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Today's Top News
Radicalism Is in the Air and the Rage is Palpable
Yesterday 50,000 people marched in London against
the proposed Coalition cuts to higher education. In the bright November
sunshine, the atmosphere was largely peaceful and exuberant. As Sally
Hunt, the general secretary of the University and College Union (UCU),
told the crowd, this was the biggest march by students in a generation.
What brought everyone out on to the streets? The
general consensus was anger. The rights afforded by education are not
simply the reserve of the elite, a claim implied by some commentators.
As an excellent film by the UCU showed, colleges such as Goldsmiths,
University of London, where I am studying for a PhD, do more than merely
smooth the progress of middle-class students into the corporate job
market.
The film showed a man who had been released from
prison walking into Goldsmiths' programme of adult learning. The
reoffending rate is three times lower for ex-prisoners who participate
in higher education. Precisely such progressive and imaginative
resources will shortly be slashed.
One of the speakers at the rally was Angela Maddock, an art lecturer from Swansea University. She rejected the idea that the arts should be subordinated to so-called "useful" subjects, and instead argued for a defence of "art for art's sake". The Government's decision to ringfence science and technology while cutting the entire teaching budget for the arts and humanities, points to an alarming ethos.
The biggest cheer came when speakers made the connection between the "eye-watering" price of proposed tuition fees and the banking scandal. Radicalism is in the air. The rage is palpable.
Perhaps this drove a small group of protesters, by no means representative of the whole, to smash their way into the lobby of Millbank Tower and on to the roof.
Most of the demonstrators I spoke to did not condone these actions, but were glad that the message of the day was clear, written in red paint and unfurled from the top of Tory HQ: Stop The Cuts.
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28 Comments so far
Show AllI do not understand the English system of funding higher education. Are there direct grants given to universities by the government? Here, in the US, the government gives grants (or, more commonly, loans) to students to help pay tuition. Schools are either private or state-run--the federal government has nothing to do with setting tuition rates.
If, in England, the national government does have a role in setting tuition rates, I can see how students would be enraged. Here, it doesn't, so it is hard to get students angry at the US government for shortchanging education. There are some protests at the state-wide level, but these are not effective since the states really do not have the money. Unlike the federal government, they cannot print currency and state budgets generally pay for things we really need--schools, roads, state police, etc.
Would like to get a response from someone who knows how England's national government administers funds to universities and who sets tuition rates.
Tuition rates are determined by the school but by law it cannot be more than a certain amount. I don't recal but it is between 1-3 thousand pounds per year.
I must admit that, given the times we live in, I find clamoring for 'higher education' to be odd...
what value, this education, if not confronting the chemical realities of modern industrial living, and the need to forego, or the corruption of modern finance and governing, and the need to supersede?
why scream for education, and corporate jobs, when chemical death and corporate control swirl all around the results?
oh, yes...to pay rent, or mortgage...
while the land is held hostage, insanity reigns...
free the land, free your mind...education lies in physically interacting with the environment on a daily basis for sustenance, in living harmoniously within the parameters of the living planet's systems, not in manipulating and exhausting those systems for temporary profit, leading to toxic entropy, which appears to be the goal of modern 'higher education'...
Guess history, literature, mathematics, music, and art have no importance--at least, for you. Not to mention foreign languages and a deep understanding of the sciences. It's ironic when people decry the value of education (and technology) while they are using the internet, a product of hundreds of years of learning. I see no benefit to ignorance--even if a person does manage to live within the "parameters of the living planet's systems."
Education enriches lives--can't you see it? The walk in the woods becomes something wonderful to a forest ecologist. Communicating with Japanese people in their own language makes it possible to see the world from a new perspective. Practical problems cannot be solved without education--the uninformed solutions do not hold up. You can run down "corporate education" all you want, but knowing things (and understanding them) has no down side to me. What's worse than knowing something and screwing up is not knowing something and making a bad decision. Education is worth its price.
education, in the abstract, is wonderful, I agree...
education, as defined by our culture, is compartmentalized, classist, and suicidal...
what name is given the study of living harmoniously, communally, in a non-industrial fashion, not owning any property, working with one's neighbors to protect and use local resources wisely?
history, literature, math, music, etc., indeed have no importance if one has no viable planet to live upon...
our priorities are whacked...
the internet as a glorious product? every related process and component is toxic...is killing the natural world 'educated'? is living under the heel of oppression?
how does your forest ecologist feel about the death of huge swaths of said forest due to climate change, and resulting infestation? education goes so far as to 'know' stuff, but not far enough to 'stop' stuff...
how does a marine biologist feel about the bleaching of corals, or the flooding of oceans with petroleum? smart?
rearrange the letters in education to get 'due action'...I like that better...
