Rethinking the Crusades, Part I

The City of the Skull

We have enjoyed reading Rodney Stark's God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades (New York: HarperOne, 2009). It is a fine piece of anti-revisionist history. We have also enjoyed Simon Sebag Montefiore's Jerusalem, The Biography (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2011) which covers some of the same ground from a different perspective.

The Crusades have never been a cause celebre amongst Protestant Churches, nor, we imagine, amongst those Roman Catholic believers who have eschewed papo-Caesarism. In the West, the Crusades were largely approbated by secularists during the imperialist and colonialist eras--as a proto-manifestation of Western superiority and imperialist pretensions. Then, as imperialism fell out of favour in the twentieth century, historians have tended to gloss the Crusades as a great evil. The rise of Islamic nationalism and fundamentalism have resulted in the Islamic world in general endorsing this new narrative, employing it effectively in their propaganda.

Stark's recent work serves as an effective call to re-think the whole phenomenon of the Crusades, and the revisionist narratives of our day. We will endeavour to do just that in a short series of posts.

The first stake which must be put firmly in the ground, it seems to us, is to get our position right on the significance of Jerusalem and Palestine per se--that is, ensure our position conforms to Scriptural revelation. Montefiore argues, grandiloquently it seems to us, that Jerusalem is the centre of world history. It is a spiritually false claim, yet, we admit, with a good deal of empirical evidence, which says a lot about the stubbornness of Unbelief. In this regard he quotes Benjamin Disraeli: "The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more; it is the history of heaven and earth." It is true that Judaism, Islam, and Christianity have all made Jerusalem to be a special and holy place. However, in the case of Christianity this has been a deceptive idolatry--a superstitious perversion of the Christian faith, and a denial of redemptive history and the work of the Christ.

But Montefiore also acknowledges that Jerusalem is a city of death. We believe that one of the most penetrating paragraphs in his magnum opus is this:

Death is our constant companion: pilgrims have long come to Jerusalem to die and be buried around the Temple Mount to be ready to rise again in the Apocalypse, and they continue to come. The city is surrounded by and founded upon cemeteries; the wizened body-parts of ancient saints are revered--the dessicated blackened right hand of Mary Magdalene is still displayed in the Greek Orthodox Superior's Room in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Many shrines, even many private houses, are built around tombs.

The darkness of this city of the dead stems not just from a sort of necrophilia, but also from necromancy: the dead here are almost alive, even as they await the resurrection. The unending struggle for Jerusalem--massacres, mayhem, wars, terrorism, sieges and catastrophes--have made this place into a battlefield, in Aldous Huxley's words the 'slaughterhouse of the religions', in Faubert's a 'charnel house'. Melville called the city a 'skull' besieged by 'armies of the dead'; while Edward Said remembered that his father had hated Jerusalem because it 'reminded him of death'.
(Montefiore, Jerusalem: the Biography, p. xix)

"A skull besieged by the armies of the dead". We wonder whether Melville himself understood just how profoundly perceptive his phrase continues to be. Into that city is heaped up many of the perversions of the Christian faith, together with the idolatries of Judaism and Islam, all claiming that this is the Holy Place. It has become a Babel of Unbelief--a monument to the folly of rebellion against the Lord and His Christ. Montefiore puts it well:

Jerusalem has a way of disappointing and tormenting both conquerors and visitors. The contrast between the real and heavenly cities is so excruciating that a hundred patients a year are committed to the city's asylum, suffering from the Jerusalem Syndrome, a madness of anticipation, disappointment and delusion. But Jerusalem Syndrome is political too: Jerusalem defies sense, practical politics and strategy, existing in the realm of ravenous passions and invincible emotions, impermeable to reason."
(Ibid., p. xxi)

Now we do not wish to descend into brute philistinism here. Jerusalem has architecture, art, artifacts, museums and religious buildings which portray its history--but then so does every old city in the world. These have their own interest and fascination. But so does 2000 year old Chinese pottery. And, yes, we are interested in the archaeology, geography and topography of Israel to help shed light upon redemptive history, as recorded in Genesis, I and II Samuel, the Gospels and so forth. But that is it. Beyond that the earthly city of Jerusalem has no significance whatsoever in the Kingdom of God--except as a warning to apostates and Unbelievers.

Before the work of making propitiation for the sins of His people--of those the Father had given Him--our Lord pronounced a final doom upon Jerusalem: "Behold, your house is being left to you desolate." (Matthew 23: 38) From that time forward, Jerusalem had played no further part and has no further place in redemptive history and in the Kingdom of God. It is covenantally, spiritually desolate. A waste place.

The repeated successive attempts to rebuild it into a Christian shrine or place of spiritual significance is not only a grave error, it is a rebellious idolatry of the first order. It was under Constantine that the first imperial attempts were made to "sanctify" Jerusalem and to confuse the heavenly city with the earthly desolation. Even so, the Church's great teachers of the time animadverted against making Jerusalem a holy place, a place of pilgrimage.

As Rodney Stark acutely observes:

. . . Jerome did not think it at all important for anyone to undertake a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and many early church fathers condemned or ridiculed the practice. Saint Augustine (354-430) denounced pilgrimages, Saint John Chrysostom (344-407) mocked them, and Saint Gregory of Nyssa (335-394) pointed out that pilgrimages were nowhere suggested in the Bible and that Jerusalem was a rather unattractive and sinful city. Jerome agreed, noting that it was full of "prostitutes . . . [and] the dregs of the whole world gathered there."
(Stark, op cit., p.81f.)

But the pilgrims, led at first by Byzantine female aristocracy, gradually mounted in number, until they became a torrent.

. . . by the end of the fifth century there were more than three hundred hostels and monasteries offering lodging to pilgrims in the city of Jerusalem alone. If we assume that on average each of these could accommodate twenty guests, that would he been a daily capacity of six thousand, which is suggestive of very heavy travel, given that the resident population of the city at that time was only about ten thousand.
(Stark, ibid., p. 82)

The resurrection of Jerusalem as a Holy City was (and is) a perversion of the Christian faith and of redemptive history. It should never have happened--and would not have, had church leaders, teachers, and Christians paid more attention to their Bibles than to superstitions. The spawn of all this was to build the city of the skull, besieged by the armies of the dead.

What God makes desolate, let not man try to rebuild--especially in His Name. Here lies the root problem with the Crusades.

Letter From America

Common Sense Meltdown

Daniel J. Flynn

Printed in FrontPageMag.com


An old joke in conservative circles takes the gloomy occasion of the world’s end to make an amusing point about media coverage. On the eve of Armageddon, the Wall Street Journal’s headline announces: “Planet’s Demise Imminent; Dow Plummets.” Us Weekly’s cover reads: “Earth Extinction: Who Will Lady Gaga Be Wearing?” The headline in the New York Times? “World to End; Women and Minorities Suffer Most.”

The Gray Lady’s coverage of the apocalyptic scenes in Japan illustrates why the joke worked. Leave it to the Times to insert its unrelated political tics into its chronicling of a major event. Instead of focusing on the actual tragedy of lives lost and homes gone, the Times fixates upon an imaginary one: the terror unleashed at damaged nuclear reactors. But the nuclear power plant in question has thus far witnessed the death of a single human being who died in a crane accident. Times reporters forever lose the story in front of their noses for politicized abstractions that massage their worldview.

Such headlines as “Risk of Meltdown Spreads at Japanese Plant,” “Partial Meltdowns Presumed at Crippled Reactors,” and “U.S. Nuclear Industry Faces New Uncertainty” suggest to Times readers that a politically-charged manmade catastrophe is what ails Japan. In reality, Japan has endured a one-in-a-lifetime natural disaster.

John M. Broder reported Sunday in the Times that “the world watches the unfolding crisis in Japan’s nuclear reactors and the widespread terror it has spawned.” But the crisis the world watches involves an earthquake and a tsunami. That real crisis has killed upwards of 10,000 people, left hundreds of thousands homeless, and caused billions in property damage. The crisis of the Times’ narrative? It doesn’t warrant constant, above-the-fold attention, particularly when competing with the worst disaster in an industrialized nation in recent memory.

“Operators fear that if they cannot establish control, despite increasingly desperate measures to do so, the reactors could experience full meltdowns, which could release catastrophic amounts of radiation,” Hiroko Tabuchi and Matthew Wald wrote in the Times Monday (emphasis added). “The two reactors where the explosions occurred are both presumed to have already suffered partial meltdowns—a dangerous situation that, if unchecked, could lead to full meltdown.” Who has time for facts when there is conjecture to be made?

