-rockers that shall remain un-named do play music... but they have so much potential that is going wasted. They're not trying to make their audience work to understand their music, they simply want them to stand around waving lighters in the air. They may be succesful, but they're so goddamn puerile.

What if... Wikipedia Ruled the World?

Wikipedia has become one of the most used websites in the world. People worldwide use it to look up certain information covering a wide array of subjects from anal rape in prisons to Martha Stewart.
Because of the sheer amount of visitors the 'pedia, the owners decided to run for President in the latest campaign elections. Here's a look at what life would be like if they won.

1. You would need indisputable proof to back up your statements
Wikipedia is well known for encouraging factual veracity. When writing or editing an article, users are encouraged to provide as many sources as possible. You would think that these sources could be anything, from a sole issue of Teen Beat magazine to some guy you met on the bus. But apparently not.

If Wikipedia became rulers of the world's foremost superpower, they could enforce this rule in real life. No longer would people be able to say that "The war in Iraq isn't about oil", citing Fox News as a reference. As we all know, Fox News isn't actual news, so it doesn't constitute as a valid source.

We can expect prison sentences galore for abuse of this requirement.


2. Telling lies would constitute a capital offense, punishable by death

I would vote for Wikipedia on the basis of this law. Imagine meeting someone on the Internet, being told they were an attractive 18 year old girl, only to find out upon meeting them that they are the people responsible for Goatse.cx . Well, no more.

3. Wikipedia keep tabs on American citizens (later changed to Ameripedians)

You can try to run, you can try to hide but Wikipedia will find you and they will hunt you do... oh, wait. They'll just keep tabs on you, making sure you update your life story twenty-four seven. That's right, you'll have to keep absolutely everyone updated on how soul-shatteringly boring your life is.

4. Censorship is in full swingWikipedia prides itself on the neutrality of it's articles. When applied to real life, morons would no longer be able to spout their mouth out at how good The Backstreet Boys are, or how Mel Gibson isn't actually all that bad.
In consequence, you wouldn't be able to state how your life is "the worst life in the world". Go cry, emo kid. Or throw yourself off a bridge, whichever is easiest.

5. Wikipedia know your future, present and past

Since they will become the new dictators of the world, you can expect them to dictate how your life is going to turn out. Sleep tight.

Inside a Killer's Mind...

I absolutely love the film Red Dragon, starring Edward Norton, Anthony Hopkins and Ralph Fiennes. While the insane Hannibal Lector is indeed the focal point of the film (as well as the whole trilogy), I find him to be rather mundane. The character who interests me the most would have to be the character of Francis Dolarhyde, AKA The Tooth Fairy. While this may seem like an amateur psychoanalysis, I'm merely trying to figure out how Dolarhyde's mind works from the wonderful adaptation of Ralph Fiennes. It's worth noting that I haven't read the book, nor have I seen the previous adaptation of the film by Michael Mann, where Thomas Noonan played the role of Dolarhyde. This is going from what I have read about the character and what I have seen in the film Red Dragon.

First of all, like all classic movie serial killers, Dolarhyde has had a traumatic childhood. This is in part due to a facial deformity (in actuality a hare-lip), which could possibly mean that he was teased as a child, though the film gives no indication either way. After a botched re-construction surgery, he is left with a long scar running up to his nose, which has also resulted in him being rather sensitive about people touching his face, as evidenced by the way he acts with Reba.
He was put into the care of his grandmother in her foster home. Through various audio flashbacks throughout the movie, we learn that she repeatedly threatened to cut off his genitals, presumably after several bed-wetting episodes. Other emotional abuse is hinted, though we are not told whether or not he was physically abused as a child. As is typical of most Hollywood serial killers; the abuse provokes a deep-seated fear and apprehension towards his grandmother, but also a sort of affection. How do we know this? The main indication would be the dentures Dolarhyde possesses. He holds one set of dentures for his normal life, and another set, snaggle-toothed and sharp which resemble the dental structure of his grandmother. He wears these dentures when he slips into his Red Dragon alter-ego, in other words when he commits the murders. This suggests that in some form or another, Dolarhyde sees himself as carrying out his grandmother's wishes, or even that she is now a part of him.

Dolarhyde possesses two radically different personalities. In public he appears to be a shy, confused young man who doesn't have much -if any- of a social life. Other than this, he appears relatively normal. In some ways, this could be an extension of his childhood personality: young, innocent and eager to learn about the world around him.
Then along comes his Red Dragon persona. Now this side of his split personality is perhaps the most interesting. To fully understand It, we need to analyse this quote:

"I am the Dragon. And you call me insane. You are privy to a great becoming, but you recognize nothing. To me, you are a slug in the sun. You are an ant in the afterbirth. It is your nature to do one thing correctly. Before me, you rightly tremble. But, fear is not what you owe me. You owe me awe"

Within this statement, we see a lot of confusion, which can help us decipher the Red Dragon personality. Here we have a being that is confused by the world around It. While it holds without doubt a certain disdain for the people around It, It cannot comprehend why others do not recognize It for the superior being It is. "You owe me awe!"; while Fiennes pulls this line off with utter contempt, I feel that it is perhaps more appropriate to highlight the confusion within that statement, indeed so that the Dragon is saying "Why aren't you in awe of me?" instead of just stating.

While on the outside, The Dragon may seem like a monster, an uncaring amoral being; It has perhaps more 'noble' (in the loosest sense of the word) intentions. Through various statements he makes during his conversation with the journalist Lounds, we can see that he believes he is "transforming" his victims, as he shows Lounds pictures of his victims through each stage of their transformation. This could suggest that he believes that by killing them through his bizarre ritual, he is freeing their true spirits from their body, allowing them to undergo a metamorphosis, such as he is trying to attain, and changing them into higher beings. This may also hint that he is somewhat envious of his victims, as to him they are able to achieve superiority in a matter of minutes, while he has been working all of his life to achieve his metamorphosis, becoming the Red Dragon. The thing you have to remember is that each personality is a completely different person, while Dolarhyde is aware of the Dragon, he fears it and he doesn't actually want to hurt people. To be honest, I don't think that the Dragon Itself is fond of hurting and killing people; but he views it as a necessary evil in order to achieve It's proper transformation. It looks down upon Dolarhyde with a certain sense of pity; as it views Dolarhyde as weak and spineless. It's important to remember this; as you can easily lose yourself in hating the character instead of trying to understand it.

So there you have it. And I bid you Adieu