James Paterson, Christopher Pearson, and off to boarding school for a course in mutual masturbation, the lot of you ...

Shocking news this Saturday morning.

It seems university graduates lean towards the Greens and they have a dangerous agenda, far more radical than many realise.

And what exactly is this dangerous agenda? According to Lindsay Tanner, who set the hare loose for James Paterson in Why graduates lean to the Left:

Tanner went on to say this growing group had a "profound commitment to multiculturalism, gender equity and higher learning" and that this was a product of their education.

Eek, sign me up immediately for a course in multiculturalism and gender inequity, and for the love of the long absent lord, make sure your child leaves school without obtaining their HSC as a way of ensuring they never proceed on to the dangerous radicalisation and ideological pitfalls involved in higher learning.

It seems students are hapless pawns, brainwashed and without a mind of their own, and so completely incapable of resisting the wiles of their Marxist instructors:

It is a damning indictment of the higher education system that Tanner, from the left faction of the ALP, admits our universities are churning out increasing numbers of Greens voters.

It is no coincidence the institutions that churn out these graduates are dominated by left-wing academics.

It is of course another column in The Australian, and the author turns out to have been an undergraduate student at the University of Melbourne for five years, writhing under the burden of courses like Contemporary Ideologies and Movements.

Dear sweet absent lord, get out of the place at once, or slowly the dangerous nectar of honied green thoughts will infect you, and corrupt you forever.

Why next thing you know, you could end up like jolly Joe Hockey, dangerously, alarmingly Green and earning comparisons to Venezuelan President Hugh Chavez, while winning the approval of arch Green Bob Brown. Why the pair have even arranged a love in to discuss how they might further jolly Joe's bank bashing.

"We share his view that an ACCC review of whether the banks are involved in collusive price signalling on interest rates will do no harm," Senator Brown said.

He said he was looking forward to talking to Mr Hockey about ways to give Australian deposit holders and borrowers a better go.

"We'd like to know what Mr Hockey's priorities are and add a few ideas of our own, like ending the ATM fees rip-off," Senator Brown said. (here).

It's a conspiracy, a dangerous jolly green Joe alliance with deadly subversives, and full of anti-bank rhetoric.

Who to blame? Well you don't have to look far. Jolly Joe did his Arts Law degrees at the University of Sydney, a hotbed of dangerous leftist green radicalism, where the love of multiculturalism and gender equity has started western civilisation on the road to abject ruin (though happily not before this year's exams torture sundry students).

Academics of Sydney, who have turned even much loved Liberals into dangerous greens lovers, you stand indicted for crimes against humanity.

What to do, how to give your child a decent and safe education?

Well naturally Christopher Pearson has the solution in Great education available outside the mainstream:

Home schooling and private and selective schools give kids the best chance at learning.

Uh huh. I've always admired the Exclusive Brethren and Scientological models, but even they've abandoned the notion of home schooling for the fun of sucking on the taxpayers' teat to fund their own form of private schooling, but tell me more:

Julia Gillard often tells us that Labor proposes to give every young Australian a great education. The phrase is a mantra, of course, but I wonder if there is anything remotely approaching a consensus about what constitutes a great education.

Uh huh. But then Labor, or at least Bob Hawke speaking off a worn cuff, once proposed that no Australian child would live in poverty by 1990. No, let's get to the nub of it:

Being something of a traditionalist, when I hear those words my mind turns to the sort of elite schooling that Eton offers its boys and Geelong Grammar provides for both sexes. Although I would have hated being a boarder myself, I'm now inclining to the view that many - perhaps even most - adolescents benefit from longish spells away from the comforts and distractions of family life, in an ordered existence concentrated on study.

Yep, there you have it, Pearson - who did his Arts degree at that dangerous hotbed of radicalism, Flinders University (children of Brian Medlin, the lot of them) has become a high Tory, yearning for the joys of boarding school and mutual masturbation after lights out.

Frankly he doesn't go far enough. My own view is that adolescents would benefit from a longish spell in an education system modelled along Spartan lines. A bit of krypteia and agoge with an older man would fix what ails them, and if they don't like it, why leave them out in the snow and if they survive, so be it. I particularly like the requirement to answer questions laconically, which is to say briefly and wittily, which would see both the pond and Pearson out in the snow (and for more on Sparta's education system, here).

