Wow, there really is a crisis in Western Civilisation.
Dame Slap and Lobbecke combined to deal with the tragedy, and the Lobbecke looking compelling, because isn't that Karl Marx with a mortar board and aren't all those books RED?
And look at the alarming news the reptiles tweeted out into the ether ...
We're funding our own demise?! …
But luckily, Dame Slap is one of the best teachers the world has ever known, always on hand with sage advice …
So let's get to it, students, it's a learning moment, a teachable experience, and Dame Slap is your guide …
Say what? The history of bloody useless film?
Oh young 'uns, pay heed, only mountebanks, charlatans, fraudsters, impostors, villains and scoundrels get involved in film, and there's absolutely no money to be made.
Trust the pond on this, trust the reporting of the lizards of Oz …
Talk about disreputable, vile sharks, the lot of them … and now the alarming news.
Yesterday the reptiles had reassured the pond that all was well and the crisis in civilisation had been averted …
There's a teachable moment, young 'uns: don't believe a word you read in the lizard Oz, trust only Dame Slap, especially when she's in a state of foaming, frothing rage and furious indignation ...
Laughable! A two-fingered salute, the teat!
And there you go, those who thought that academic independence might be an issue, please stand down, and stand corrected.
The entire point is to teach "what's admirable about Western civilisation."
Yes, if it isn't propaganda of the kind the onion muncher expected, what's the damned point of the whole thing?
Remember, we're on a crusade here ...
If students can't learn the fine art of forelock tugging, bowing and scraping, and admiring the admirable, damn it, they won't even be able to make a go of it filming Karl ranting about the glories of the glorious Logies …
Please go on, Dame Slap ...
Now who failed that question, "where, by the way, do millennials think their iPhones come from?"
Alright, you bloody useless young 'uns, you failed Dame Slap's trick question again. Your iPhones come from a country run by an appointed for life dictator, operating on the basis of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and a repressive governmental apparatus that makes sure workers stand in line and don't bleat about matters on the heavily censored intertubes …
Go on, refresh your memory at Bloomberg here, and warning, if you fail another Dame Slap question, you'll be kicked out of the course …
Just remember, the IPA is expert in explaining the health and lifestyle benefits of tobacco (there's a shitload of admirable money to be made killing people), so you can take it from Dame Slap that she's spot on explaining why you should find her teachings so admirable …
And so to some final teachable moments, and please note any negative comments on the hideousness of the word "teachable", which has swept through the English language like a plague and corrupted it since the 1960s, will be marked down …
Indeed, indeed, this is not a culture war, this properly should be called a crusade, and just so everyone knows the point of the crusade, it's to inoculate everyone so that they might learn to properly admire Western Civilisation in the Dame Slap/onion muncher way, and perhaps also learn not to split infinitives in the process …
And anyone caught snorting into their beer and laughing at the reptiles, and Dame Slap, preaching a "truly liberal education", will earn the pond's ire.
There will be absolutely no wondering why there's this endless blather about the Judeo-Christian ethic, as if we should be talking about a Greco-Roman, Huns, Visigoths, Angles, Saxons, Celtic ethic - and that's just for starters in the ethnic stew, the pond was only covering its own bases …
Sceptics inclined to doubt that the morass of diverging cultures can be unified in one simplified moronic notion of "Western Civilisation" will be kicked out of class for not being either admiring, or stupid enough, to sit at the feet of the Dame and our very own Josher …
And now to give everyone hope that they too can become a dreamer and dream of leading Western Civilisation into a glorious future full of glorious new destinies, a few cartoons … though one of them contains a movie reference, so possibly only depraved ANU students will get it ...
Hi Dorothy,
ReplyDelete"where, by the way, do millennials think their iPhones come from?”
Ooh Dame Slap, Dame Slap! Ask me, ask me!
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-us-military-is-responsible-for-almost-all-the-technology-in-your-iphone-2014-10?r=UK&IR=T
Hardly Free-Market Capitalism.
DiddyWrote
Dame Snap: "...and some misguided students who are so drenched in politics and ideology that they oppose a course that introduces students to books by Aristotle, Linnaeus, Shakespeare, Plato, Socrates, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Goethe, Kierkegaard, Joyce, Jung and more"
ReplyDeleteWhat, no Freud, no Adler, no Pavlov, no Skinner ?
But this really takes the cake, obviously the Dame simply has not looked at the "indicative" curriculum provided by the Ramsay Centre. If she had, she just might have noticed that there is, in fact, no works by Linnaeus, only one Shakespeare play (Hamlet BOC), no works by Socrates (who abhorred writing and so wrote nothing) Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Goethe, Kierkegaard, Joyce or Jung. None whatsoever.
So if Dame Snap thinks any or all of those works are essential to learning of "Western civilisation", well it just isn't going to happen, is it. And not only that, but I object to including Hildegard of Bingen only for her music, she was a very accomplished writer and philosopher (who also invented a language). Greghunt her here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildegard_of_Bingen
As to being "introduced", well The Dame obviously has no idea what is taught in secondary schools these, or in any other, days. Even back in the 1960s, I for one was introduced to Shakespeare, Darwin, Newton and Einstein at my good old High School (as we called them then) in Melbourne.
But what really amused was her praise of Josh Frydenberg and the idea that he, or Ramsay, or the Dame have any idea where the "rule of law" came from. It came initially from the Ur-Nammu law code, was given another later run in the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi and more than 1100 years later, in the law code of the Athenian archon Draco. Yep, another glorious venture of "Western civilisation".
But what is really hilarious is that the Ramsay scholarships only cover about 20 students per uni per annum. Yes, that's 20 - so, how will that save the "Western civilisation" that Dame Snap would have us believe in ? Sydney Uni (a Ramsay maybe) has 60,000 enrolled students according to the Dame, and Ramsay will educate 20 every year to stave off oblivion. Yeah, right !
Nice of Snap to demonstrate she doesn't know anything about the Ramsay curriculum in particular as well as very little about Western civilization in general.
DeleteI suspect Ramsay board members Abbott & Howard would be the same. I know that "leftie" Gough Whitlam had an encyclopedic knowledge of Western history. I wonder if the conservative elder statesmen could talk off the cuff about, say, the Merovingian or Carolingian dynasties? Suspect not
In 2018, 59% of Australians (up five points) say ‘global warming is a serious and pressing problem’ about which ‘we should begin taking steps now even if this involves significant costs’. Almost all Australians (84%, up three points) say ‘the government should focus on renewables, even if this means we may need to invest more in infrastructure to make the system more reliable’. Only 14% say ‘the government should focus on traditional energy sources such as coal and gas, even if this means the environment may suffer to some extent’.
ReplyDeleteThis may have been pointed out before, but isn't Karl Marx part of "Western Civilisation"?
ReplyDeleteDepends on who you're asking, Anony. If you're asking Dame Snap, then Karl might be "western", but he most definitely isn't "civilisation".
DeleteJust stepping back a bit from this nonsense, does anyone think it a bit odd that we have an existential crises over the teaching of an arts degree? This in a country with very little manufacturing or technical base relying on bulk commodity exports, but we are doomed because of the way history is taught? (& presumably also because of gay marriage). Sounds a bit like the British general who thought schooling in classics an essential prerequisite for the officer class.
ReplyDeleteAt another level, if you wanted to discuss Western history, would you get a sensible discussion with any of these wallies?
It's not even an "arts degree" as I see it Bef. More just a happy little 'great things we've done' list so that reptriles and Ramsayans can cluster around and worship themselves.
Delete