~ I see no benefit to ignorance--even if a person does manage to live within the "parameters of the living planet's systems." ~
wouldn't an ignorant person, living within such parameters, be better off than an educated person living without, as the ignorant person still has air, and water, and food?
would a person with no formal education, yet able to understand the need to live within such parameters, still be defined as ignorant, or would they be educated?
Is a person that is formally educated, yet unable to understand this need, actually educated, or are they ignorant, despite schooling?
direct observation of current conditions and trends rather goes against modern 'education', does it not? what's going well?
Wise words, brother dubet.
"Just Due It"!!!???
(I was thinking maybe the Spring of '12 would be a great time to 'get those gardens growing'...)
I still think education can precede political action. Sometimes it is even necessary for intelligent decision-making. I cannot help what some in this country make of education--namely, a way to make money. To me, it involves enlarging one's perspectives. How can that be harmful?
enlarging one's perspective is great...nature provides several ways to do that...
how far does one enlarge? beyond accepted religions? beyond school boards? beyond private property? beyond nationality?
regarding decision making: violence tends to win most arguments...
nature provides nothing, that is a metaphor. Whatever you feel or think of nature is a product of your mind. Education changes perception and allows for a better approximation of reality. How far? Until you die. I wonder where you stopped.
"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." A. Einstein
You know nothing about the system of higher education in the UK and frankly, your attitude towards education is very similar to a pro-lifer (I don't want an abortion/formal education so I don't see why anyone else should have one). Here in the UK, university has been free or heavily subsidized for generations. This has done two things: 1) allowed working class people to broaden their prospects for work and mobility and 2) given a free education to the rich (David Cameron not only got his education free, he got a grant to live on despite being from unfathomable wealth). This is precisely why young people are so angry.
Sure people can learn from nature. They also learn from each other, from experiences, from being exposed to new situations and it's from all of these that people are able to make informed choices about how they can and want to live their lives. When people don't have access to any of these, the status quo is perfectly preserved. By dismissing higher education as being flippant or a luxury, you manage to do exactly the same.
"hey also learn from each other, from experiences, from being exposed to new situations"
I went to college in the US, but these I would say were the most important areas of "learning" for me. Suddenly going 1000 miles away from where I grew up, knowing noone where I was other than a few superficial acquaintances, and living amongst people of all walks of life that I would have otherwise never encountered, and being in a dorm situation with them and so forced to interact.
I learned more outside of the class than in by far.
This is what bothers me about this whole online school thing. It was the in-person experiences that taught me the most valuable things.
This is not about education. Everything that is of any benefit to working class people is under assault globally. Education is just one of those fronts in the battle.
"Our" priorities are whacked, you say. There is no "us" with any power to control our future. *Their* priorities are whacked, and we cannot stop them without resistance, without a struggle.
Modern farming is "whacked," too. But that does not mean that we fail to stand with working class people who are being denied access to adequate food.
Your notion that saving the environment from destruction and culture are somehow at odds with another is not defensible. The opposite is true. The same people attacking the food supply and the environment are also destroying culture and education. Just because education - and everything else - has been largely corrupted by Capitalism, that does not mean that it is of no value to us. Obviously, the rulers think that education is potentially of benefit to us or they would not be attacking it, as they accelerate a last ditch desperation drive to eradicate everything that sustains us, everything that gives us power. This is an aggressive world wide effort at gaining total control an domination over all of us.
Everything dear to us, everything we care about, everything that makes life worth living, everything we need for human survival is under relentless and vicious attack. We fight back, we fight to protect it all, or we lose it all. We fight with each and every person being attacked, or we all go down.
