"Global Education"

The British Council aims to establish 4,600 "links" between schools in Britain and the Third World by 2012, in an attempt to educate children about other cultures. Apparently, "government schemes to promote global education" fund such initiatives.

Things aren't quite going to plan so far, however. It seems that certain pupils in Britain have come away from these lessons with the idea that Third World countries are failed states rife with poverty and corruption.

Could this be because teachers spend so much time telling them that Third Worlders are victims of Western evil, incapable of helping themselves without vast sums of our money?

The article doesn't speculate - but it does tell us that some of these accurate perceptions are simply racist and neocolonialist and must be altered by a "different way of thinking."

Presumably that would be a different way of thinking whereby these Third World countries must be given our help in every conceivable sense, but are immune from our criticism lest the magic "R" word be used.

Of course, many of these statements are also the confused ideas of children - but to the Leftist ideologue, there are no children, just mini-adults and potential future racists whose way of thinking must be altered at all costs.

From The Evening Standard:

School links between the UK and the developing world can leave children with “racist” views of other cultures, research has found.

British pupils believe that their peers there are covered in flies and all wear straw skirts as lessons focus too much on poverty, the study said.

Academics warned that badly trained teachers in subjects such as geography were fuelling “neocolonialist” views.

Growing numbers of state schools have formed partnerships around the world under government schemes to promote global education.

The British Council aims to establish 4,600 links by 2012.

Researchers asked English children about their Gambian peers.

The pupils said: “They don't wear much clothes, they wear straw. The boys wear skirts too.”

Other responses, reported in The Times Educational Supplement, included: “Gross things like flies go in their mouths. Because their mouths are brown and the flies think their mouths are made of mud.”

Dr Fran Martin, from Exeter University, who led the study, said: “There needs to be a different way of thinking to avoid partnerships having these neocolonialist or racist undertones.”

The way I look at it is that facts are facts. Ideology can hide reality up to a point, but not very well and certainly not forever.

If you teach British children about the Third World, they're going to learn about the Third World, no matter what spin is put on it.

To use the example from the article, either Gambia is a thriving, successful modern nation, or it is not.

Clearly, it is not, and the reasons for that are clear to all but die hard Leftists, and thus this brainwashing might have the opposite effect to that intended - it might wake up future generations to the fact that all cultures are not equal. At all.