But hang on, forget the Spartans, didn't Prince Charles - that giant woolly jumbuck - go alarmingly Green, such that today he jets around the world, chasing his green dream?

Back in the dim, distant past, I asked Cambridge University – my alma mater! – to run this Programme for me as I wanted to find a way of helping businesses understand the scale of the challenges that lay before them; to help them see that ‘business-as-usual’ was not an option if we were to confront the environmental challenges which were ahead of us. (here at Charlie is me darlin's home page as he rabbits on about the carbon challenge).

But hang on before Chuck went to Cambridge - a well known refuge for dangerous leftists - didn't he once go to Geelong Grammar? Is that where he turned Green?

Eek, there's no answer there. Geelong Grammar, beloved of Pearson, must be infested with dangerous leftist ideologues, and has been so for a very long time.

Clearly what's needed is home education so that any kind of ideological infection can be avoided. But who to call?

Retired Latin, French and music teachers can earn a modest supplement to the pension, instructing small groups of highly motivated youngsters. Old maths teachers are also much sought-after.

I should declare an interest here. I've found teaching English and history to individual home-schoolers one of the most rewarding experiences of recent years.

Dear definitely absent lord, history from a Pearson perspective as a way to bring up a youngster ...

Enough with the Latin already.

Time for any prospective employers of Pearson as a home schooler to learn that he too was once a leftie before trying to hide his green academic origins, and so off they must go to read Gerard Henderson's bilious hatchet job Christopher Pearson Moralist.

Meanwhile, Pearson spends the rest of the column rabbiting on in the usual conservative way about whole word reading programs and the joys of IQ tests and annual exams and the benefits of selective public schools and a proper religious leaning:

It (James Ruse school) has overcome the habitual under-valuing of education by generations of working-class Australian parents.

There are a few groups that have been notable exceptions to that rule: the Lutherans and the remnants of the old-fashioned Presbyterian and Methodist cultures (which maintain a strong ethos of self-help) and the Jews, known from the earliest times as "the people of the book".

Thank the defiantly absent lord there's still room for cultural stereotypes, cliches and vulgar generalities in the current education system.

But here's the rub. If the academies are full of dangerous leftists, isn't it right - even noble - for generations of working-class Australians to habitually undervalue education. Wouldn't want lad going commie when he can be down at mill at dawn.

Or could it be that columnists for The Australian regularly indulge in sweeping generalisations and meaningless tosh?

Pearson urges academic competition as fierce as the kind taken for granted in sport, but thankfully the editors of The Australian don't take such notions seriously, or else they'd have Pearson somewhere towards the back pages compiling their Latin crossword puzzle.

So long as no one lets him near an actual education system ...

Meanwhile, and just to show that we're equal opportunity here at the pond, we heartily commend Adele Horin's Lost inside our cultural ghettos.

Horin spends her entire column bemoaning how we're all alone, m'dear, and less connected and without friendships, and how the online world is no substitute for the CWA (and indeed no one comes online to offer me a scone, a lamington and a cup of tea). It all sounds alarmingly grim and glum, as we shrink inside the walls we build, living in cultural ghettos, cut off from the world, isolated and alone.

Quick, what to do before I shoot myself?

We can make a conscious effort to meet people who are not like us. But I strongly believe fiction and film by and about the "other" can also help transcend prejudices, and provide a window into different worlds.

That's right. It's okay to meet people, if you must, but you can really fix your sense of community by locking yourself in a dark place to watch a movie, or settle down by yourself, alone by candle light, and read a novel ... (must you keep interrupting dear, can't you see I'm reading ...)

And I always thought lawn bowls, a lamington and a cup of tea was the answer ...

But at least now I know who to blame. Those bloody leftist academics and their green ways and their group huggy love of movie-makers and novelists ...

Another day on the pond, and still not the first inkling or clue as to the way towards the light, but at least we now understand it should involve monoculturalism and gender inequity ...

And now, inspired by Pearson, we're in the mood for a little more Latin and Molesworth: