Deep Thoughts in Plain White English

by Mike Adams

Dr. Adams,

My name is Claire. I am working on a story for the school newspaper, The (UNCW) Seahawk, about Dr. Maurice Martinez and his philosophy regarding Black English in his classroom. I would appreciate the opportunity to ask you a few questions on your views about this issue. I have read your column for Townhall.com and I am very interested in hearing your side of the debate about Black English. Please take some time to think about these questions and get back to me as soon as you have time. Thank you for your time.

Hello Claire. I have some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that I do not do interviews with the school newspaper because it has a 100% rate of error in representing my opinions. This is not because the reporters tend to be stupid. It is because they tend to be liberal and, therefore, tend to suffer from severe moral rather than intellectual hernia. For example, the last time your paper ran a story on one of my opinion pieces it was insinuated that I wished to bomb gay bath houses in San Francisco although there actually aren’t any gay bath houses in San Francisco. Thankfully, the paper stopped short of accusing me of attempting to rape a unicorn.

But there is good news. I am going to respond to all five questions you have submitted by making them the subject of my Monday column on TownHall.com. That way, the paper will not be able to misrepresent my views as they have in the past. TownHall.com is the premier conservative political website in America. So when university administrators try to attack my views it is sort of like Michael Jackson trying to attack Mike Tyson. It also keeps the university newspaper honest.

1. What is your response to Black English being taught in a UNCW classroom? What purpose does it serve to you?

My response is that I am developing a new course proposal to be submitted directly to UNC Wilmington Chancellor Rosemary DePaolo. It will be called EDN 201 “White English.” I’m going to spend an entire semester differentiating White English from Black English and see how long it takes for me to be removed from the classroom.

While I am on leave I will write a book about my experiences. I plan to call it Redneck Jihad: The Art of Sacred Cow Tipping. So my response to your question about “what purpose” this is serving me is simple. I plan to make money off the stupidity of far left professors just as I’ve been doing for years. I plan to use the profits from their stupidity to buy more firearms and go on more hunting trips.

2. Dr. Martinez teaches that one reason for implementing this philosophy is so children who speak this dialect won't be "condemned" for the way the [sic] speak; are his teaching methods an appropriate way to address "No Child Left Behind"?

No, absolutely not. The best way to address “No Child Left Behind” is to repeal it. The Republican Party leaders had it right in the 1980s when they considered eliminating the Department of Education. The federal government has had no business interfering with local schools since we had to send in the National Guard in the 1950s to stop racist Democrats from keeping little black kids from attending the public schools in Arkansas. I think we should get rid of the Department of Education after we first repeal “No Child Left Behind.” That program just proves that George W. Bush was really a big-spending liberal posing as a conservative.

3. Black English is a social dialect that has been defined by sociolinguists, and many claim that more knowledge could be learned to bridge the gap between social dialects and Standard English to help students in school; does this bring validity to Dr. Martinez and his claims, or is his "street talk" best left to the streets?

No, it does not bring validity to Dr. Martinez and his claims. Dr. Martinez was asked to defend his teaching of Black English in the wake of my column last week. This was done at a Black Faculty meeting. Afterwards, a black faculty member who was clearly angry with Martinez called my office. He claimed that Martinez had told them that in his class there were only a few pages of notes on Black English. I sent him the entire 75 page power point presentation. Now, that black faculty member is even angrier with Dr. Martinez. Dr. Martinez has suffered a very severe and self-inflicted blow to his credibility.

4. Controversy has stemmed from the naming of this dialect: is it racist to label Black English as "Black"?

It is not really racist but it is offensive. But I find the United Negro College Fund to be more offensive. Not to mention the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Oh yes, and the Black Faculty meetings at UNCW are offensive, too. Maybe Chancellor DePaolo could reinstate the “white” and “colored” restrooms in the name of diversity, tolerance, and inclusion.

5. In your column, you stated that many parents should request their tuition money back. Why do you feel that Black English is a waste of funds?

Well, thanks for asking about my feelings. I like talking about my feelings. But my feelings about Black English require little elaboration. Black English just makes me feel filthy when I repeat it. Kind of like when the feminists chant the c-word in The Vagina Monologues. In White Redneck English we say “At (not “dat”) just ain’t right.” By way of analogy, imagine that you see a large pile of dog manure in your front yard. There’s no need to walk over to the pile and pick it up to know it is manure. There’s no need to rub it on your face or take a bite out of it to know it is manure. You do not have to “immerse” yourself in it or in any way analyze it to know it is manure. You just need to scoop it off your lawn before someone steps on it and tracks it into your hizzie.

It’s the same way with Black English. It is self-evident that it is simply pseudo-intellectual manure. It has no place in higher education.

