There is something stirring, and I don’t think it’s just in the air – I think George Monbiot is turning his back on industrial civilization, and about time too. We could do with someone like him in the ranks of the “heretic unbelievers”. Here is his take on the Agreement That Never Was:

Everyone agrees that the new declaration on biodiversity is a triumph. Just one snag: it doesn’t appear to exist.

References:

1. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/countries-join-forces-to-save-life-on-earth-2120487.html

2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/oct/29/nagoya-biodiversity-summit-deal

3. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/8098540/Landmark-UN-Nagoya-biodiversity-deal-agreed-to-save-natural-world.html

4. http://www.cbd.int/doc/press/2010/pr-2010-10-29-cop-10-en.pdf

5. On Sunday I emailed all the addresses given by the CBD. On Monday I phoned the secretariat several times: it was unable to put me through to anyone who could tell me where the declaration was. I also left a message on the press officer’s mobile phone and landline. The secretariat either would not or could not give me any other numbers to try.

6. I spoke to the Defra press office on Monday.

7. See document 3 on this page: http://www.cbd.int/cop10/doc/

8. These quotes are repeated in the preamble to the draft declaration – as above.

9. http://www.wwf.org.uk/news_feed.cfm?uNewsID=4194&uAction=showComments

10. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/oct/04/biodiversity-100-actions-europe

11. http://www.teebweb.org/

12. All these examples can be found in TEEB’s summary for policy makers: http://www.teebweb.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=I4Y2nqqIiCg%3D

Northern Arizona University have been given $1 million by the National Science Foundation to create a program to teach rural and indigenous people (you know, those people whose land was stolen from them in order to extract minerals and oil, and grow industrial scale crops) science and technology.

The National Science Foundation is a US government institution that exists to promote industrial science for the benefit of the industrial system. It was founded in 1950 with the following Mission:

“To promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense….”

(The full text of the National Science Foundation act of 1950 can be found here)

Dig deeper and apart from the sinister undertones of “secure the national defense…” we find the following statement which sums up very well what the true rational of NSF is:

The National Science Board (Board) firmly believes that to ensure the long-term prosperity of our Nation, we must renew our collective commitment to excellence in education and the development
of scientific talent.

A key component of innovation is the development of new products, services, and processes essential
to the Nation’s international leadership. Just as in generations past, there are talented students from every demographic and from every part of our Country who with hard work and with the proper opportunities will form the next generation of STEM innovators. The vital importance of innovation to the U.S. economy led the Board to embark on a 2-year exploration of this issue.

In the NAU statement (reproduced below in full) the authors not only reflect the desire to encourage economic growth through science but, and even more abhorrently, are determined to exploit the generosity of indigenous teachers in order to feed back into native cultures a new desire for industrial scientific principles. In short, because indigenous cultures value sustainability above all other aspects of life, then they are clearly in conflict with the desires of a rapacious industrial nation, and therefore must be taught that industrial civilization is the only way of living.

A $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation is putting Northern Arizona University in a leading role to increase public understanding of global climate change and help prepare the next generation of scientists and educators.

As one of 15 institutions nationwide that was awarded NSF funding as part of the foundation’s Climate Change Education Partnership program, NAU will focus its outreach effort on Native American and rural communities on the Colorado Plateau, targeting students who are historically underrepresented in science and math education.

“One of the things this grant allows us to do is go into these rural communities and meet with teachers and leaders to teach about climate change science and solutions in culturally and regionally relevant ways,” said Jane Marks, NAU biology professor and principal investigator for the project.

Marks said the constantly evolving nature of scientific research makes it a challenge to introduce school-age children to cutting-edge science—a matter complicated by the interdisciplinary nature of climate science, which does not fit neatly into any given science class.
“The topic of climate change has become so politically charged,” she added. “Misinformation and biases often lead to the perception that climate change either is not a real problem or that it is a problem too large to solve.”

In an effort to tackle these challenges, Marks and a team of NAU researchers from the Merriam Powell Center for Environmental Research, the Program in Community Culture and Environment, the Center for Science Teaching and Learning, the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals, the Department of Applied Indigenous Studies and the School of Earth Sciences and Environmental Sustainability will use the new funding over the next two years to design a middle- through high-school climate change curriculum for the region.

