To say that the pond was terrified for a moment is perhaps an understatement, and why it felt the need to top off its weekend with the reptiles with another posting …
No, not that silly humbug in the New Yorker, currently outside the paywall … that's nothing, just the end of the world, and who cares about that?
No, no, no, it was the Angelic one turning up at the top of the reptile page to announce an impending disaster that terrified the pond ...
Look at those terrifying indolent ferals. Has anyone ever seen a more offensively feral haircut than the one on the sign carrier. And as for that sweet young thing, fancy laughing and smiling at the camera in such an insolent way! And even worse she seems to have some sort of cross draped around her neck - a sure sign of the end times, or perhaps the rapture …
No wonder the Angelic one was in a state of wild excitement, verging on panic and hysteria ...
Outrageous, please pack that sweet blurry young thing into an egg carton, and remind her she's just a commodity. Next thing you know she'll be thinking she should be thinking for herself, and then what happens to her subscription to Murdoch land?
As for no history student knowing about Thucydides, but everyone knowing about Foucault, is it possible that students are also unaware of the monumental stupidity of the Angelic one, and her ability to make fatuous generalisations?
No wonder the Ramsay Centre was a total waste of time and money… but do go on, give the world a dose of hysteria, wreathed in the fumes of nostalgia ...
Yes, indeed, journalists! But remember the Angelic one is no journalist, she's a mother of nine, and surely that qualifies her for just about anything and everything, including punditry and pontification … and speaking of self-aggrandising charlatans and ideological long marches and the triumph of ideologies that scream the loudest, how right she is …
And now, please stand back, and make room for a little esoteric preening and self-congratulation ...
Say what? Is the Angelic one completely unaware that week in, week out, the lizard Oz is full of columnists berating the 'leets?
Dammit, it's the dog botherer's major preoccupation, warning the world about the 'leets …
And Dame Slap and Washington hate the 'leets too …
You can google those if you have the Firefox app that breaks the paywall, but why bother? The point is that the 'leets are deadly, dangerous and possibly feral too.
If the Angelic one doesn't watch out, she'll need to be sent to a re-education camp to understand the dangers of urging on the 'leets …
And what's this about literacy? Who needs to be a good speller to get to be the President of the United States?
Yes, let them study hustory, and if they don't like it, well covfefe them ...
The silly Angelic one doesn't seem to understand that hustory is now the main game in town and soon enough they'll be erecting statues celebrating its contrubution to civilisation …(and if that isn't fluent Kiwi, the pond will give everyone a chup to put on their shoulder, in reptile style) ...
Apparently the Angelic one is also unaware that her mob just tried to price humanities out of the market place ...
Ah, the self-aggrandising charlatans again. Well, the pond's advice is to speak to Dame Slap, because she just loves narcissist snake-oil salesmen and can never get enough of them … and nor can the pond … though to be fair, the Angelic one makes a passing stab at being a social engineer fiddling with education, an amateur psychologist meddling with young minds, and worst of all, a journalist filling up the full to overflowing intertubes with blather ...
Now Angie Shanana earnestly tells us that "Even teaching English became difficult because kids knew no grammar and could not write a sentence."
ReplyDeleteJust amazing, isn't it, how human languages got passed on from generation to generation down through the long ages before there was any schools to teach kids grammar. It must have been very hard to communicate when nobody could write a sentence. Oh yair, you're right: nobody could write back then anyway.
DP - thank you for the link to ‘The New Yorker’. It is encouraging to know that journals such as this, and ‘The Atlantic’, have survived. That article almost - but not quite - compensated for the Angelic.
ReplyDeleteThe Angelic - ‘There has been a worthwhile campaign to change the direction of reading education.’
I suppose, if she had written ‘There has been a completely pointless waste of time, generated by people who think that phonics is all the next generation needs to know about the language it will use every day.’ there could be a chance that some exalted Leet in the ‘it’s phonics or nothink’ battalion might have read it (taking lots of time over the big words she has used) and organised letters to the editor, seeking her forcible re-education.
While Dean Swift might not have understood why there has been an argument about phonics, I am sure he would have been tempted to use it, perhaps even in preference to his history of Big-endians and Little-endians in those islands that he placed - oh, pretty much where Australia happens to be.
Chadwick.
Now that association with phonics was a complete whooshies for me - having learned to read back, oh, nearly 3/4 of a century ago, I just haven't followed the "debate" about teaching kids how to read.
DeleteAnyway, so you reckon she was on about the 'phonics' versus 'whole word' contretemps ?
Perhaps the outrageous iconoclastic (are we having fun yet) wisdom of Zippy the Pinhead should be a compulsory component of a humanities education - especially the kind promoted by the Ramsey outfit. www.zippythepinhead.com
ReplyDeleteI knew a a very wise Buddhist philosopher who highly recommended Zippy.
But was the recommendation mutual ? And there's no nuf here.
DeleteFor those who came in late, we should note that Zippy the Pinhead amazingly still lives …
Deletehttps://www.zippythepinhead.com/
The great ones are always immortal, DP.
Delete