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Islamic Indoctrination vs. Education

by Nonie Darwish

Remember the Muslim Television executive, Muzzammil Hassan, who decapitated his wife near Buffalo, New York? His TV station, Bridges TV, was created to promote the idea that Islam is a religion of peace and friendship. This station’s goals perfectly fit with the intense Saudi PR machine, which is spending tons of money to change the image of Islam in the West — even if it takes denials, fabrications and outright lies.

Several years ago, I debated Othman Shibly, a U.S. citizen of Syrian origin and a Sharia expert, on a Bridges TV program directed by his son, Hassan Shibly. Both bearded men are fierce apologists for Radical Islam and defend Sharia. Dr. Shibly holds a Sufi/Radical Islamist ideology and hides behind a thin veneer of “moderate” Islam, but that façade does not fool someone like myself from the same background. The Shiblys make no attempt to repudiate the claims of men like Hizbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, or other radical Islamists like Sheikh Ahmad Kuftaro, the Mufti of the Syrian Ministry of Religion under the regimes of both Hafiz and Bashar Assad and Kuftaro’s protégé, Sheikh Rajab Deeb. My interview with the two men was never aired and the Shiblys never sent me a copy of the taped interview as they promised.

That brings me to an email I recently received from a concerned American mother, who said that she was horrified at what her child is being taught by Islamic guest speakers at her child’s high school, Clarence High School in Clarence, New York. The speakers are none other than Hassan and Othman Shibly, who are now lecturing our kids on Islam at New York state public schools. That is done with the help of politically correct apologist educators.

Under their curriculum on the Ancient World, the New York State public schools as well as many other states around the country, require students to be taught about Islam, the spread of Islam, the Golden Age of Islam and the conflict between Muslims and Christians as part of the Crusades. That topic almost always turns political and accusatory when Muslims get very emotional about their history, jihad and religion. Islam by nature is extremely political and promotes a very elaborate legal system that Muslims must live under. To accommodate Islamic education with Western principals of freedom and the Bill of Rights is an impossible task. The two ideologies are at opposite poles in terms of the role of government, human rights, as well as women and minority rights.

Thus, the two systems must eventually become villains. To avoid being politically incorrect, public schools prefer to use Muslims experts or clerics rather than public school teachers to teach the topic of Islam. Our educational hierarchy refuses to see that many devout Muslim experts have a political agenda and are themselves indoctrinated and thus always on the defensive or offensive. I can only imagine what the poor American kids are subjected to. I was on the receiving end of such indoctrination when I was a young Muslim girl.

This is what the mother wrote to me:

“Hello Mrs. Darwish:

I need your help addressing a serious problem I’m currently trying to handle. Recently, my child came home from school and told me about a presentation his Global Studies 9 class had that was given by a man by the name of Hassan Shibly. My child was shocked and visibly shaken at home and told me about the things this man said to the class. The pretext for the presentation was for Mr. Shibly to talk to the class about Islam and dispel some of the ‘misunderstandings’ and ‘Islamophobia.’ Here are some of the things he said to these boys and girls:

‘ The September 11th attacks occurred because of America’s blind support of Israel and the men who carried out the attack were not Muslims, but atheists.’

‘Terrorism is an example of people reacting with their hearts and not their minds…if someone insulted your mother, wouldn’t you retaliate against them? Allah is more important than anything to a Muslim, and if you insult Allah, a Muslim can do anything to defend his belief.’

‘The news media lie…when a Muslim does something, they’re labeled as a Muslim while people of other religions who commit crimes are never identified by their religion.’”

She added that Hassan Shibly’s father, Othman, also came to speak at the school but to a different class. She expressed her outrage that these men were invited into a school to indoctrinate underage, impressionable minds with hate a filled ideology and a hidden agenda. She stated that she alerted the principal to a few links that show Shibly’s affiliations and added that she doesn’t think the principal is convinced. She concluded by saying that so far a decision has not been made whether to bring the Shilbys back to teach or not.

I was speechless after reading this woman’s e-mail. That is outrageous and what is worse is that I have heard similar claims from mothers in California where I live. I wanted to tell all the concerned mothers of America to stand up against this kind of “education” and never feel helpless. We must all speak out before the indoctrination strikes America at the heart. Perhaps this can be one of the causes of the Tea Party Movement. There are powerful forces trying to indoctrinate American children when it comes to Islam. Like I was as a Muslim kid, our kids are being discouraged and shamed from thinking for themselves when it comes to 9/11 or finding out the truth about Islamic terrorism. Their minds must never wander or, Allah forbid, blame Muslim culture or Islam for producing a never ending flow of terrorists.

