It definitely is not what you know, it’s who you know (or rather who knows you). I just saw a
commercial for University of Phoenix. The main point they were pushing is that there are several individuals in positions of power and authority that are University of Phoenix graduates and if you get a degree from U of P, it is likely one of those individuals will see that on your resume and hire you. Just when I thought getting a job had little to do with merit or know how, along comes University of Phoenix and confirms that they actually have NOTHING to do with it as far as U of P alumni are concerned.
Stalin and Mao could have saved a lot of time and effort if they had recruited their commissars from the Hampstead school system.
Dear Gary,
Yup. Get a load of how a Clover reader rushed to the Head Teacher’s defense. And we wonder why the system is the way it is.
Graim2 days ago
He should be knighted.. Big mouthed kid got what was coming. With the ability to slag institutions off should come responsibility. Free speech does not mean free insults, lies and seeking to humiliate.
Anonymous2 days ago
Yes it does, that’s why it’s called free speech
Graim2 days ago
Mr Anon (or Ms)…..
I bet you value universal free speech – up to the point that someone defames or slanders YOU causing embarrassment, hurt, humiliation and possible ‘unfortunate’ reactions by employers, neighbours or family members. We have laws to stop the irresponsible and vile and nasty from causing affront to decent people.
Bevin, what scares me the most is for over 30 years they always start it in GB then bring it here. The new “Common Core” Obama funded curriculum will put the wax-seal on this kind of teacher behavior for Ameicans.
Dear Gary,
That is scary indeed, given current gun laws in the UK.
Check this out.
Talk about Clovers! This British Head Teacher takes the cake. The way he behaved simply proved that what the anarchist oriented student was saying about him and other staffers was true!
Hampstead headteacher tells police of pupil ‘enchanted by anarchism’ and tips off his chosen university
Anna Davis, Education Correspondent
Published: 06 September 2013
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/education/hampstead-headteacher-tells-police-of-pupil-enchanted-by-anarchism-and-tips-off-his-chosen-university-8801621.html
Reported: student Kinnan Zaloom and head Jacques Szemalikowski
A London headteacher today told how he spoke to police about a student and contacted the university he had applied to after he criticised the school on a blog.
Jacques Szemalikowski, head of Hampstead School, said he stands by his actions and wanted to “err on the side of caution” because he believed the blog showed the student’s “enchantment” with anarchism.
Kinnan Zaloom, 19, attacked the way Hampstead School was run on The Hampstead Trash website in a series of posts.
He accused the school of caring more about spending money on its own PR than investing in equipment for pupils, and compared senior staff at the school to characters in George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
The blog was blocked from school computers and Mr Szemalikoswki wrote to Glasgow university, where Mr Zaloom hoped to study, to tell them about it. He also alerted the school’s on-site policeman.
Mr Szemalikowski told the Evening Standard: “I was concerned about the tone. I passed it to our safer schools police officer we have on site. I was erring on the side of caution. I dropped Glasgow university a line with a copy of it.
“It is quite unpleasant about teachers at the school. It is quite a diatribe and towards the end of it the tone changes. He talks about enchantment with certain ideologies.”
Mr Szemalikowski said the school believes in freedom of speech, but he was prompted to act by other students who alerted him to the blog.
Mr Zaloom, who did not get the grades to go to Glasgow university, will instead study mathematics at Portsmouth university.
He told the Camden New Journal: “They said I had brought the school into disrepute. I said that was their opinion, but nothing I had done was illegal so why such severe action?
“I was prepared to apologise for the language. But what worries me is if I had been a year younger they said they would have expelled me halfway through my A-levels, and that means they would have been prepared to ruin my education because they didn’t like my thoughts.”
Mr Szemalikowski added: “I am not an expert in these matters but I had training in how to look for things that might need a second opinion. I didn’t think it was illegal but the undertones towards the end made me think – does this need a second opinion?”