The opening line of a Times editorial Tuesday might be read as a tacit indictment of its news coverage: “Any comment on the disaster in Japan must begin with the stunning scale of human loss.” This is precisely what the Times has not done. Sensationalistic accounts of the problems at Fukushima Daiichi have been allowed to dwarf the catastrophe that dwarfs it. The editorial, after noting the human tragedy, obsesses over potential calamities involving nuclear power: “this four-day crisis in Japan already amounts to the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986.” Unmentioned is the inconvenient fact that nobody has been killed in a nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

There is something profane about bumping a human tragedy on such an enormous scale to the sub narrative. This indecency is compounded by leading with Godzilla scenarios and frenzy-inspiring what-ifs. The disproportionate coverage is obtuse in a profound way.

Hyperpolitical reporters feel lost without a black-hat to crusade against. Geological disturbances lend themselves neither to politicization nor anthropomorphization. So, reporters invent boogeymen to propel story arcs.

The Indian Ocean Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, some conspiracy theorists in the Muslim world suggested, unleashed so much destruction because U.S. officials withheld information that could have warned those in its path. After Hurricane Katrina, Al Gore and others suggested global warming as the culprit. In Japan, where an earthquake and ensuing tsunami damaged, among much else, nuclear power plants, nuclear power overshadows the earthquake and the tsunami as the villain among Western journalists. Part ideological slant, part yellow journalism, the overblown Fukushima Daiichi coverage represents the worst of journalism.

The Fukushima Daiichi plant has experienced radiation levels rise above normal (and then has experienced a drop down to the level of a common X-ray). One worker has been treated for radiation exposure. There have been fires and explosions. But nobody has died, save for in the crane accident, as the result of undeniable problems at the 40-year-old plant. This is a news story. This isn’t the news story.

The Times coverage tells us less about the tragedy in Japan than it does about the Times. We glean from the reporting that journalists working for the newspaper of record are skeptical about the proposed expansion of nuclear power in the U.S. Less apparent to readers is what is happening a half-a-world away. In Rahm Emanuel fashion, the paper has not let a good crisis go to waste.

Daniel J. Flynn is the author of A Conservative History of the American Left (Crown Forum, 2008), Intellectual Morons (Crown Forum, 2004), and Why the Left Hates America (Prima Forum, 2002). He has appeared on Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, Sky News, PBS, CSPAN, and other networks. He writes a Monday column for Human Events and blogs at www.flynnfiles.com.

Mine, Baby, Mine

A Tick for Solid Energy

Regular readers of this blog will be well aware that we have scant regard for the state using its coercive power to engage in commerce. However, the state owned enterprise ("SOE") model, where commercial operations are run on commercial terms at a reasonable arms length basis, has worked reasonably well--at least in the short term. (Having said that, we doubt that it would have survived another left-wing Labour government. Labour had already stacked SOE boards with its "friends" who had less commercial experience than an ante-diluvian Neanderthal. The writing was on the wall.)

We were cheered recently when the Government's mining company, Solid Energy announced that it intends to bid for what remains of the Pike River Coal company. The Chief Executive, in true mercantilist spirit, declared his company's interest in bidding, slammed other bids (by entities as yet unnamed) as not worth the paper they were written on, and talked up his company's considerable experience in West Coast mining. He also added a deft political touch by promising to pay out Pike River's creditors and work to recover the bodies of the slain miners.

More cheering still was his intimation that Solid Energy would employ open cast mining to extract the highly valuable coal from Pike River, pointing out that Solid Energy currently operates open cast mines successfully, in compliance with environmental codes.

If any company would be successful in extracting this valuable asset, it would likely be Solid Energy. The fact that it will likely be partially privatised in the next year or so makes the proposition even more attractive.

No Chernobyl

Fukushima 'meltdown' is worrying, but this is no Chernobyl

Tom Chivers
Tom Chivers is the Telegraph's Strategic Events Editor. He writes on science, culture and anything that crosses his mind. Follow him on Twitter @tomchivers.

I’ve been trying to write this blog post for two days, because I wanted to get it right. The events at Fukushima No1 Nuclear Power Plant are frightening and, understandably, they have attracted the attention of the world’s media. The words “meltdown” and “Chernobyl” have been bandied around, and every time I wrote something, the situation moved on, making each of my pronouncements out of date. So forgive me if that has happened again.

Are we looking at a meltdown? Possibly, in that the fuel rods that run the reactor have lost coolant and may be melting. Will that lead to a Chernobyl-style disaster? Almost certainly not, for two reasons: one, at Chernobyl there was a “criticality accident”, when an uncontrolled nuclear reaction took place, which is essentially impossible at any well-designed reactor; and two, because there was no dedicated containment vessel at Chernobyl, unlike the 20cm-thick concrete-and-steel structures at Fukushima, solely designed to contain a full meltdown.

That’s not to say it’s not alarming – apparently the containment vessels have been breached, so radioactive steam (although not fuel) is leaking out, which is part of the reason for the high radiation levels. Also, a spent fuel pool has been damaged, which is less well protected than the reactors themselves, and could also end up leaking. But it seems (from the confused information that is coming out) that coolant systems should be put back in place today. Further, while radiation levels spiked at more than 11 milliSieverts per hour outside the main gate of Fukushima, that is still only about the equivalent of having a CT scan every hour. Obviously you wouldn’t want to do that, but working in those conditions for short periods probably won’t do any lasting damage, and the usual levels have been significantly lower.

It could all get worse, and I don’t want to belittle it. But here is the thing: the fourth largest earthquake in recorded history struck Japan on Friday. 10,000 people may be dead, and more than 3,000 certainly are. This is in a country more used to earthquakes than any in the world. Of those 10,000 possible dead, so far it appears that not one was due to the problems at Fukushima. Even in a worst-case scenario, if the team of fantastically brave nuclear workers who are there trying to fix it are killed, then it is still something of a triumph for Japanese engineering, which – 40 years ago, remember – created a nuclear reactor so solid that, faced with a cataclysm 8,000 times as powerful as the one which devastated Christchurch last month, it is still largely intact.

So by all means build future nuclear power stations in Japan to withstand greater earthquakes. But don’t think this means that nuclear power is unsafe. And, most importantly, don’t let the very human fear of the words “radiation”, “nuclear”, “meltdown” and “Chernobyl” distract us from the real tragedy, which is an unfolding humanitarian disaster of entirely natural and familiar causes. The real problem over the next few days is not going to be radiation sickness. It’s going to be hypothermia. Fukushima is a high-profile diversion. Snow is the silent killer.

Chinese Chutzpah

A Child Too Far

"Chutzpah" is brazen effrontery. The classic illustration is of a man who murdered his parents, then threw himself on the mercy of the court, pleading that he was an orphan.

China has shamed itself and lost face in New Zealand with and act of chutzpah as ludicrous as the account above. According to Stuff,

China has demanded New Zealand give special compensation to Chinese families who lost their children in the Christchurch earthquake. Seven Chinese nationals have been named as dead while 24 are missing, all from the CTV building-based language school.

Is the demand based upon race? Or upon China's long held view that it is earth's Middle Kingdom and that we in the outer regions are barbarians? Not at all. The Chinese ambassador has been demanding extra compensation because of the "special circumstances" of the bereaved Chinese parents.

An embassy official coordinating the disaster relief centre, Cheng Lee, told Radio New Zealand that China's situation was unusual due to the fact that by law families there could only have one child per family.

"There is a very notable difference in terms of the family situation between the Chinese family members and other foreign family members," he said. "You can expect how lonely, how desperate they are, not only from losing loved ones, but losing almost entirely their source of economic assistance after retirement."

To be sure the suffering of parents losing an only child would be extreme. Coupled with the fact that in China, one's only child is one's retirement plan, the suffering is not just emotional--it is also financial. All this we can understand. Just as we can understand how the man who murdered his parents might suffer as an orphan.

Whilst the immediate cause of suffering for these bereaved parents has been the earthquake in Christchurch, the ultimate cause is a deliberate benighted policy of the Chinese government. The "one child policy", we believe, is already resulting in untold damage and will wreak destruction to Chinese society in the long term. It is an overt act of rebellion against the Living God which will be judged by the nation reaping its fearsome consequences.

Before too long Chinese parents who have suffered adverse consequences as a result of losing their only legally permitted child are going to rise up against their government and demand redress. Maybe that's the real reason the Chinese Ambassador has been pushing so hard for extra compensation from the New Zealand government. Anything to nip potential unrest in the bud.

In the meantime, the Chinese government has just lost face and shamed itself in New Zealand. Chutzpah is what it is.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

The Devil You Say

Expository - Exegetical Fragments
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, March 16, 2011

It is initially curious to some that fundamentalists will say, in their statements of faith, that they believe in a personal devil. At first glance it might appear to be a statement about the inspiration of the Bible -- since the devil is such an obvious reality in Scripture, and since the liberals were engaged in denying the authority of Scripture, this would be a good litmus test to detect any incipient liberalism. And it is a good litmus test. The devil is obviously more than a vague miasma.