Muslim propaganda is relentless in trying to misportray Islam in the eyes of the West. While mainstream mosques and Muslim leaders across the globe are shouting jihad, death to America, death to the Jews, and encouraging Muslims to take over the West, our children are told if you fear such threats you are an Islamophobe. When mainstream Muslim schools and universities teach that apostates must be killed and that jihad means “to war with non-Muslims to establish the religion” and that jihad is a permanent war institution against Jews Christians and pagans, we are told to never dare misinterpret this as encouraging violence. Islamic education, like communism and Fascism, must control children’s minds, which is the best system to produce adults who will submit.

I am not the one who compared Islam to communism and fascism; this comparison was made by none other than the most prominent Muslim scholar of the 20th century, Sheikh Abu Ala Maududi, who stated in his book, “Islamic Law and Constitution,” on p. 262, that the Islamic State:

“seeks to mould every aspect of life and activity…. In such a state no one can regard any field of his affairs as personal and private. Considered from this aspect the Islamic State bears a kind of resemblance to the Fascist and Communist states.” Maududi added “Islam wishes to destroy all states and governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and program of Islam.”

I wonder if the Shiblys will condemn this popular Muslim scholar to their students or perhaps call him an atheist.

Muslim petro-dollar powers have penetrated our educational system with permission and support from the highest levels of our governments. I cannot blame many teachers and school principles forced to teach this garbage and who are themselves subjected to demeaning sensitivity training on Islam. I blame the people on the top who are hell-bent on promoting Muslim propaganda with the blessings of Saudi Arabia.

If such propaganda continues, future generations in America will gradually become confused. They will doubt their instincts and their sense of good judgment will be weakened. Like the restless and confused populations of the Middle East, they will build tolerance to violence, extremism, hatred, discrimination, anti-Semitism and oppression of women and minorities.

Because of my background, I can smell and taste Muslim propaganda. It is coming to a school near you. The danger is, believe it or not, if you grow up with such propaganda, it can feel and sound normal and even holy. Intentionally or unintentionally, in the name of tolerance, we are bringing up a generation of Americans who will tolerate Islamic Jihad, in the name of cultural relativism and compassion.

Islamic tyranny, like all tyrannies, must use lies, propaganda and fabrications to justify the Muslim duty of jihadist violence to expand and conquer the world for Islam and Sharia. That is why the Arab world is having great difficulty in modifying its hate-filled educational system. Instead of changing, it is trying to change us and desensitize us to its violence.

If this is not immediately corrected, it will be one of the biggest mistakes in American history. What Mr. Shibly was teaching our kids is outright Arab propaganda justifying jihad, 9/11, retaliation as self-defense, and conspiracy theories against Israel. How monumentally foolish and dangerous it is to allow the likes of the Shiblys to have access to American high school kids.

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In British education, the high fly, the rest sink. And no one acts

Selection by ability, normal in most countries, has become selection by cash. This is insular, hypocritical and damaging

On the conduct of wars the political parties can disagree, on the economy they can pretend to, but on a key subject for Britain’s future — selection in education — a conspiracy of silence reigns, which as the election approaches will become deafening.

For 13 years new Labour, to this day an almost religiously anti-selection party, has presided over the downgrading of the educational expectations of the lowest in society, the flourishing of the highest, and the extinction of competition between the two. Hence, in large part, the startling retreat of meritocracy in Britain compared with other countries: an LSE report in 2005 showed that in the past 30 years we had gone into reverse, mostly for educational reasons.

It is not about money. Under the hardline, anti-selection Ed Balls the greater the expenditure on education the wider the great divide between state and private. Labour remains neurotic about social class, and sure enough the most recent examination figures are a caricature of their class connotations: independent schools — 7 per cent of total pupils — scored 11,500 straight As against a piddling 9,725 sixth formers in comprehensives.

What will happen when the first starred As are published later this year? I think we know who will get the lion’s share. The result will no doubt be even more anguished contortions in university admission procedures, to avoid the embarrassment of too many starred pupils getting the best university places. Only in Britain ...

The situation would be less appalling if Labour’s defunct ideology were under challenge, but the Conservatives go along with it, and the Lib-Dems you can once again forget. The question the Tories never answer is how the independent schools they largely patronise can be selective in every sense — academically, financially, socially — while the party leadership abhors selection for people who do not have the cash?

Who would have thought that Conservatives would frown on those upstart grammar schools — a personal bugbear of Cameron it seems — as “entrenching advantage,” in the ill-chosen words of David Willetts. From a party with no criticism to make of parents who send their children to private schools (and nor should it), that is a phrase to be rolled around the tongue.