You misunderstand what is happening. You are thinking of this in terms of American political activism.
It is not some special interest niche cause, based on people's feelings or beliefs about education that is motivating these protests. That sort of gentrified and powerless activism dominates the political scene here - or has for the last 40 years. But it has no application or relevance to the current spreading global uprising,
This is the have-nots fighting back against the all-out assault by the wealthy and powerful few. There are many points of friction, and there will be many more. Each of those fronts in the battle, points of confrontation, are not isolated and discrete causes, and the battle that is raging and growing every day is for real. It is not some namby-pamby "speaking truth to power" self-expression "expressing our opinion" or "acting on our values" nonsense. It is a life and death struggle. Don't look for excuses for taking the wrong side.
"Austerity measures" is the ruse, the lie. People are responding with "no" and more and more people are connecting the dots. Wherever "austerity measures" are being applied, people are fighting back. We need to side with all who are fighting back. If "austerity measures" succeed on the things you don't care about, it is just a matter of time before they succeed on the things that you do care about. You need to see the lager picture - that is the most important thing right now.
"The rage is palpable."
And just like the killings at Kent State, the government will kill people to quell dissent. When that happens it will likely be a two way street. The revolution will have crossed the line between between civil dissent and civil war.
This article is about the UK, where from my understanding, that thing happens a little less often over the last couple hundred years... I'm not AS familiar with British activist history tho...
.."the idea that the arts should be subordinated to so-called "useful" subjects, and instead argued for a defence of "art for art's sake"
How 'bout, "war for war's sake."? War is useful.
Why, if there weren't war there would then be enough funding for art for art's sake.
[sarcasm off]
Civilization such as I remember it from pre-Reagan days may still survive in some greener form in parts of the EU, England, Scotland and Ireland. But it won't be because their people kowtowed to plutocratic zombie economic neo-liberalism and foreign policy neo-conservativism. It will be because their people are far less cowardly and submissive to authority than Americans have become over the last 40 years.
Thank you, Metal, I was wondering when someone would state the bloody obvious!
All this shit about education being a "priviledge" and blah blah blah...this is about the FACT that the Europeans know how to FIGHT BACK against the thieves and Americans DO NOT.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4788278544386657539#
a Crass documentary.
for those who are not familiar with them Crass was known as a Punk band in the UK in the late 70's and 80's
It was founded in part by Penny Rimbaud, a cultural activist on the UK who had what is known as "Dial House" that was run as an anarchist open house.
It was more than a band.... Penny still resides at Dial House, still somewhat of an artist colony/ organic garden...
yeah, England still has it's radicals :)
Crush the Corporate Plutocracy Now!
The following RSA Animate is worth a watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&feature=share
David
It is not so much that certain subjects might be cut or curtailed but notice that the subjects that they want to keep are pretty well cut and dried in that there are laws and proceedures that must be followed. The Humanities which are vitually on the chopping block because they teach critical and outside the box thinking for one's self. Robots is what is wanted. Tony
Radicalism and rage without leadership and labor will end in failure and further repression.
Leadership will emerge. Labor is there.
Just as the Democratic party of the United States of America brought the Republicans back form the grave with their short sighted Policies, so too will the Governments of Britain and the EU bring back "Marxism" and "Communism" back from the grave in Europe.
Watch for bombs to go off and the powers that be blame it on "The Communists" just as happened in the 1970's when the CIA and European Intel agencies were planting bombs in Europe as part of operation Gladio.
On the fall of the USSR and the widely proclaimed "Victory of Capitalism" one Fukuyama proudly boasted it was "The End Of History" with "Western Liberal Democracy" to be the pinnacle of Human achievement . He went on to help Authror the PNAC documents wherein the US was to remain the dominant nation until the end of time. The New "Thousand Year Reich".
History has not even BEGUN.
the average people voted the elite party and the centrist party in to power.
and there was no alternative, no left party to vote for.
and when the people found out the conservatives were squeezing the average people out, they got upset.
sounds familiar.
now you have three separate new labor parties in England - like everywhere else - the parties of world shareholders
edweg