And so put me down with the fundies as believing in a personal devil, and in a real Hell. At the same time, this is a subject where a lot of extrabiblical traditions have gotten mixed in with what the Bible teaches. Here are just few areas where we need to look more closely.

First, the devil is not God's opposite. God has no opposite. To affirm this is to fall into a kind of Manichean dualism, with two eternal principles at war with each other -- good and evil. As Lewis points out, the devil is a fallen creature, and if he has an opposite it would be someone like the archangel Michael.

Second, the common conflation of names for him has to be carefully reviewed. Satan and Lucifer are common enough, but the biblical case there is tenuous. Possible, but tenuous. Beelzebub and Belial are others. We tend to lump them all together, and we might be right. But we might not.

Third, he is not mentioned by name in the account of our first parents, but his presence there is implied. In Genesis, he is the "serpent." But his presence there is confirmed by statements in the New Testament. John tells that he was involved in instigating the murder of Abel by Cain. In Revelation, he is called "that ancient dragon." And in Romans, Paul applies to Satan the prophecy that was made against the serpent in Gen. 3:15. May the God of peace soon crush Satan beneath your feet.

Fourth, he is not the king of Hell. Jesus is the king of Hell. The lake of fire was prepared for the devil and his angels. Contrary to popular cartoons, demons are not the jailers and tormentors in Hell, but are among the tormented.

Fifth, this place of final torment is Gehenna, Hell, the lake of fire. It is not Hades, the intermediate place of the dead, called Sheol in the Old Testament. In Revelation, we are told that death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire. Jesus, as the Creed accurately tells us, descended into Hades. He did not descend into Gehenna.
Sixth, the fact that the devil is a personal devil, having a genuine independent reality, does not keep him from being a spirit. He is the prince of the power of the air. The ability of demons to possess a man, as in the case of Legion, and numerous other New Testament examples, means that the structure of a devil's personal identity is conducive to linking up with the spirit of a man. Where does the devil live? What is a conducive environment for him? He lives in the cloud of envy and accusation that the unconverted human heart so easily generates.

And last, the devil and his angels were definitively thrown down from their position of power in the death of Jesus. As Colossians tells us, Jesus triumphed over them by His death. We are told in Hebrews that Jesus, through His death, destroyed him who had the power of death, that is the devil. But the fact that the devil was defeated in the cross does not mean that he was vaporized in the cross. He had his ability to deceive the nations taken away, thus making way for the fulfilment of the Great Commission. But after his defeat on the cross, in the pages of the New Testament, we still find him active -- Paul says we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers.

The End of State Education, Part #5

Resistance is Futile

The litany of the forces arrayed against quality state education systems is long. We believe these forces make state education's decline inevitable. Without a thoroughgoing reformation of the fundaments of Western society itself, resistance is futile. The Borg is here.

We know that in New Zealand roughly one third of all graduates from state schools are functionally illiterate and innumerate. They cannot read supermarket shelf labels. Nor can they compare prices. We also know that on any given school day one tenth of pupils will be absent, without a conscientious reason. Truancy is systemic.

Recently we sought to interview potential candidates for a teaching position in our Christian school. These candidates were committed Christians; they were currently studying at a teacher training institution; they were zealous for their prospective careers--but were unable to write a sentence that was grammatically or syntactically correct. Apparently they had never learned after thirteen years of state schooling what a full-stop was, or how one was to begin a sentence. They had all graduated with "flying colours" from NCEA levels 11 through 13 in English! Sadly they were unemployable in our school.

These folk were neither functionally illiterate nor innumerate--but they were incompetent in even the rudiments of language and maths. This, of course, meant that their ability to think, reason, encapsulate, describe, argue, and comprehend was severely curtailed. We guess that this cohort would represent another third of graduates from state schools.

Those who think that starting a new state funded programme (for example, Early Childhood Education), or shrinking classroom sizes, or raising teacher salaries, or introducing national testing will turn the tide are naive. They have not reckoned with the tsunami of the secular forces arrayed against state schools. It is bigger by far than any ten metre wall of water racing into Sendai.

Let's name two of these secular forces. The first is statism--which arguably is the established religion of our day. By this we mean that for many the state or the government is the ultimate reality and force. Name any social, political, material, economic or cultural problem and within a nano-second the conversation will have become political--by which we mean that "the government needs to do something, or this, or that" will have been introduced into the conversation. Functionally our society looks to government as its god.

The spin-off effect upon state education is direct. The state's "long term" solution to any problem is to attempt to use its schools to change human nature and action to solve society's perceived problems. Government as redeemer translates into schools as agents of socialisation and state propaganda, not education. This is a weight which schools simply cannot bear. They both stop educating and fail miserably in socialisation.

The second secular force also has religious roots. When the West turned away from the Living God philosophical scepticism was the inevitable long term outcome. Knowledge lost its point of integration and so fractured into thousands of pieces. Three hundred years of post-Enlightenment maturation has allowed scepticism to reap a prodigious harvest. Unbelief now understands that it can no longer talk about culture, but only multi-cultural reality. It can no longer speak of truth, but only perspectives. Rather than knowledge, it is reduced to telling stories about the world. It can no longer speak intelligibly about mankind; rather, more "accurately" only an emerging life-form. Correspondence between what we think we know and the actual world is in itself impossible. Truth is prejudice. Knowledge is opinion. Any claims for either beyond this is nothing more than adding ignorance and stubbornness and arrogance to the mix.

The end result of scepticism is pluralism. You can have as many truths as there are people or opinions. This drive to pluriformity is relentless. We have now been gravely informed by Stephen Hawking that we must no longer speak of a universe, but multiverses.

Scepticism means that education is impossible in the sense of a teacher imparting actual truth and knowledge to students. This is why state school systems are failing--and will continue to do so. In a philosophically sceptical world to attempt to teach someone can never rise beyond being an act of arrogant, presumptuous intellectual imperialism.

The only course--and this is now the current paradigm in education--is constructivism. This refers to education being made subservient to pedagogy, and a particular kind of pedagogy at that. It is a way of "teaching" where the "teacher" becomes merely a facilitator, enabling the pupil to construct their own meaning, truth, and perspectives. In this sceptical world-view--which now dominates the West--to impart knowledge is to impose and enslave; it is to do serious damage to the pupil. It impedes true enlightenment which is self-discovery and individual perspectival sovereignty. The only recourse of state education systems is to affirm everything, which is to deny nothing.

Above all, the child must be affirmed, rather than taught.

Making children feel good about themselves has been on of the main objectives of US schools during the past three decades. By the time they are seven or eight years of age, American children have internalised the prevailing psychobabble and can proclaim the importance of avoiding negative emotions and of high self-esteem. Yet this has had not perceptible impact on their school performance.
Robert Whelan, ed, The Corruption of the Curriculum, p. 9

Maybe not, but the child will be well on the way to constructing their own private curriculum--and that is the whole point in a culture which is both democratic and Unbelieving. Scepticism can only mean self-discovery--whatever that might mean--not conformity to an authoritative Truth.

Western state schools cannot do aught, but fail.

Alex Standish, who has taught both in the UK and the US,  has provided a case study using geography as a subject to illustrate how scepticism has not only destroyed the subject, but has reduced it to incoherence. In his essay, "Geography Used to Be About Maps", he shows how the modern UK curriculum now specifies that geography is about teaching students self-awareness.

[The curriculum's] emphasis upon the personal ethics of pupils is apparent in its specifications of content document: "Candidates should be encouraged to examine their own values as they analyse the values of others and to become aware of the power relations implicit in any situation and the conflicts and inequalities which may arise."
Whelan, ed., op cit., p. 34. Emphasis, ours.

Yes, geography used to be about maps. Now it is about self-examination. Scepticism's fruit.

Standish goes on:

In post-structuralism, truth is replaced by truths and knowledge by knowledges. Thus, much of our present inherited knowledge is dismissed as only one perspective: that of a Western, white, male, middle-class elite. If knowledge can no longer be abstracted from the particular social context in which it arose, it cannot be separated from the prejudices or values of the individual who constructed it.
Ibid., p.42

Scepticism has silenced the teacher. He dare not speak or teach, lest he impose his prejudices and values upon students. Rather, he must facilitate a student's self-discovery of his own values and the values of his peers.