If successful, the team will be eligible for long-term funding from the NSF to implement the program across the Colorado Plateau.

Drawing on the traditional knowledge and relationships that members of Native communities have with the land and its resources, the researchers will incorporate these ideologies into the curriculum.

“We will call on local people, including Native artists, musicians and community leaders, to generate an excitement and interest among the region’s young people about alternative energies, conservation and land use,” Marks said.

Rom Coles, director of the Program in Community Culture and the Environment, said one of the most innovative pieces of the program is that it will “connect the teaching of climate to many of the bold initiatives being advanced by people in the non-profit, private and public sectors to generate a green economy based on energy alternatives that are not carbon-intensive, such as solar and wind power.”

An added goal is to spark an interest among Native and rural students in science, technology, engineering and math—also called STEM disciplines—which Marks said will connect these underserved populations to vital economic and career opportunities.

Words fail me in expressing how deep my loathing is for this brainwashing program. All I really need to do is quote again from the article: “An added goal is to spark an interest among Native and rural students in science, technology, engineering and math—also called STEM disciplines—which Marks said will connect these underserved populations to vital economic and career opportunities.”

For thousands of years indigenous people have known how to live without screwing up their land, so it’s about time NAU taught them how to screw it up good and proper.

Fashion! Turn to the left
Fashion! Turn to the right
Oooh, fashion!
We are the goon squad
and we’re coming to town
(“Fashion”, David Bowie)

The Unsuitablog is being fashionably late in publishing the latest Monthly Undermining Task; the main reason being that I wanted leave the previous one up as long as I possibly could, particularly in light of an article by Javier Sethness, which included the following phrase that I couldn’t possibly disagree with:

“Just as the hegemonic system McKibben mystifies—capitalism—must be dislodged and abolished, so must McKibben himself come to be displaced as leader/father of contemporary movements against climate catastrophe.”

So there you go – it’s nice not to be alone.

This month (I’m skipping into the next month too, as this is so important) we are targeting something that should be the antithesis of every environmental group, and environmental activist on Earth – but it’s not and, in many cases, is embraced by so-called environmentalists for the very reason given in the above quote. Fashion is the artificially generated desire for change. Note the word “artificial”: as humans we do, to a certain extent, desire change in order to achieve fulfilment; but only in civilised society are we bound to the idea that we should change constantly, driven by a system that ensures we are never fulfilled.

Fashion exists to keep humans in a state of psychological flux: malcontents always looking for the next thing to desire. What is especially evident in the destructive monster called Industrial Civilization is that the idea of fashion is increasingly becoming the driving force behind economic growth. Where once it was enough for industry to ensure that everyone had what most people in the industrial world would consider to be basic goods, such as a shoes, a warm coat, a television and a refrigerator; the saturation of the Western economies with such “basic” goods, along with ever-shrinking profit margins (only partly supplemented by using slave labour) means that baseline consumption has to be augmented by a constant desire for different versions of the same thing.

Once you have a computer, you don’t need another one for a long, long time; unless companies bring out software that is constantly “upgraded” to ensure that at some point you will have to buy new hardware in order to run the new software. You don’t need the upgraded software, but you are sold it in a very convincing way – to such an extent that it becomes highly desirable. At some point you feel that you do need the new software; and in order to run the new software you need to upgrade your hardware. Of course, you might be given the desire to change your hardware before you “need” to, for instance to take advantage of faster performance you never realised you needed.

Remarkably, this is only a simplified version of the full story – leaving out built in obsolescence and withdrawal of support – such is the nature of computing. More transparently, but in essentially the same way, are we given the desire for new clothing and footwear; new ways of listening to and watching things; new ways to communicate; even new ways to read books – by doing away with the books themselves. The superficial driver may be practical: personal betterment, convenience, speed, scale; but beneath all of this, including the computer example, is the idea that someone, somewhere has something you have not got, and which you have become in need of.

Fashion cannot exist without this “need”. The industrial economy, increasingly, cannot exist without fashion.

Of course, once you have the thing which you desire (or rather, “need”) then a new desire has to be created. The incremental “upgrade” – be it to a different colour or style of coat, or a more convenient way of recording television shows – is readily attainable providing you are prepared to spend the money, and ideally take out a loan; and if the upgrades are just significant enough, and just affordable enough, then you will never realise that what you desire is actually completely unattainable. It must be, otherwise consumption would eventually stop.

The iPhone 3 became unfashionable immediately upon the release of the iPhone 4. There was no need for anyone to buy an iPhone 4 if they already had an iPhone 3; but very many people were persuaded in contradiction of such an obvious point. There will be an iPhone 5 soon.

So, how is this desire for the unattainable maintained in a society where we are, apparently, so market-savvy and educated? I’ve given one of the key reasons away: the idea that the unattainable is seen to be attainable. I’ve also hinted at a deeper psychological trick: the personalisation of desire, by which a “need” that is external to the individual, eventually becomes internalised, and thus what is perceived to be a genuine need. This is nothing short of psychological manipulation; and it is one of the most powerful forces existing in modern society.

The methods by which these two con-tricks are pulled off are many and varied, and you will probably be familiar with the vast majority of them.

A very powerful – possibly the most powerful – method by which fashion is imposed upon people is social peer pressure. The idea that someone important, and possibly influential, to you has something you do not have is more than enough to create personal “need”. This factor is heavily exploited by industry, most obviously in the form of advertising that suggests collective desire (notice the number of adverts that use happy crowd or friend scenes), but increasingly through virtual social networks such as Facebook, and direct viral networking.

More subtly, but on a larger scale, is the use of targeted media such as technology and clothing magazines (who will readily promote product x in exchange for advertising revenue) along with newspaper supplements, that show new products as being “essential” or at least highly desirable. Far more cheaply, as far as industry is concerned is the blanket press release to kneejerk bloggers, desperate to be the first to report on the latest big thing – well, big in terms of potential income – and extremely willing to publish these press releases verbatim.

At a more formal level, but clearly in response to the corporate desire for continued economic growth (profit), is the relentless push by civilised governments for continual consumer spending. This can manifest itself in political speeches that ask citizens to support industry and maintain a “healthy” (ironic, considering it is destroying the global ecosystem) economy; and even government policy that may give tax breaks for consumer spending – providing that spending is on new products and, ideally, the very latest of everything. On the surface this may be suggested as promoting “eco friendly” products, when it is actually ensuring we keep the economic machine grinding on.

Incredibly, despite our knowledge of these methods, we all – at some time or another – fall for them. We fall for them because they exploit some of the most primal aspects of humanity: the need to be wanted and loved; the desire to belong; the willingness to follow strong leadership. It may just seem like a small word – fashion – but it encompasses a Pandora’s Box of manipulative methods that exist in order to keep us buying, and thus allowing the ravenous industrial machine to keep eating up the very ecosystem we depend upon for our survival.

This can be stopped.

During 2010, I have detailed all sorts of methods for undermining different aspects of industrial civilization: from mind numbing television and behaviour altering advertising to life destroying debt and child enslaving school testing; from the civilised corruption of language to the all-embracing cash economy; from the addiction of mass tourism to the placatory, fake greenness of the mainstream environmental movement.

Contained within those articles, along with the three original Unsuitablog anti-greenwashing guides are literally hundreds of potential avenues for undermining a way of life that will lead to our ultimate demise. As London Fashion Week ramps up to a screaming crescendo, and the fashion world’s commercial clock makes us once again feel inadequate in a new season – one that wild nature has been happy to repeat in resplendent glory every year since humans first colonised seasonal lands – I am turning to my readers, and fellow Underminers, to say how you would undermine the system that turns artificial, unnecessary commercial change into something we feel we need to have.

How would you create a world of Unfashion?

Suggestions can be sent to news@unsuitablog.org, posted on the Anti-Greenwashing Action Facebook Group, or posted as comments below this article. All suggestions that have a decent chance or working, and are practical for ordinary people to do will be published here.

Away you go…

From DVD:

Anti-peer pressure: make sure you don’t perpetuate social peer pressure and act as the opposite dissenting voice for people you know. Move against the trends too, downsize and simplify rather than buy in to them.