Meanwhile, all parties collude in masking the true position on university admissions, which is worse than people think. In Oxbridge they think something over 40 per cent are from the 7 per cent of private schools — shocking enough. But if you include selective grammars (in well-to-do areas, by and large) alongside selective independents, the 2008 figure is 63 per cent selective. The underperformance of the comprehensives, some 90 per cent of the system, in Oxbridge as elsewhere is tragic.

In Britain any debate on selection is cut off at the knees before it starts: “11 plus,” “a return to old-style grammars” and “writing off as failures” is all you need to say. No serious person proposes any of this. Sir Eric Anderson, former Provost of Eton and mentor to Blair and Cameron, says that the debate should not be about the 11-plus and whether or not to select, but how to do it. It could be later than 11, it does not have to be in separate schools, though that should be an option, since national standardisation introduces rigor mortis into the system.

The British non-debate on selection is insular, ignorant, class ridden, neurotic and to the nth degree hypocritical, especially in the upper reaches. The Sutton Trust’s report on selection in other parts of the world, due at the end of the year, will help. It exists in various forms pretty much everywhere. There are sophisticated systems in France and Germany, where it takes place at 14, and those who don’t make the Gymnasium (grammar schools) may have to content themselves with being doctors or well-paid engineers.

The Indians and the Chinese especially have no qualms about selecting the best suited to particular lines of study. In India vocational emphasis begins at 14, in China higher technical schools start at 15. With the talents of hundreds of millions to draw on, in time these countries will outclass us in field after field. We must hope that ambitious immigrants will increasingly challenge their host country’s indolent and evasive assumptions about how, without effort or distinction, or being drawn into the invidious position of accepting that one person can be more capable in some ways than another, somehow the Brits will always come out on top.

Though perhaps the British case is hopeless? It may be that ingrained cultural factors are at work, a perverse social consciousness that leads the British to think it normal that the upper reaches of society should be schooled according to one theory of education, with remarkable success it seems, while the non-affluent majority should be content to follow a manifestly inferior system. Where else in the developed world are two methods of examination developing, pretty much without comment, one largely the preserve of monnied folk — the International Baccalaureate — and a less demanding one for the rest?

Proof that the egalitarian experiment has run its course is mounting, but no one seems ready to contemplate alternative systems. Rather than face up to fundamentals, gimcrack ideas are imported from countries with a population smaller than London. Meanwhile, all our party leaders and most leading political figures were selectively or independently educated. Not their choice, of course, but it seems to have served them well, and I don’t see many of them sending their own children to the new, non-selective local city academy.

The culture of anti-intellectualism fostered by an egalitarian system means that it is no longer possible to discuss anything much without recourse to celebrity. The clinching argument in favour of a system that gives the non-advantaged a chance against the rest must, therefore, be that an increasing number of our pop stars, comedians, actors and sportsmen and women are privately (ie, selectively) educated.

Britain’s got talent, the TV programme tells us, and I suspect it has, but we won’t go far while selection can only operate on TV shows.

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Australia: Schools leaving students at the mercy of bullying

QUEENSLAND schools are failing to properly deal with the two worst kinds of bullying and often don't even check how their existing anti-bullying measures are working, the Government's own expert has warned.

Current approaches to tackling bullying inside the education system are unlikely to stem the growing menace of cyber-bullying. They also are unlikely to curb the effects of children deliberately excluding others. The stark warnings are contained in a highly anticipated report by Professor Ken Rigby, commissioned last year by the State Government. The report says cyber-bullying and social exclusion are "now seen as the most damaging of all to the mental health of targeted children".

After a review of the state's schools, Prof Rigby has concluded they are failing to follow up on how well their existing anti-bullying measures are working. "This needs to be remedied before schools can discover, with confidence, what works at their school," his report said.

Prof Rigby also warned the Government that it needed to continually provide the best new advice to its education department. He recommended every school be made to report annually on its anti-bullying tactics and then be encouraged to note them on their website.

One in three children are bullied in class almost daily, according to research released by Education Queensland last year.

The Rigby report, Enhancing Responses to Bullying in Queensland Schools, highlights a lack of education in schools about the range of anti-bullying measures available. It wasn't all bad, however, with Prof Rigby saying he was "much impressed" during his visits to state schools on their "dedication and sheer inventiveness on what was being done to address bullying". "I have worked with schools in every state in Australia, and it is not my impression that Queensland schools are less dedicated or less effective in dealing with bullying than any other state or territory," he said. "However, I do believe that a good deal of useful advice and guidance can and should be provided by the Department of Education and Training and by other educational jurisdictions."

Prof Rigby acknowledged he only visited a small sample of schools, with only staff and stakeholders – not parents or students – interviewed.

Education Minister Geoff Wilson said he would "carefully consider" the recommendations. Mr Wilson said the report was an important step in his commitment to dealing with bullying and behaviour in Queensland schools.

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