Every subject is being inundated by the sceptical tsunami. Even science. A UK recent report entitled, "Science Education in State Schools" produced, in part, to understand why science as a subject has declined in "popularity" in state schools called for a radical re-write of the science curriculum. The subject must be made explicitly to engage with the "enthusiasms and concerns" of students. Here is the clanger: "science education can only succeed when students believe that the science they are being taught is of personal worth to themselves." (Whelan, op cit., p.120) Personalised curricula, self-discovery, values education, constructivism . . . scepticism.

"State education" is now an irrecoverable oxymoron.

Mordor and Its Works

Foetid Fruit of the Fall

"I was a mistake. My mother didn’t want to have me. I guess she never wanted me. I probably got in her way. I know I must have disgraced her. A divorced woman has enough problems getting a man, I guess, but one with an illegitimate baby…. I wish, I still wish, she had wanted me."

Marilyn Munroe, quoted by novelist Larry McMurtry, from a biography of Munroe.

Only Christ can remove such pains and evils from the human race. "There is salvation in no-one else, for there is no other Name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved." (Acts 4:12)

Religious Nutters Everywhere

It Takes One to Know One

Tapu Misa has written a coruscating piece in the NZ Herald on "religious nutjobs" in the US. It meanders all over the place and unfortunately contains more slurs than coherent argument.

She commences by professing that it is hard to love fellow Christians. She finds the Westboro Baptist folk particularly despicable because they protest outside the funerals of US soldiers in a most ungraceful way. She goes on to misrepresent a recent decision by the Supreme Court on the matter.

The US Supreme Court has ruled that the church's right to behave despicably is protected by the First Amendment right to free speech.

Well, actually Tapu, no. The Supreme Court was a bit more sophisticated than that. The Court upheld (as it has done many times) the right of local communities to regulate public speech, but the plaintiff in this case was not part of the community at all. He was not seeking a local restriction, but a blanket interdiction against Westboro Baptist views and practices--an entirely different matter. But, as they say in journalism, it's best not to let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Then comes an egregious slur of the United States in general.

When it comes to religious nutters, we have nothing on America. The most religious of Western nations excels at breeding the seriously theologically ignorant and misguided. If only they weren't so supremely confident of God's approval as well.

OK, so now we are going to get some examples of "the seriously theologically ignorant" in the United States. Listen up. Maybe Tapu is going to give us an analysis of the aberrant theology of Westboro Baptist believers--you know, something along the lines of their misplaced apocalypticism, or the fact that they appear to have little understanding of divine providence, or what separation from unbelief really involves, or how their ethics call for strict separation of wheat and tares now, despite our Lord's prohibition on this matter, etc.

No. For her "case in point" Tapu Misa points us to Governor Walker of Wisconsin. Now here is one seriously misguided theological nutter if ever there were. What? Yes. He is busting up unions in Wisconsin. He is on a mission from God (and his billionaire backers) apparently. Unfortunately our columnist is starting to let her petticoats show. Her theology appears to be informed far more by marxist rhetoric and class warfare than the Scriptures.

Not a word about democracy, elections, voters, and Governor Walker's recent inauguration as Governor of Wisconsin, having won an election by promising to deal with Wisconsin's $3bn annual budget deficit. Not a word about keeping one's integrity with voters. Not a word about the evils of public debt binding up future generations of children and grandchildren. Not a word about fiscal rectitude and its theological underpinnings. It's  all about stripping away union rights.

But, as with her rendition of the Supreme Court's recent decision on Westboro, a half-truth actually becomes a misrepresentation eliding mighty close to a lie.

Not that "beating up" (state sector) unions is not on Governor Walker's agenda.  It clearly is.  A recent piece in Time Magazine puts the matter succinctly. 

Walker has a strong case on the fiscal merits. The cost of state employees' benefits has skyrocketed in tandem with the rising power of public employees' unions. It has become a perverse and semicorrupt arrangement: the unions raise millions from dues, which are then used to elect labor-friendly politicians who cave at the contract-negotiating table, especially on long-term employment deals, whose cost really begins to crush the state or city budget in the years after the agreeable politician has left office. This is where public-sector unions lack the moral authority of their private-sector brethren. When the United Steelworkers negotiate with a steel company, they don't also control the company's board of directors. (Who's to blame in Wisconsin?)

Few Americans understand how the public-employee-union money machine works. Many unionized state and local public workers have their dues automatically deducted from their paychecks. On average, a teacher in Wisconsin pays more than $1,000 per year to the union (from an average salary of $51,264). A decent chunk of this money is used to fund political activities. That doesn't mean just making contributions. It also means running lavish independent ad campaigns in support of their chosen candidates and against their opponents. Even Democratic candidates who oppose union priorities can face massively funded negative campaigns targeting them in primaries. Engaging in such well-funded political activity is the unions' right, of course, but their immense financial power means they are bringing a machine gun to a fistfight.

Then the biggest hoot of all comes. Tapu Misa begins to lecture us all about the evils of inequality in the United States. She paints her own version of Armageddon, which is that the future of the US is under threat due to growing inequality. Having made due obeisance to Westboro-like nutter, Naomi Klein, she then cites a professor of sociology in California:

"The poverty rate in the United States, which was cut in half during the 1960s, is now the highest of the wealthy democratic countries. And according to a recent Unicef study of child wellbeing, the United States ranks 20th out of 21 OECD countries."

If the attack on public sector unions triumphs, it will "have dire consequences that will go far beyond union members and their families, for it will shred America's already tattered safety net and further concentrate power in the hands of the privileged".

Note: this is theological acumen and understanding according to Tapu Misa. We would caution her to be careful about throwing around sobriquets like "religious nutter". They might prove to be a little bit closer to home than she would wish. In any event, we are all for equality. We wish the public sector unions in Wisconsin were as well. Through their gaming of the political system and their self-serving conspiracies with State Democrats they have been able to vote themselves money out of taxpayers pockets to where they are paid well above private sector wages.

If Tapu Misa genuine believes that inequality proses a great social danger she should ardently favour Governor Walker's programme. The (presumably) offensive inequality between public sector and private sector wages will be obliterated by the good and righteous Governor. Right on, brother.

Media Hysteria and Japanese Reactors

In the Bowels of Nuclear Reactors

We are being bombarded with visions of Armageddon daily. It's Meltdown, folks. Well, maybe not.

Here is a piece written by a research scientist  from MIT on the Japanese nuclear power situation. It is the best we have come across. We cannot verify or confirm this, as we have no scientific credentials in the matter. The upshot appears to be: layers upon layers of safety procedures coupled with no radiation threat to the population at large, even with the pressure releases.

It is a bit lengthy, but if you are interested then well worth the read. It is also written clearly in non-technical language, which speaks for its credibility.

(Hat Tip: Patterico; post taken from Morgsatlarge.)

This post is by Dr Josef Oehmen, a research scientist at MIT, in Boston.

He is a PhD Scientist, whose father has extensive experience in Germany’s nuclear industry. I asked him to write this information to my family in Australia, who were being made sick with worry by the media reports coming from Japan. I am republishing it with his permission.

It is a few hours old, so if any information is out of date, blame me for the delay in getting it published.

This is his text in full and unedited. It is very long, so get comfy.

I am writing this text (Mar 12) to give you some peace of mind regarding some of the troubles in Japan, that is the safety of Japan’s nuclear reactors. Up front, the situation is serious, but under control. And this text is long! But you will know more about nuclear power plants after reading it than all journalists on this planet put together.

There was and will *not* be any significant release of radioactivity.

By “significant” I mean a level of radiation of more than what you would receive on – say – a long distance flight, or drinking a glass of beer that comes from certain areas with high levels of natural background radiation.

I have been reading every news release on the incident since the earthquake. There has not been one single (!) report that was accurate and free of errors (and part of that problem is also a weakness in the Japanese crisis communication). By “not free of errors” I do not refer to tendentious anti-nuclear journalism – that is quite normal these days. By “not free of errors” I mean blatant errors regarding physics and natural law, as well as gross misinterpretation of facts, due to an obvious lack of fundamental and basic understanding of the way nuclear reactors are build and operated. I have read a 3 page report on CNN where every single paragraph contained an error.

We will have to cover some fundamentals, before we get into what is going on.

Construction of the Fukushima nuclear power plants

The plants at Fukushima are so called Boiling Water Reactors, or BWR for short. Boiling Water Reactors are similar to a pressure cooker. The nuclear fuel heats water, the water boils and creates steam, the steam then drives turbines that create the electricity, and the steam is then cooled and condensed back to water, and the water send back to be heated by the nuclear fuel. The pressure cooker operates at about 250 °C.

The nuclear fuel is uranium oxide. Uranium oxide is a ceramic with a very high melting point of about 3000 °C. The fuel is manufactured in pellets (think little cylinders the size of Lego bricks). Those pieces are then put into a long tube made of Zircaloy with a melting point of 2200 °C, and sealed tight. The assembly is called a fuel rod. These fuel rods are then put together to form larger packages, and a number of these packages are then put into the reactor. All these packages together are referred to as “the core”.