Adbusting: consumer advertising does a huge amount to create the unhappiness in people to need constant change – consider ways to fight back against it (http://thesietch.org/mysietch/keith/2010/02/09/monthly-undermining-task-february-2010-time-to-break-the-ads/)

From LS:

For my part I opted out of the “fashion” game a long, long time ago. My solution embodies the principle of: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. And that is pure poison for the fashion industry. I do the following

1. Buy the highest quality garments that I can find (which is increasingly difficult of course). Don’t buy clothing that is clearly rubbish, it just encourages the retailers to replace good quality clothing with more rubbish
2. Only wash clothing when it actually needs it (not just because your wore it yesterday) and dry it on a cloths line. Washing wears out clothing faster, especially if you tumble dry
3. Repair garments to increase their lifespan
4. “Retire” clothing to wear while working in the garden as it ages and becomes unsuitable for wearing in public
5. Wear garments until they can’t be repaired any more
6. Convert unwearable clothing into rags for use around the house

I have also stopped buying new clothing to a large degree. So much perfectly good clothing is available second hand that I can provide most of my needs (often in very high quality once expensive garments) just by browsing a few second hand stores.

From Knutty Knitter:

I don’t buy fashion either and my sister who loves fashion now makes her own and does lots of swap sessions with friends. As for computer stuff – if it isn’t open source I mostly don’t have it.

All my appliances including computers are old – my stereo system is 30 years plus! It works really well so why would I need a new one.

I will have to purchase a new oven because I don’t have one yet (the last one was left in the previous house as part of the fixtures). Thats a total of one new appliance every five years or so – am I annoying enough yet?

I do buy art supplies but I don’t look at ads for that – I just go with what I actually want. Anyhow I don’t watch tv unless its recorded so I can skip the ads, don’t buy magazines or papers and don’t accept junk mail so I never know whats hot anyway :)

My friends like me for who I am not what I possess and that is the way I’ve always been – just more so since I started seriously into green. Keeping up with the Joneses was always overrated anyhow :)

From Sarah:

We’re not green. We just live simply. We’ve never used a credit card, and only have a loan for schooling of debatable use and a house that we couldn’t afford otherwise.

We cloth diaper, using a plain Chinese Tri-fold and waterproof liner. We gift handmade stuff. We sell handmade, hard-wearing kitchen stuffs. We go for weeks on end buying only groceries. (I’ve heard of “Year of no stuff” people doing that, and thinking it was some great thing, but the Amish and the Mennonites in our area have been doing that forever.) For that matter, why not take a page out of the Amish handbook, and take some sort of pious pride out of being simpler than everyone you know?

Instead of shopping for relief of that marketing-induced guilt of not being worthy on our own merit, we try to spend the time making something. We’ve made bramble baskets, all sorts of kitchen and bathroom items, painted pots and vases, made up-cycled denim bags, re-buttoned dresses and coats, pillow forts with children, hats, scarfs, Renaissance Festival Gear, campfires, s’mores, pies, sheds, crackers, and baby slings (among others). The point was we found worth in developing ourselves (like ladies of accomplishment in the Jane Austen novels) rather than just celebrating how much money we could make at a job we hate to buy things we don’t think we could make ourselves because we’re too lazy or scared.

The big thing for us is that only one of us works outside of the home (by choice and a strong in-home childcare market in our area), giving us time to make things. And if it isn’t made by our hands, it isn’t cool or worthwhile.

Thanks for all these so far.

Here is a picture of a cat in a deckchair, probably relaxing as cats are wont to do from time to time. The cat could be anywhere but I can bet you anything that the cat didn’t travel thousands of miles to wherever it is relaxing in the deckchair especially in order to relax in a deckchair; that cat is just chilled, in the deckchair, being a cat.

I know why many people take vacations (holidays, vacances…), and it’s for a reason that would be absurd if it weren’t so tragically true: it’s to get away from the place where they live. Not to go somewhere else – although that is often cited as the reason – but, to put it another way, to be in a place other than that where they spend most of their lives so as not to be reminded of what they do for the rest of the year. Oh, there are plenty of people I know – myself included – who go on vacations solely to see other places and/or meet other people, but they are in the minority.

