Architexturez. wrote:
For a real exhibition of modernism, skip the V&A and go to Manchester
The human misery of crumbling estates is the malign legacy of these
aesthetic authoritarians and their machine fetish
Simon Jenkins
Friday April 7, 2006
The Guardian
Go at once. Take a young person to see the Modernism show at the V&A and
feel fear. It is the most terrifying exhibition I have seen, because it
is politics disguised as art.
| politics disguised as Art, M.Foucault responsible for postModernism
| (he wasn't one) and Marxism (which was before his time), the Neo Cons
| can put twists to stories in a way that cons might want to learn from
| (we have sent plenty of material proving the con's neo-con leanings
| on this list in the past)
|
| glad, we are not alone, the not-superstars can rest in piece,
| quoting Auntie in full monty....
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http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,18874034-601,00.html
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Giles Auty: Top Marx for our educators
Marxism should not keep infiltrating the English curriculum
April 21, 2006
NOT long after the collapse of communism in eastern Europe, I was
lunching in London with a fellow journalist when a third colleague
approached us. "Have you heard they have just tracked down the last
communist cells to exist anywhere in the world?" he asked. "You would
never guess where they were located: in Beverly Hills, the BBC building
and the staff rooms of our universities." At which our source of
supposed information departed, hugely amused with himself.
I recalled this silly interlude yesterday while scanning some of the
apposite remarks made about education by our Prime Minister on ABC radio
in Brisbane (see Cut & Paste). John Howard is absolutely correct in
seeing post-modernist influence behind the dumbing-down of the English
syllabus and in the growing disrespect shown for significant literature.
But does he - or most parents - appreciate fully the extent to which
Marxist ideology hides behind the mask of postmodernism?
Communism has never achieved even 2 per cent of the total vote in
Australian federal elections. In the sphere of public education,
however, the grip of ideas that have their origin in Marxist theory has
never been greater. Children are now regularly indoctrinated in
Australia's public schools with political ideology that is the opposite
of that supported by their parents. Add to this an accelerating decline
in quantifiable standards of learning and achievement and you see why a
sizeable migration to private education has been taking place for years.
If parents were offered a totally depoliticised system of public
education - even one approximating to a classical model from 50 years
ago, which emphasises the acquisition of skills rather than of attitudes
- I have no doubt that many would embrace it with enthusiasm.
In terms of measurable academic standards, hopes for worthwhile future
employment, ability to cope with tertiary courses and the development of
genuinely independent, educationally informed minds, such an alternative
could not help being an improvement on the present, covertly politicised
and academically disastrous model. Such an alternative would, of course,
be resisted to the death by those who now dictate educational policy.
Such educationalists invariably claim - in spite of overwhelming
evidence to the contrary - to know best what is most beneficial and
desirable for those in their power.
Does such a claim to omniscience sound familiar? It certainly should to
anyone who has ever lived for any length of time under a communist
regime. Under such regimes even abject failure was always represented as
triumph or impending triumph.
Regular observers of our educational scene should have realised by now
that wherever radical educational initiatives - generally of
postmodernist and thus Marxist origins - appear to create chaos or
failure such shortcomings find themselves twisted through 180 degrees to
re-emerge as triumphant vindications of doctrine: "Our children may not
be able to read, spell, punctuate, add or subtract or show even the
slightest grasp of the pleasures and purposes of significant literature
but what they have been forced to recognise are the power structures
concealed in educated discourse. Access to the mysteries of such
recognition will make them the true world citizens of the future." What
I am referring to here obliquely is the brave new world of what is
termed critical literacy.
It may be instructive for parents who remain understandably in the dark
about any supposed need to analyse language largely or solely in terms
of power relationships to understand why their children should be
obliged to view the written word in this one-eyed fashion.
The originator of these ideas was a French Marxist historian/philosopher
who died 22 years ago and whose entire life was consumed by a corrosive
hatred of the kind of conventional, middle-class, "bourgeois" values
that tend to obtain in modern Western democracies such as Australia.
The man in question was Michel Foucault. Was this paragon truly the
possessor of an exceptional, visionary and supremely balanced mind whose
theories of life and society should be accepted by the rest of us -
including parents of hundreds of thousands of children now attending
Australian schools - without question?
When not exercising his supposedly superior vision of the true nature of
bourgeois Western societies, Foucault was a promiscuous masochist whose
areas of interest were in torture, drug-use and totally anonymous sex.
His spiritual hero was the Marquis de Sade.
As well as seeking the destruction of conventional Western capitalist
societies, the admired philosopher had a parallel penchant for
destroying himself, attempting suicide a number of times and finally
succeeding in dying prematurely at the age of 57 from a sexually
transmitted disease.
Whether any of these acknowledged facts fitted him supremely to be a
posthumous arbiter in the way our children and university students are
taught is not for me to say. These personal details of Foucault's life
are, incidentally, freely available, being discussed in disturbing
detail in a biography written by James Miller, The Passion of Michel
Foucault (Simon & Schuster 1993).
Giles Auty was a member of the Art Working Group for the National
Curriculum for English and Welsh schools in the early 1990s.