The Zircaloy casing is the first containment. It separates the radioactive fuel from the rest of the world.

The core is then placed in the “pressure vessels”. That is the pressure cooker we talked about before. The pressure vessels is the second containment. This is one sturdy piece of a pot, designed to safely contain the core for temperatures several hundred °C. That covers the scenarios where cooling can be restored at some point.

The entire “hardware” of the nuclear reactor – the pressure vessel and all pipes, pumps, coolant (water) reserves, are then encased in the third containment. The third containment is a hermetically (air tight) sealed, very thick bubble of the strongest steel and concrete. The third containment is designed, built and tested for one single purpose: To contain, indefinitely, a complete core meltdown. For that purpose, a large and thick concrete basin is cast under the pressure vessel (the second containment), all inside the third containment. This is the so-called “core catcher”. If the core melts and the pressure vessel bursts (and eventually melts), it will catch the molten fuel and everything else. It is typically built in such a way that the nuclear fuel will be spread out, so it can cool down.

This third containment is then surrounded by the reactor building. The reactor building is an outer shell that is supposed to keep the weather out, but nothing in. (this is the part that was damaged in the explosion, but more to that later).

Fundamentals of nuclear reactions

The uranium fuel generates heat by nuclear fission. Big uranium atoms are split into smaller atoms. That generates heat plus neutrons (one of the particles that forms an atom). When the neutron hits another uranium atom, that splits, generating more neutrons and so on. That is called the nuclear chain reaction.

Now, just packing a lot of fuel rods next to each other would quickly lead to overheating and after about 45 minutes to a melting of the fuel rods. It is worth mentioning at this point that the nuclear fuel in a reactor can *never* cause a nuclear explosion the type of a nuclear bomb. Building a nuclear bomb is actually quite difficult (ask Iran). In Chernobyl, the explosion was caused by excessive pressure buildup, hydrogen explosion and rupture of all containments, propelling molten core material into the environment (a “dirty bomb”). Why that did not and will not happen in Japan, further below.

In order to control the nuclear chain reaction, the reactor operators use so-called “control rods”. The control rods absorb the neutrons and kill the chain reaction instantaneously. A nuclear reactor is built in such a way, that when operating normally, you take out all the control rods. The coolant water then takes away the heat (and converts it into steam and electricity) at the same rate as the core produces it. And you have a lot of leeway around the standard operating point of 250°C.

The challenge is that after inserting the rods and stopping the chain reaction, the core still keeps producing heat. The uranium “stopped” the chain reaction. But a number of intermediate radioactive elements are created by the uranium during its fission process, most notably Cesium and Iodine isotopes, i.e. radioactive versions of these elements that will eventually split up into smaller atoms and not be radioactive anymore. Those elements keep decaying and producing heat. Because they are not regenerated any longer from the uranium (the uranium stopped decaying after the control rods were put in), they get less and less, and so the core cools down over a matter of days, until those intermediate radioactive elements are used up.

This residual heat is causing the headaches right now.

So the first “type” of radioactive material is the uranium in the fuel rods, plus the intermediate radioactive elements that the uranium splits into, also inside the fuel rod (Cesium and Iodine).

There is a second type of radioactive material created, outside the fuel rods. The big main difference up front: Those radioactive materials have a very short half-life, that means that they decay very fast and split into non-radioactive materials. By fast I mean seconds. So if these radioactive materials are released into the environment, yes, radioactivity was released, but no, it is not dangerous, at all. Why? By the time you spelled “R-A-D-I-O-N-U-C-L-I-D-E”, they will be harmless, because they will have split up into non radioactive elements. Those radioactive elements are N-16, the radioactive isotope (or version) of nitrogen (air). The others are noble gases such as Argon. But where do they come from? When the uranium splits, it generates a neutron (see above). Most of these neutrons will hit other uranium atoms and keep the nuclear chain reaction going. But some will leave the fuel rod and hit the water molecules, or the air that is in the water. Then, a non-radioactive element can “capture” the neutron. It becomes radioactive. As described above, it will quickly (seconds) get rid again of the neutron to return to its former beautiful self.

This second “type” of radiation is very important when we talk about the radioactivity being released into the environment later on.

What happened at Fukushima

I will try to summarize the main facts. The earthquake that hit Japan was 5 times more powerful than the worst earthquake the nuclear power plant was built for (the Richter scale works logarithmically; the difference between the 8.2 that the plants were built for and the 8.9 that happened is 5 times, not 0.7). So the first hooray for Japanese engineering, everything held up.

When the earthquake hit with 8.9, the nuclear reactors all went into automatic shutdown. Within seconds after the earthquake started, the control rods had been inserted into the core and nuclear chain reaction of the uranium stopped. Now, the cooling system has to carry away the residual heat. The residual heat load is about 3% of the heat load under normal operating conditions.

The earthquake destroyed the external power supply of the nuclear reactor. That is one of the most serious accidents for a nuclear power plant, and accordingly, a “plant black out” receives a lot of attention when designing backup systems. The power is needed to keep the coolant pumps working. Since the power plant had been shut down, it cannot produce any electricity by itself any more.

Things were going well for an hour. One set of multiple sets of emergency Diesel power generators kicked in and provided the electricity that was needed. Then the Tsunami came, much bigger than people had expected when building the power plant (see above, factor 7). The tsunami took out all multiple sets of backup Diesel generators.

When designing a nuclear power plant, engineers follow a philosophy called “Defense of Depth”. That means that you first build everything to withstand the worst catastrophe you can imagine, and then design the plant in such a way that it can still handle one system failure (that you thought could never happen) after the other. A tsunami taking out all backup power in one swift strike is such a scenario. The last line of defense is putting everything into the third containment (see above), that will keep everything, whatever the mess, control rods in our out, core molten or not, inside the reactor.

When the diesel generators were gone, the reactor operators switched to emergency battery power. The batteries were designed as one of the backups to the backups, to provide power for cooling the core for 8 hours. And they did.

Within the 8 hours, another power source had to be found and connected to the power plant. The power grid was down due to the earthquake. The diesel generators were destroyed by the tsunami. So mobile diesel generators were trucked in.

This is where things started to go seriously wrong. The external power generators could not be connected to the power plant (the plugs did not fit). So after the batteries ran out, the residual heat could not be carried away any more.

At this point the plant operators begin to follow emergency procedures that are in place for a “loss of cooling event”. It is again a step along the “Depth of Defense” lines. The power to the cooling systems should never have failed completely, but it did, so they “retreat” to the next line of defense. All of this, however shocking it seems to us, is part of the day-to-day training you go through as an operator, right through to managing a core meltdown.

It was at this stage that people started to talk about core meltdown. Because at the end of the day, if cooling cannot be restored, the core will eventually melt (after hours or days), and the last line of defense, the core catcher and third containment, would come into play.

But the goal at this stage was to manage the core while it was heating up, and ensure that the first containment (the Zircaloy tubes that contains the nuclear fuel), as well as the second containment (our pressure cooker) remain intact and operational for as long as possible, to give the engineers time to fix the cooling systems.

Because cooling the core is such a big deal, the reactor has a number of cooling systems, each in multiple versions (the reactor water cleanup system, the decay heat removal, the reactor core isolating cooling, the standby liquid cooling system, and the emergency core cooling system). Which one failed when or did not fail is not clear at this point in time.

So imagine our pressure cooker on the stove, heat on low, but on. The operators use whatever cooling system capacity they have to get rid of as much heat as possible, but the pressure starts building up. The priority now is to maintain integrity of the first containment (keep temperature of the fuel rods below 2200°C), as well as the second containment, the pressure cooker. In order to maintain integrity of the pressure cooker (the second containment), the pressure has to be released from time to time. Because the ability to do that in an emergency is so important, the reactor has 11 pressure release valves. The operators now started venting steam from time to time to control the pressure. The temperature at this stage was about 550°C.

This is when the reports about “radiation leakage” starting coming in. I believe I explained above why venting the steam is theoretically the same as releasing radiation into the environment, but why it was and is not dangerous. The radioactive nitrogen as well as the noble gases do not pose a threat to human health.