You see, the vast majority of people living in the civilized world are stuck (so it seems) with a life that only releases them from its industrialised grip for a very short time once every year; or maybe twice if you can arrange things that way. Weekends, for most people, are spent doing the things that couldn’t be managed during the rest of the week because there wasn’t the time or energy to do them. Stuck in the spin-cycle of sleep-work-eat-watch-sleep-work-eat-watch…sleep-shop-clean-eat-watch-sleep… then the vacation becomes that slowly brightening light at the far end of a long, long shift that the industrialised and their families pinpoint as one of their few realisable aspirations.

What a bloody hopeless existence!

A few years ago I authored an essay called “The Problem With…Tourism” that set out the basic environmental and humanitarian issues of this pernicious industry. Here’s an extract:

As with many large-scale commercial ventures, the users of tourism are being promised a dream. That dream comes with few strings attached. That dream can be expensive, but the potential returns are good memories for life. And we are addicted to that dream; the one fantastic holiday that we want to repeat over and over again; the sense of “getting away from it all”, enjoying better weather, great entertainment, a chance to meet different people, and the cachet that goes with having done all this; all essentially selfish things, but none of them harmful as such.

As we continue to be enchanted by the riches that tourism has to offer, we fail to see the stream of people coming with us that grows ever wider, feeding on the same dream, taking advantage of the richly polluting cheap flights that deposit the hoards of people who engulf delicate habitats with concrete and suck dry the natural riches that so attracted them in the first place.

Does it have to be this way?

Do we ever stop and think of the reasons we go where we do? Do we actually consider the impact that our travelling, accommodation and entertainment are having on planet Earth?

The impact of tourism on the natural environment is huge, and growing at an enormous rate. With a current annual growth rate of about 5% in the western world, the emissions from flying are expected to triple in less than 25 years – far more if you consider the potentially enormous growth expected from China and other rapidly developing nations.

And on the surface, it is the act of tourism that seems to be the real problem – the pollution of travelling and the seasonal populations of travellers, along with the concentration camp-like existance of tourists, shut off from the outside world, economically unreachable by the people who are supposedly set to “benefit” from this tide of humanity. But as becomes clear when you analyse the way the civilized world is run – for the benefit of the corporate elites and their toadying political makeweights – tourism is even more sinister than this: it is a way of screwing every last drop of humanity from civilization’s willing slaves in return for a few weeks in the sun and, if you’re really unlucky, more opportunities to hand your money over to the corporate world.

And they call this a holiday?

Do you know the simplest way to short-circuit this horrible facade? Simply refuse to do what you are told.

I don’t have a detailed list of Undermining tasks of varying risks to offer you this month: just a simple set of ideas. Only you can make your mind up how risky they are, and whether you want to do them. But if you do take them, you may find yourself escaping far more than just the Tourist Trap…

If you are being sold something, don’t buy it.

If there is a way, any way, to get out of the spin cycle, slow down and take control of your life then take it!

Enjoy time your way, not the way of the machine.

We’ve been enjoying the sunshine (yes, wonderful sunshine) of North Wales for the past week and now we’re moving house, so The Unsuitablog has had to take a back seat for the time being. Don’t worry, we will be back soon, but to tide you over is the latest from the RANVideo YouTube channel, which it looks as though is well worth visiting on a regular basis.

Love this week’s take on the Nopenhagen Accord (not to be confused with the similar sounding, and equally execrable Copenhagen Communique), and look forward to more biting stuff…

See you soon.

Keith

“Before school really starts to mould and shape you — and these days the assessment and unnatural selection begins just the other side of the cradle — you remain a primal being, attracted by the good earth.”
Andrew Collins, Where Did It All Go Right?

In a few week’s time we will be packed away and ready to move to Scotland. The timing is perhaps serendipitous, for at the beginning of May, in England alone of all the parts of Britain, approximately 300,000 children aged between 10 and 11 years will be sitting examinations in English and Mathematics. My younger daughter would have been sitting them too, had we not been moving to Scotland.

The aim of these examinations (these are not “tests” – they are sat under exam conditions) is ostensibly to assess the level of understanding that a child has of the subject being examined: given that knowledge in only two subjects is being assessed, this seems like a rather narrow view of what “education” means, but that’s not the worst of it.

