I found this GSCE English homework in Denton Woods today. No name or school on it and no owner to be seen anywhere. If by any chance any viewers of this blog happen to know a pupil who has lost their GCSE homework about the poet Benjamin Zephaniah
please do let me know and I will forward it on to the school - probably Two Trees or St Thomas Moor.
14 comments:
A pretty transparent attempt to get the more 'hard of thinking' all fired up?
You can do better TC...
Blatant brainwashing of our youth. I remember having to do some things similar to this at school but never this blatant. This kind of thing even when I was 14/15 would have caused me to rebel completely against school.
It seems that unless you are thoroughly under the spell of the Marxists then you have not a chance of completing your education.
My experience of sixth form college is a good example of this, I refused to paint the kind of paintings that my leftist art teachers and such I had to jump before I was pushed. We need more rebels in our schools to counteract this.
Children of Tameside, down your pencils! :D
The Zephaniah legend (as I see it) is of a Rastafarian prodigal son, born in 1958 in Handsworth, son of a Barbados postman. He was dyslexic, attended an approved school but left at 13 unable to read or write. He got into trouble with the law, even spent some time in jail for burglary. But when I asked what crimes he committed, he hesitated, uncharacteristically: 'Everything. I was growing up nicking things from cars and people's houses, fighting with the police... but don't make too much of it. It is not how I want to be defined.'
Benjamin Zephaniah has received many criminal convictions, even serving time in prison for several robberies, yet our kids are being taught that he is some kind of hero whose 'poetry' is the next best thing to Shakespeare.
A while back the Daily Mail listed the top 100 Black 'Britons' of all time. I nearly wet myself when I saw Zephaniah listed as the 20th greatest Black this country has ever produced. Lol
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-207670/100-Greatest-Black-Britons.html
Come on this is just wrong. For a start the poem is rubbish and why not use the work of a great British poet such as Tennyson, Clare or Wyatt?
I agree this is a case of blatant brainwashing.
I disagree anon. I did find this work in the woods yesterday and I was actually disappointed to see what is to all intents and purposes a brainwashing exercise dressed up as an examination paper.
I have a child in education and went into school to speak to the head of history when I discovered that neither she nor her friends - none of whom could be described as dim were being taught almost nothing about British history other than Britain’s role in the slave trade and the Suffrage Movement.
It started when I was quizzing the kids on real basic stuff such as; who were the Tolpuddle Martyrs, to what did Edward the Confessor Confess, what happened at Bosworth Field in 1485 and so on.
They knew the answers to none of these things but knew everything about 20th century world events and in particular; the rise of the European dictators (Mussolini, Hitler and Franco - apparently the Soviet equivalents were revolutionaries not dictators) WWII and a massive year long emphasis on The Holocaust™ as well as the American Civil Rights Movement and most recently the Cold War and American involvement in Vietnam - all very good, but not when British kids are being wilfully under informed about our own history.
The teacher agreed with me but told me they must teach what is on the national curriculum or the kids would fail their exams.
This rot even permeates our universities. I have a young lady friend currently doing a law degree at Manchester Met and recently she asked for a bit of help on a paper abour a brief history of England. The most outrageous question - and there were a few, was a multiple choice question
A) Do immigrants come to Britain to take advantage of our generous welfare system
B) To conquer
C) To escape poverty and create a better life for themselves
D) To fill vital shortages in the labour market
We both looked at each other and said “we know the correct answer but if we give it, it would be marked as the wrong answer”
I really do hate Political Correctness and that’s what all this brainwashing
When you think of all the great British poets British pupils could be taught about: Philip Larkin, Robert Browning, Rupert Brooke, Lord Byron, Shelley, Tennyson, Geoffrey Chaucer, Keats, Rudyard Kipling, Ted Hughes, John Masefield etc etc.
They all had an immense talent, and in some cases genius, for expressing themselves in our wonderful language. Often expounding a fundamental understanding of our nation, its history, culture, identity and essence.
Instead they are force fed politically correct poetry in an attempt to brainwash them and erase their sense of identity.
It wouldn't be so bad if Mr Zephaniah's poetry was in the curriculum on merit, but any impartial observer can see that it most certainly isn't.
There once was a poet called Ben
Who shouldn't have picked up a pen
The Greatest Black Briton?
Cha must mee be shittin'
His verse rates at one out of ten
Zephania is a gifted poet for sure.
English school kids should be taught poems such as the Stranger by Kipling, not semi-literate garbage by Benjamin Zephaniah.
The Stranger by Rudyard Kipling
(1908)
The Stranger within my gate,
He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk—
I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
But not the soul behind.
The men of my own stock,
They may do ill or well,
But they tell the lies I am wonted to,
They are used to the lies I tell;
And we do not need interpreters
When we go to buy or sell.
The Stranger within my gates,
He may be evil or good,
But I cannot tell what powers control—
What reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
Shall repossess his blood.
The men of my own stock,
Bitter bad they may be,
But, at least, they hear the things I hear,
And see the things I see;
And whatever I think of them and their likes
They think of the likes of me.
This was my father's belief
And this is also mine:
Let the corn be all one sheaf—
And the grapes be all one vine,
Ere our children's teeth are set on edge
By bitter bread and wine.
'Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
Shall repossess his blood'
Priceless.
Mr Zephaniah's poetry is chip on the shoulder, childish junk. Doggerel would be high praise.
The educational establishment has a wealth of British talent and in some cases genius to choose from, from Chaucer, Byron, Keats, Wordsworth, Browning, Masefield, Larkin, Hughes, the list goes on and on. These poets had a gift for explaining and expressing via the written word a fundamental understanding of the culture, traditions, history, essence and identity of our country. British children should read and hear these works to help them learn where they come from and who they are.
British children would learn inestimably more about their identity and heritage from one reading of Masefield's, 'August,1914', than a thousand years spent reading some of the corrosive modrn pap they are force fed.
I'm sure this work would have been awarded an A*
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