At some stage during this venting, the explosion occurred. The explosion took place outside of the third containment (our “last line of defense”), and the reactor building. Remember that the reactor building has no function in keeping the radioactivity contained. It is not entirely clear yet what has happened, but this is the likely scenario: The operators decided to vent the steam from the pressure vessel not directly into the environment, but into the space between the third containment and the reactor building (to give the radioactivity in the steam more time to subside). The problem is that at the high temperatures that the core had reached at this stage, water molecules can “disassociate” into oxygen and hydrogen – an explosive mixture. And it did explode, outside the third containment, damaging the reactor building around. It was that sort of explosion, but inside the pressure vessel (because it was badly designed and not managed properly by the operators) that lead to the explosion of Chernobyl. This was never a risk at Fukushima. The problem of hydrogen-oxygen formation is one of the biggies when you design a power plant (if you are not Soviet, that is), so the reactor is build and operated in a way it cannot happen inside the containment. It happened outside, which was not intended but a possible scenario and OK, because it did not pose a risk for the containment.

So the pressure was under control, as steam was vented. Now, if you keep boiling your pot, the problem is that the water level will keep falling and falling. The core is covered by several meters of water in order to allow for some time to pass (hours, days) before it gets exposed. Once the rods start to be exposed at the top, the exposed parts will reach the critical temperature of 2200 °C after about 45 minutes. This is when the first containment, the Zircaloy tube, would fail.

And this started to happen. The cooling could not be restored before there was some (very limited, but still) damage to the casing of some of the fuel. The nuclear material itself was still intact, but the surrounding Zircaloy shell had started melting. What happened now is that some of the byproducts of the uranium decay – radioactive Cesium and Iodine – started to mix with the steam. The big problem, uranium, was still under control, because the uranium oxide rods were good until 3000 °C. It is confirmed that a very small amount of Cesium and Iodine was measured in the steam that was released into the atmosphere.

It seems this was the “go signal” for a major plan B. The small amounts of Cesium that were measured told the operators that the first containment on one of the rods somewhere was about to give. The Plan A had been to restore one of the regular cooling systems to the core. Why that failed is unclear. One plausible explanation is that the tsunami also took away / polluted all the clean water needed for the regular cooling systems.

The water used in the cooling system is very clean, demineralized (like distilled) water. The reason to use pure water is the above mentioned activation by the neutrons from the Uranium: Pure water does not get activated much, so stays practically radioactive-free. Dirt or salt in the water will absorb the neutrons quicker, becoming more radioactive. This has no effect whatsoever on the core – it does not care what it is cooled by. But it makes life more difficult for the operators and mechanics when they have to deal with activated (i.e. slightly radioactive) water.

But Plan A had failed – cooling systems down or additional clean water unavailable – so Plan B came into effect. This is what it looks like happened:

In order to prevent a core meltdown, the operators started to use sea water to cool the core. I am not quite sure if they flooded our pressure cooker with it (the second containment), or if they flooded the third containment, immersing the pressure cooker. But that is not relevant for us.

The point is that the nuclear fuel has now been cooled down. Because the chain reaction has been stopped a long time ago, there is only very little residual heat being produced now. The large amount of cooling water that has been used is sufficient to take up that heat. Because it is a lot of water, the core does not produce sufficient heat any more to produce any significant pressure. Also, boric acid has been added to the seawater. Boric acid is “liquid control rod”. Whatever decay is still going on, the Boron will capture the neutrons and further speed up the cooling down of the core.

The plant came close to a core meltdown. Here is the worst-case scenario that was avoided: If the seawater could not have been used for treatment, the operators would have continued to vent the water steam to avoid pressure buildup. The third containment would then have been completely sealed to allow the core meltdown to happen without releasing radioactive material. After the meltdown, there would have been a waiting period for the intermediate radioactive materials to decay inside the reactor, and all radioactive particles to settle on a surface inside the containment. The cooling system would have been restored eventually, and the molten core cooled to a manageable temperature. The containment would have been cleaned up on the inside. Then a messy job of removing the molten core from the containment would have begun, packing the (now solid again) fuel bit by bit into transportation containers to be shipped to processing plants. Depending on the damage, the block of the plant would then either be repaired or dismantled.

Now, where does that leave us? My assessment:

The plant is safe now and will stay safe.

Japan is looking at an INES Level 4 Accident: Nuclear accident with local consequences. That is bad for the company that owns the plant, but not for anyone else.

Some radiation was released when the pressure vessel was vented. All radioactive isotopes from the activated steam have gone (decayed). A very small amount of Cesium was released, as well as Iodine. If you were sitting on top of the plants’ chimney when they were venting, you should probably give up smoking to return to your former life expectancy. The Cesium and Iodine isotopes were carried out to the sea and will never be seen again.

There was some limited damage to the first containment. That means that some amounts of radioactive Cesium and Iodine will also be released into the cooling water, but no Uranium or other nasty stuff (the Uranium oxide does not “dissolve” in the water). There are facilities for treating the cooling water inside the third containment. The radioactive Cesium and Iodine will be removed there and eventually stored as radioactive waste in terminal storage.

The seawater used as cooling water will be activated to some degree. Because the control rods are fully inserted, the Uranium chain reaction is not happening. That means the “main” nuclear reaction is not happening, thus not contributing to the activation. The intermediate radioactive materials (Cesium and Iodine) are also almost gone at this stage, because the Uranium decay was stopped a long time ago. This further reduces the activation. The bottom line is that there will be some low level of activation of the seawater, which will also be removed by the treatment facilities.

The seawater will then be replaced over time with the “normal” cooling water

The reactor core will then be dismantled and transported to a processing facility, just like during a regular fuel change.

Fuel rods and the entire plant will be checked for potential damage. This will take about 4-5 years.

The safety systems on all Japanese plants will be upgraded to withstand a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami (or worse)

(Updated) I believe the most significant problem will be a prolonged power shortage. 11 of Japan’s 55 nuclear reactors in different plants were shut down and will have to be inspected, directly reducing the nation’s nuclear power generating capacity by 20%, with nuclear power accounting for about 30% of the national total power generation capacity. I have not looked into possible consequences for other nuclear plants not directly affected. This will probably be covered by running gas power plants that are usually only used for peak loads to cover some of the base load as well. I am not familiar with Japan’s energy supply chain for oil, gas and coal, and what damage the harbors, refinery, storage and transportation networks have suffered, as well as damage to the national distribution grid. All of that will increase your electricity bill, as well as lead to power shortages during peak demand and reconstruction efforts, in Japan.
This all is only part of a much bigger picture. Emergency response has to deal with shelter, drinking water, food and medical care, transportation and communication infrastructure, as well as electricity supply. In a world of lean supply chains, we are looking at some major challenges in all of these areas.

The End of Education, Part #4

The Gradual Descent into Meaninglessness

There is another destructive and devastating trend in state schools: psychobabble has entered pedagogy and is taking over. Children, we are told by state educators, need to be affirmed.

Years ago we attended a "prize" giving at a small primary school. It lasted quite a long time. Why? Everyone was awarded a prize. There was a prize for the biggest smile; for the neatest hair; for helpfulness to the teacher; for kindness--you get the picture. The rationale was that it was vital to the well-being and development of the child that no-one was left out, everyone be affirmed. Disappointment was banished from the school.

Again, you ask why? Clearly this is not reality impinging upon the classroom. Once again, state schools see themselves as preparing children to be model citizens in our Western secular democratic societies which are, as we have seen, pluralistic and multi-cultural. Since nothing can be excluded, philosophically or religiously, everything must be accepted.

These days a few political leaders in the West (Angela Merkel and David Cameron) have been bold enough to declare that multi-culturalism is a tragic failure, a mad experiment that has not worked. Its ramifications do not work in state schools either.

Meaningful learning cannot get far if "A is not non-A" is ignored. Modern education must affirm both "A" and "non-A", since to speak of "non-A" is implicitly discriminatory and negative. Pupils that embrace both "A" and "non-A" must be told they are wrong, incorrect if they are to be educated. But that does not accord with the "affirmation narrative".

In recent decades it has become common to regard children as fragile, emotionally vulnerable things who cannot be expected to cope with real intellectual challenge. It was in this vein that in April 2007 UK teachers were instructed by (Education Secretary) Alan Johnson that they should routinely praise their pupils. According to guidelines, teachers ought to reward children five times as often as they punish them for disrupting lessons. . . . Increasingly the therapeutic objective of making children feel good about themselves is seen as the primary objective of schooling.
Frank Furedi, in Robert Whelan, ed., The Corruption of the Curriculum, p. 8f

The New Zealand curriculum has swallowed this psychobabble hook, line and sinker.

Learning is inseparable from it social and cultural context. Students learn best when they feel accepted, when they enjoy positive relationships with their fellow students and teachers, and when they are able to be active, visible members of the learning community. Effective teachers foster positive relationships within environments that are caring, inclusive, non-discriminatory and cohesive.
"Effective Pedagogy", The New Zealand Curriculum, p.34.