It was while watching a fascinating television programme about the teaching of mathematics a few weeks ago, that I came across a phenomenon I had not experienced at first hand before: the dropping of virtually the entire school curriculum for 11 weeks in order to concentrate on passing SATs. When my elder daughter took her SATs last year — which also included science for the last time — the school sent home a few books for the children to read, and a few past papers were looked at, more for technique than anything else; yet, as I have since learnt, this is unusual. At this time of year, across England, schools are cramming students’ heads with probable exam questions, tips for passing using intelligent guessing, imposing additional targeted homework on children, and running “after school clubs” for those children who are on the borderline between grades.

And here the crux of the matter emerges: the schools (my younger child’s included from this year) are not running extra classes for the least able students, nor those likely to breeze through the exams – no, they are trying to ensure as many as possible get to Level 5. The statistics of most interest to parents of prospective students are the ones that show how many children achieved Level 5 in Year 6. Here is a vicious feedback loop working at full-tilt, for the more parents obsess with SATs results, the more the schools push the exams onto children as essential, and consequently the more the parents become obsessed by SATs results.

Have you any idea what this level of pressure does to the mind of a ten or eleven year old?

The Cambridge Primary Review, a four-year study covering all aspects of primary education in England had the following to say about SATs:

It is often claimed that national tests raise standards. At best their impact is oblique, says the Review. High stakes testing leads to ‘teaching to the test’ and even parents concentrate their attention on the areas being tested. It is this intensity of focus, and anxiety about the results and their consequences, which make the initial difference to test scores. But it does not last; for it is not testing which raises standards but good teaching.

Concern about stress levels is rife on parenting discussion groups; one such comment on Mumsnet was interesting, not only for highlighting the stress, but also raising a very interesting possibility:

The problem is not necessarily her academic progress, Her English is in the top 1/4 of the class and her maths is in the bottom half.

My concern is the stress that this will cause her. Worrying about them consumes her, and I’m worried that exam nerves will cause her to get a very bad mark in the exam, which will then destroy her confidence in her ability.

So the question is more to do with people who have experience of withdrawing their children from the test, is unauthorised absence the only way?

It seems odd to me that parents have the “right” not to have their children vaccinated but there does not seem to be a clear procedure for opting out of these potentially damaging tests

It is possible that the examinations may be boycotted by a large number of teachers in 2010, because of the disruption they cause to the curriculum in general. This would be a good thing for all concerned – except perhaps those head teachers and parents obsessed with getting “the best” for their children (or rather, their school’s reputations) – but in the event of the SATs not being put down with a terminal strike, there are quite a few things you can do to both remove the unnecessary levels of stress on your children, and also undermine the idea that “education” is about rote learning and cramming of useless facts.

Note: Although the text and actions specifically apply to the English school system, there is no reason they cannot be adapted to whatever part of the world and “educational” system you fall under. It is really just common sense.

Low Risk

Most children in Year 6 are being sent home with revision papers and given access to online resources in order to “brush up” on their technique. Why not spend that time with your child, learning how to grow food in the warming soil, or perhaps do some sewing, knitting or cooking as the sun goes down. Then again, you could play a game of cards, or just let them go out and have fun with their friends.

In summary: forget the revision homework and ignore the online tests. What’s the worst thing that could happen? Your child will get a mark that is based on their current ability – that is, if they sit the exams.

We had a great time last year purposefully ignoring the revision books – in fact we sent them back to the school in order to make the point that we had better things to do.

Medium Risk

If you are a teacher then anything rebellious you do, in such a high-pressure situation, may harm your career, so tread carefully if you value your pay packet; nevertheless, there are a couple of things you can do. The first is to ease up on the pressure; if not only for your sanity, but for the good health of the children you teach. Just because you have been told to drop lessons in order to concentrate on SATs it doesn’t mean you have to set mock exams or give extra homework – just teach the subject in hand, and if complaints are made the ideal response would be: “But surely it’s better to teach English / maths than to teach children how to pass exams.”