In his final post on the blog, which is now being continued by other anonymous writers, Mr Zaloom wrote: “This past year, I have become more and more enchanted by the ideology of anarchism and individualism.”
He added: “I am not hailing anarchism as the only way of life, just pointing out that any type of government has the risk of being corrupt and vile.”
Morning, Bevin!
Boy, that was just what I didn’t need to read before I’d had a bit more coffee… .
The UK is this close to criminalizing contrary opinion – and we’re only this close behind them.
Dear Eric,
No shit!
And don’t forget, we’ve got the likes of Piers Morgan over here leading the charge.
Dear Eric,
Of course, the upside of that story is the kid.
He might turn out to be another Walter Block style market anarchist provocateur!
This sort of thing is what prompts me to cheer the COMPLETE AND TOTAL collapse of the entire edifice of education here in the US of A along with its heady, hypocritical, self-absorbed lack-wits known as teachers, professors and administrators. It’s not about passing skills and knowledge from master to apprentice (would that it were that way) but ensuring that NO ONE with an ideology contrary to that upheld by TPTB may be successful in any measureable way.
Just like that kid said “I was prepared to apologise for the language. But what worries me is if I had been a year younger they said they would have expelled me halfway through my A-levels, and that means they would have been prepared to ruin my education because they didn’t like my thoughts.” This kid is probably a very skilled and capable individual, and just as important, he is a critical thinker, something TPTB must stamp out. So, by expelling him, his entire educational career would have been for nothing.
Further, if the UK is anything like the US of A, the expulsion would have turned the kid into a varitable educational pariah amongst the mainstream institutions setting off a chain reaction possibly leading to a life of vocational mediocrity, all because he dared to THINK; to hold a world view contrary to the mainstream.
This story again shows it is NOT what you know, or who you know, but who knows you and whether they are in a position of power and if they like you. Sad state of affairs indeed.
Dear MP,
Indeed.
The real irony is that the vindictive stunts the Head Teacher pulled, obviously motivated by revenge, merely confirmed the veracity of the student’s accusations.
After reading how the mindless educrats set out to “get him” out of sheer spite, its clearer than ever that the accusations the student leveled against the faculty were dead on.
I always got the impression that University of Phoenix only had two departments, Art and Engineering. The Art Department offered digital art classes in University of Phoenix banner ad creation and the Engineering Department offered classes in scripting for delivery of U of P banner ads and popup blocker avoidance.
Maybe there’s also a graduate program on starting and marketing your own third-rate university.
U of P doing it too? Damn! And I thought my masonic ring was the answer to everything.
What? You didn’t stay for the Skull & Bones one too?
Speaking of masons, my uncle is one of the 32nd degree. I remember pointing out to him that masons are Luciferians and the only reason he hasn’t made it to the 33rd degree is that they feel he still naively believes that the G.A.O.T.U. refers to the God of the Bible (or Qu’ran or the Great Spirit in the Sky) instead of knowing it really refers to Satan. I started quoting the vows that masons have to take and so on and he hit the ceiling. Most of those guys creep me out. They only join so that they have some power and privilege. Without their secret society such as the masons, they would be faceless and relatively powerless mundanes.
A guy I used to be friends with joined. One of the reasons I’m no longer friends with this dude is he showed more loyalty to his fellow Masons – most of whom he didn’t even know a few months prior to his joining – than he did to me, someone he’d known for 20 years.
That told me something about his character that stuck in my craw.
Haven’t seen him in three-plus years now.
Ha, I have the same friend. Only knew him 10 years though.
Of course I’m be facetious but even a woman I knew from decades ago had a brother, a minister no less, who was a Mason and still couldn’t see the obvious before him. Talk about being blind!
From what I have been told (I haven’t done any independent investigation into the truth of the statement however a 32nd degree mason with which I worked told me this), the bishop of the diocese to which the church I used to attend belonged (Church Of God In Christ denomination) is a high ranking Prince Hall Mason. Now THAT is what I call blind leading the blind if it is in fact true.