When this is applied to particular subjects, heuristic chaos results. Take history. "I think Hitler was not a bad chap," says one student. "It is good to have structure and order."  Teacher: "Well said. We must care about Hitler's memory. We must not discriminate against him. We are all human beings and we must pull together. Excellent point."

An exaggeration? No. It's that bad. In both the UK and in New Zealand, the subject of terrorism has recently been thrust to the fore of history curricula. Materials to help teachers cover this topic have been hastily assembled.

This material being promoted presents terrorism as its victims as having, broadly speaking, equal points of view. After all, "new history" is about "value relativism"--all views are equal since history is all a matter of opinion. A pack . . . contains 13 sources. Four of these are about Osama bin Laden, including one source that provides extracts from his own words across a range of topics and another source that transcribes his words about the September 11th attack. These two pro-Bin Laden sources are "balanced" only by a fairly neutral biography of Bin Laden and by a copy of the FBI Wanted Poster for him.

Across the other nine sources two are pro-US, two are anti-US and four are, broadly, neutral. The final source provides 16 quotations from the world press on the third anniversary of 9/11. Eight of these press reports come from the Islamic world and are largely hostile to the West. The other eight are from Europe and Asia. Five of them are critical of the US. The US press is not represented.

What is clear is that these teaching materials include substantial evidence to justify terrorism.
Chris McGovern, The New History Boys, Whelan, op cit., p.63f.

This idiocy is a direct result of the psychobabble of affirmation, affirmation, affirmation. Objectivity means that anything is acceptable to someone. Affirmation means that any views must be accorded respect.

Teaching history has become "New History". Wonderful. The achievement of "skills" rather than knowledge now drive the subject.

Teach what content you like. It really does not matter. "New History" is not reliant upon any specific content.
Ibid, p.67

It is important to realise that this is not a sudden development. This process of "using" the subject of history (or social studies) as a pretext to build "model citizens" has been gathering steam for over forty years. There can be no turning back now. The West long ago relinquished the one meta-narrative that gives a framework to reverse this drift into irrational meaninglessness. Just how meaningless becomes clear when perspectivalism rears its ugly post-modern head.

The current UK National Curriculum document in the UK requires that history be taught "perspectivally". Every perspective is equally valid.

. . . children must be taught history through four "diversity" perspectives--"the social, cultural, religious, and ethnic diversity of the societies studied". In addition, perspectives on "experiences", on "ideas", on "beliefs", and on "attitudes" relating to each of men, women and children must be taught--"the experiences and range of ideas, beliefs and attitudes of men, women and children" in the "periods and societies studied". This amounts to another 12 perspectives. . . .

Although the National Curriculum document does not always use the word "perspective" there are, in effect, 24 of them. . . . The obsession with "political correctness" in most of these perspectives is clear. Take any landmark personality or event in history and start applying these perspectives to its teaching and we see how the familiar and famous can easily become the unfamiliar and the uninformative. . . .

These perspective act as a kind of filter. It a battle is taught it is as likely to be through a "social" or "gender" perspective--conditions on board HMS Victory or the rule of women in World War II munitions factories--than it is to be about military events at Trafalgar or El Alamein. When children learn about Elizabeth I they are as likely to learn about how she dressed and went about her daily life as they are about what she did. The unfolding narrative of what happened across the Tudor period does not have to be covered.
Ibid., p.71f. Emphasis, ours.

There will be some who argue that this will be a pendulum phenomenon. The irrationality and idiocy of New History will generate its own counter reaction, and things will move back to a meta-narrative of our "unfolding story". Don't hold your breath. What story would that be? The West in its headlong rush to deny the Living God has been forced into a relentlessly sceptical position where meaning is what we say it is.

But the relentlessness is not finished yet. Meaning is what "we say it is" has now gone still further. Meaning is now what I say it is. Hence the emergence of constructivism--the latest pedagogical fad, which is the most consistent end-point of scepticism yet seen. Since truth is radically relative and perspectival, it is also individual. Therefore, each pupil needs his or her own personally constructed curriculum. (Incidentally, we believe this is why the teaching profession lusts after having the Internet available in classrooms.  It has little to do with teaching and educating.  Rather, its attraction is that it facilitates students to construct their own "thought-world".) 

We will address this in the next piece in the series. Meanwhile we reiterate: state schooling appears irretrievably lost. Given the philosophical, religious and cultural forces arrayed against the state education system, it would appear the entire edifice can only go one way--from failure to ever greater failure.

Those Poor Unionised State Workers

Cry Me a River of Tears

We have blogged several times on the inherent conflicts of interest promulgated by public sector unions (here, here, here,, here, and here.) They are a cancer on the body politic.

In the US a considerable number of states are fiscally bankrupt. A major cause of this mess has been the exorbitant wages and benefits paid out to state sector workers who have used the "muscle" of their unions to "negotiate" with their political dependants ever higher and higher payouts and salaries.

Here is Ann Coulter's take.

Public sector workers are pursuing their own narrow financial interests to the detriment of everyone else in their states. That's fine, but can we stop pretending it's virtuous?

Because of the insane union contracts in Wisconsin, one Madison bus driver, John E. Nelson, was able to make $159,000 in 2009 -- about $100,000 of which in overtime pay. . . . Seven bus drivers took home more than $100,000 that year. . . . It's ludicrous to suggest that these union contracts were fairly bargained. Only one side was at the negotiating table. Ordinary people with jobs were not at the meetings where public sector compensation was discussed. . . .

Why do public sector employees have absurd overtime rules? Why don't they pay for their own health insurance? Why do they get to retire at age 45 with a guaranteed pension of 65 percent of their last year's pay -- as state police in New Jersey do?

This is asymmetrical warfare. Seven percent of the population cares intensely about public sector union contracts -- and nothing else. The remaining 93 percent of voters can't be bothered to care.

Meanwhile, state after state spirals into bankruptcy.

COPYRIGHT 2011 ANN COULTER
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The End of Education, Part #3

Boogie Boarding Up the Huka Falls

We know that state education systems are in trouble all over the Western world. For the vast majority, this poses no insolvable problem. The solution is ready to hand. Vote state education systems more taxpayers' money and, hey presto, all problems will be ameliorated and wither away. Quality education will break out like a plague of pimples. (We note in passing that this "solution" is always endorsed by teachers and teacher unions. No prizes for figuring out why.)

Anyone who can think their way out of a wet paper bag knows that this is a con. In fact there is a very strong negative correlation evident in the West: the more money that is spent on state education systems, the worse the educational outcomes. Ignorance rises the more money spent.

Our thesis is that the decline of Western state education systems is inevitable. The dominant religious and philosophical forces arrayed against education in the West are sufficiently powerful they rapidly outflank any sound initiatives, encircle, then obliterate them. To change the metaphor: to attempt genuine education in state education systems is to paddle up the Huka Falls on a boogie board. In the end the opposing torrent is overwhelming.

To educate its children, any society must have two prerequisites. Firstly, a dominant tradition of knowledge and truth; secondly, an authoritative order in society which requires that the older must teach the younger, and that the younger are obligated to learn from the generation that precedes. The West has neither. Therefore, state education systems fail to educate.

We have described how the emergence of the soft-despotic, redeemer state in the West has led to an inevitable demand that its schools create redeemed citizens. All social problems are deemed solvable provided state schools succeed in socialising students into New Men. Education is no longer focused upon inherited truth, knowledge, or the tools of further learning. It is upon making better people.

Secondly, because the West has turned away from the Living God it has lost all ground of truth. Sartre once said that if a truth or fact has no infinite reference point it has no meaning. Scepticism is the result. In democratic societies this has resulted in an endless "pluriformity" of "truths", the individualising of "truth" and the fracturing of the curriculum. In the end the pluralistic West has no foundation to determine whether learning to read is more important than peace studies or sex education. In fact, there is a phalanx of narratives asserting that peace studies are far more important than leaning to read. After all, peace studies help prevent crime, don't they? And as for global warming consciousness--it will save mankind and the planet. What use is reading and writing properly when the world has ended, huh?

There is a third force at work undermining state education and state schools in the West. It is the religious belief that all men are equal and all pupils have equal rights. Egalitarianism in state schools means a number of things. Firstly, it drives all education to mediocrity, to the lowest common denominator. Striving, teaching, and training for excellence is regarded as elitist (the "elitist privilege of decile ten schools"); teaching to the lowest common standard so that all can be included and affirmed as successfully achieving is mandated.

In New Zealand the revolutionary NCEA qualifications system was overtly designed so that every pupil would graduate from secondary schools with achievement qualifications in something. No-one would depart a failure. All would be equal in being an achiever. Anti-intellectual ideals are now actively promoted by educators through the state education system. Being a philistine is cool. Hence the plethora of cultural activities in secondary schools. Everyone can be affirmed as being cool in something.