And you always have your union to fall back on; speaking of which, if your union does call for a SATs boycott, then you are in a much better position to not get involved in the SATs than if you had acted unilaterally (which is definitely a High Risk move).

As a parent, I believe you are within your rights not only to refuse SATs revision for your child, but also to refuse your child entry to the SATs exams themselves. Withdrawing from school entirely on the day(s) of the exams is – strictly speaking – illegal, although I would like to see this come up in court one day! Withdrawing because of an unexpected illness(!) may be another option, or maybe a special outing as described by the Anti SATs Alliance:

In some instances, groups of parents have made a further point by arranging educational visits or experiences on those days. This has always been as the result of getting together with other parents – usually starting with nothing more grand than a chat at the school gates.

Oh, and if you are a student who has the threat of SATs over your head (I like to think The Unsuitablog has a wide demographic) then there is no real reason that you have to put pressure on yourself. Take it easy; if you’re given a mock exam then do the minimum amount of work possible so as not to be noticed – life isn’t about exams, it’s about having a life.

High Risk

Whether you consider this High Risk or not depends on your attitude to Home or Community Schooling, but if you really want to make a statement about examinations, and the aims of the schooling system in general (turning children into nicely-rounded economic units ready for a life of wage slavery) then one strategic withdrawal will not be enough. Examinations are part of school life and, love them or loath them, if you attend a mainstream school then you will be taking exams, and the only way to avoid it is to not attend a mainstream school.

That’s a discussion for another day, but it is undoubtedly an option for quite a few people.

Finally – although with a bit of creativity I’m sure you will be able to think of more undermining actions – try a bit of concerted rebellion across the whole school; simply refuse to take the SATs as a group of parents and children. Go into school with a purpose, and make it clear that none of you want anything to do with SATs and that your children will not be sitting them, making clear the reasons for your refusal (see the introduction to this article). If the school insists that there is no way they can countenance this, or that supervision is not available so they have to take the exams, then withdraw the children from the school for the precise times the exams are taking place.

Of course, the risk you take is your decision, but one thing must always be clear: education is not about school, and it is certainly not about exams – it is about learning the skills and knowledge necessary for the future. The way things are going, that future is anything but certain, and there are some skills we will all be needing that you won’t find taught in any school…

(For more background information, read “The Problem With…Work” on The Earth Blog)

**UPDATE**

This, from The Observer, May 9 2010:

Thousands of primary schools will boycott national tests for 10 and 11-year-olds tomorrow, treating their pupils to class trips and lessons in creative writing instead.

In a question-and-answer session on the site, Rosen wrote: “I think we are obsessed by giving kids scores, measuring them and producing research that is based on statistics. This biometric approach to human behaviour is to my mind corrupting. It tries to reduce the variability in human behaviour. The difference between humans and machines is that with machines, you can keep all the variables in your test constant … you can’t do that with human beings.”

According to BBC News on Monday 10 May, something like 25% of schools in England due to take the tests, are not running them:

The data is not complete, but the councils which have given information cover 73% of England’s 17,000 primary schools.

The councils say they do not know the situation in the remaining 40% of schools.

No need for comment, straight repost with thanks to Fred.

How do you greenwash a large airforce base? A base that is responsible for bombing nearby countries, and which was built on an island you confiscated from residents who are now living in exile on the other side of the world?

Now, rather than airbrushing out Chagos, the mandarins want to paint it green. Conservation seems to be the last hurrah of the British Empire.

(From http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/18/chagos-nature-reserve-greenwash)

Freshly extruded Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has challenged the Prime Minister to debate him over the Government’s response to next week’s looming asteroid impact, saying that the science isn’t in on whether the planet’s collision with the 90 kilometre-wide clump of frozen iron, nickel and basalt will be nearly as apocalyptic as the Intergovernmental Panel on the Impending Asteroid Apocalypse is predicting.

Unfortunately, according to the Government’s Minister for the End of the World, Senator Penny Wong, with the Coalition filibuster in the Senate likely to string out debate on the asteroid impact until well after the asteroid impacts next week, it is unlikely Mr Abbott will realise his desire to debate those views after all.

This beautiful spoof — in case you hadn’t guessed; after all, it’s close enough to be true — was written by John Birmingham (AKA Blunt Instrument) for the Sydney Morning Herald and deserves to be reposted because Tony Abbott is one of the most dangerous kind of sceptics. Without going into the background of his position too much; to the more radical of us in the environmental / ecological space, he actually comes across as a useful ally: by opposing a measure that toadys up to industry and allows traded emissions to masquerade as emissions cuts, he has done the right thing.

Then you look again and find he is using a scattergun approach to climate science, while also taking utterly discredited writers like Ian Plimer at face value:

If you look at Roman times, grapes grew up against Hadrian’s Wall – medieval times they grew crops in Greenland. In the 1700s they had ice fairs on the Thames. So the world has been significantly hotter, significantly colder than it is now. We’ve coped.

As I said, it is quite concerning but we have to remember that these are computer models and we also have to accept that there is… there are certainly some reputable scientists, Tony, who don’t accept that the most important element in climate change, to the extent that it’s occurring, is man-made carbon dioxide.

Well, look, if man-made CO2 was quite the villain that many of these people say it is, why hasn’t there just been a steady increase starting in 1750, and moving in a linear way up the graph.

These three quotes from the same interview demonstrate, in order, that (a) Tony Abbott is reading from the same song-sheet as the real old-school deniers, like Fred Singer; (b) he is trying to suggest that there is significant disagreement within the climate science community; and (c) he hasn’t a clue how natural climatic systems work at all. In other words, he appears to not have an original thought in his head and is thus extremely manipulatable. In a nation that really needs to take radical action to undermine the power of the fossil fuel and other industrial interests, Tony Abbot is rapidly becoming a potent player — acting the part of “confuser” quite brilliantly.

The industrialists must be grinning all the way to the bank / coal mine / clearcut.

Farmers have accused UK ministers of doing nothing to prevent the spread of Bovine TB in cattle in England and Wales. The National Farmers’ Union, which represents the interests of farmers throughout the UK said that government policy for dealing with the disease was “unacceptable” and that farmers would be forced to take matters into their own hands in order to prevent the spread of the disease.

In a surprise move, the NFU said that it would be pushing for cattle culls in the worst affected areas in order to prevent the disease passing to other animals.

NFU president Peter Kendall said unless the disease was tackled in the cattle population, it would never be eradicated.

He said: “For years the NFU has pushed for a cull of badger populations in the worst affected areas, including the South West of England and parts of Wales. It has recently become clear that this policy would simply deal with a few isolated disease vectors while still leaving the root of the problem unmanaged.”

“Therefore, in recognition of the fact that without cattle there can be no Bovine Tuberculosis, we are calling for the government’s help in culling cattle herds where Bovine TB is a significant problem, and will be encouraging farmers to move away from this highly inefficient source of protein. Early signs are that farmers will welcome converting land to the growing of legumes, small-scale soya and nut orchards.”

“We have also, as a mark of respect, embarked on a process of returning some parts of our members’ arable farms to the kinds of habitats in which badgers can thrive — safe in their natural environment.”

Commenting on the radical u-turn, a government spokesman said: “Well, it certainly came as a surprise, but anything that reduces the amount of methane in the atmosphere is probably a good thing.”

(http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,52260545001_1947480,00.html)

Alerted to this video by a correspondant, who commented:

In what might be the greatest example of dystopian irony ever imagined, entrepreneurs in Greenland are seeking to use water taken from chunks of melting glaciers and bottling it in plastic for sale. Never mind that single-use plastics are one of the reasons that CO2 levels continue to rise.

To which I would add, that the whole operation stinks of yet another creeping tendril from the industrial machine desperately grabbing whatever “resources” it can take in order to siphon off the last few dollars (or Krone) from a dying empire. This is with the full backing of the Greenlandic government. The quotation from the video that really makes my blood boil is this one:

“Nature’s own knife has sliced this historic product and sent it crashing into the ocean. Creating enormous icebergs that float elegantly into the open sea: a resource possessing fantastic potential.”

The website marketing these monstrous products refer to the water as having been “reborn after 180,000 years.” No matter that with this “rebirth” comes so many deaths. No matter that the Greenland Ice Cap has the potential to raise the world’s oceans by 7m.

No matter. That’s business.