It is important to realise that there is a serious philosophical and religious grounding to all this. Human rights have morphed into "demand rights" (where others have to provide what I want) and "affirmation rights" (where others have to affirm and approbate me at every turn). The prevailing ideology is that equality is undermined without a constant providing for, and a constant accommodation and affirmation of, pupils. Hence state schools are orientated to affirming everything and denying nothing.

Michele Ledda, in an essay entitled "English as Dialect" describes the prevailing philosophy and practice on teaching English in the UK by making reference to a training day.

Recently, during a training day on the teaching of A-level English, a senior examiner and exam question-setter for one of the main examination boards told a group of colleagues and myself that the idea that there is a correct way of speaking in English is something that "we have to batter out of students". She was surprised that pupils keep asking their English teachers about the correct way of speaking.
Robert Whelan, ed., The Corruption of the Curriculum, p.23

Egalitarianism in society promulgates multi-culturalism and pluralism. Everything is to be affirmed. In education it leads to anti-academic standards, mediocrity, a lowest common denominator approach to education, an an affirmation of all learning as valid and worthy. Ultimately it leads to the oxymoron of a personalised national curriculum.

This is the sea in which state schools endeavour to swim. It is a sea in which education loses any meaning, subjects have no coherence, and everything is equally valid and true. This sea is bottomless and those in it have no compass. As G.K. Chesterton acutely observed, those who stop believing in the Living God end up believing in everything, which is to say, they end up bobbing like a cork in a sea of meaninglessness. Everything is possible and nothing human is foreign to us.

Marvel not that state school systems in the West are failing--and failing badly.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

No Tension Whatever

Chrestomathy
Written by Douglas Wilson
Friday, March 11, 2011

"When I was first struggling with this issue, Acts 4:27-28 was my undoing. 'For truly against Your holy Servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Piliate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose determined before to be done.' The most heinous crime ever committed was the crucifixion of Christ. And no matter how hard some try to get around this important truth, the Bible declares that God decreed that Christ would be executed. But even though God decreed Christ's execution, He held those who executed Him (those who fulfilled God's decree) guilty of sin. Acts 2:23 teaches the same truth. 'This Man [Christ] delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death' (NASB).

In the same breath, Acts 2:23 declares both that the Christ was delivered up in accordance with God's sovereign plan and that those who put Him to death were responsible for their godlessness . . . To be true to the plain meaning of Scripture, I had to admit that divine sovereignty and human responsibility live together comfortably in Scripture. Scripture presents no tension between sovereignty and responsibility. It is not either divine sovereignty or human responsibility. It is both divine sovereignty and human responsibility" (Back to Basics, pp. 12-13).

Panic

The Governor Has Blinked

Stagflation it is. It seems that New Zealand is headed for the worst economic outcome. The Reserve Bank has reduced the official rate by half a percentage point. It has done so, said the Governor, as an "insurance" measure. According to the NZ Herald:

Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard has cut the official cash rate half a percentage point to 2.5 per cent in what he termed an "insurance measure" to stave off a severe downturn in the wake of the 6.3 magnitude Christchurch earthquake.

Economic growth, already anaemic, is now expected to weaken still further as a result of the Christchurch earthquake.

But at the same time inflation is soaring. Raw material costs are up. Commodity prices are booming--already impacting food and petrol prices. The cost of living is rising sharply. 

Earlier this week, the Treasury said there were inflationary pressures throughout the global economy, and the Christchurch reconstruction was so large it would inevitably have an impact on inflation. The faster the rebuild, the greater the pressure on prices, it said.

This is what is meant by stagflation: a stagnant economy with rapidly rising prices--at the same time.

Under the stagflation syndrome, rising prices feed into the wage spiral; demands for cost-of-living wage adjustments become the norm. The currency collapses. The Reserve Bank, having got behind the inflation curve, finds itself rapidly pushing up interest rates to catch up and get inflation under control. Recession turns into depression. This is now a very real prospect for New Zealand.

Now, to be fair, this is not the view of the RB. It believes that inflation, rising because of the GST hike last year, will soon abate.

The central bank expects inflation will come back within its target band of between 1 per cent and 3 per cent once the effects of last year's hike in consumption tax flow through, and forecasts 4.4 per cent growth in the consumer price index in the March 2011 year, slowing to a pace of 2.1 per cent in 2012 and 2.4 per cent in 2013.

It seems that it has discounted the risk of inflationary expectations starting to affect people's economic and social behaviour. When people and business believe prices are going to be likely higher in six months time it affects their expectations, actions and behaviour. That's when the inflation spiral sets in.

The Governor Bollard will have to rush to catch up with the risk of rampant inflation. We believe he has made a grave mistake. But that's what happens when a Governor decides to go beyond his mandate in law and considers the Bank has a responsibility to act to maintain economic growth, rather than keep inflation within a mandated band. Sadly, he has been encouraged to think that way by the public pressure coming from the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. So much for the chimera of an independent Reserve Bank.

It would seem that the current Governor and Government now increasingly see themselves as being above the law.

If our prognosis of stagflation, followed by rapidly increasing inflation, is right, then John Key's muddling through trying to keep everyone happy will, in hindsight, be judged to be naive, politically cowardly, and economic folly. Still, he's a nice bloke and that's the main thing.

EU Carbon Commissioner Blackened in Oz

Aussie sceptics destroy EU carbon commissioner

By James Delingpole, Politics Last updated: March 9th, 2011

Published in The Telegraph

Is this the best five minutes of radio in the history of broadcasting? I think it might be. Have a listen and judge for yourself.

It’s an Australian interview with Jill Duggan, a British woman who you almost certainly won’t have heard of, but who yet holds the economic future of an entire continent in her grasp. As an expert on carbon markets for the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Climate Action, Duggan will help mastermind the EU’s bold – and massively expensive – plans to reduce Europe’s carbon emissions by 20 per cent by 2020. In the process she will of course destroy every last vestige of 550 million people’s economic future: but until now – as is evident from her stumbling and surprise – no one has really called her on it.

That’s what makes it such good radio. Her Aussie interviewers Andrew Bolt (the great sceptical blogger) and radio host Steve Price destroy her feeble arguments so magnificently, comprehensively, and irrefutably that the entire AGW edifice has since collapsed, wind farm ownership has been made a capital offence and Al Gore and Michael Mann have been sent to Guantanamo for crimes against humanity.

Oh all right, the last bit isn’t true (yet) but the first bit is. And thanks to all the Aussies who emailed this morning to draw my attention to it. (H/T Kevin Bennewith; Lucas Joyce; Simon from Sydney Australia; McFanon; Perry Debell).

First, they ask, what the expected cost is of this grand Europe-wide scheme to reduce carbon emissions by 20 per cent by 2020. Duggan says she doesn’t have a figure. So her interviewers put to her the estimate by (non-sceptic) Richard Tol: $250 billion.

Next they ask what she hopes to achieve by spending all this money. What will be the reduction in global temperatures? Duggan again isn’t quite sure but knows that “the models show” that in order to have an even chance of lowering temperatures by 2 per cent CO2 emissions must be reduced by 50 per cent by 2050. Duggan then concedes that this will not be possible if the EU nations act unilaterally since they only contribute 14 per cent of total global carbon emissions.

Her interviewers try again. Does Duggan know what the estimated effect on global temperatures will be if Europe goes it alone in its carbon emissions reduction campaign? Her interviewers tell her 0.05 degrees C by 2100.

“You’re in charge of a massive programme to rejig an economy and you don’t know what it costs and you don’t know what it will achieve,” says Bolt.

Duggan changes tack. She claims that “a million” green jobs have been created in Germany; and that many hundreds of thousands of green jobs are going to be created in Britain. “Really?” wonders Bolt. That would seem to contradict the real world evidence which shows that, far from creating jobs, government “investment” in renewable energy is in fact destroying jobs in the real economy.

(This “economic” argument for renewables, incidentally, is the new Big Lie being promoted by the European Union – inter alia, of course, through its propaganda mouthpiece the BBC)

Finally Duggan makes one last try at digging herself out of the hole. She tries to imply that there’s something eccentric and behind-the-curve about her interviewers’ desire not to emulate the EU’s great decarbonisation programme.

Bolt and Price are unimpressed: “We’re talking about a region which has got unemployment at 10 per cent and growth forecast of 1.6 per cent. I don’t know why what we could learn from Europe actually.”
The part of me that got stitched up like a kipper by the BBC’s Horizon documentary the other day feels almost sorry for Jill Duggan. But here – trolls note – is the key difference between Duggan and me: I’m not proposing to steal $250 billion of your money, spend it on crap, destroy the landscape, raise taxes and deprive your children of an economic future. But the organisation she represents is.