When I was growing up, the entrance to our city library was faced by an enormous monumental wall emblazoned with Thomas Carlyle’s great epigram: “All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books”. From the earliest age, that
As I wrote recently, it’s a grave mistake to write off the erudite circle-jerking of academics as nothing more than ivory-tower nuttiness. Eventually, the nonsense that’s passed off as “scholarship” filters down to the real world, with often devastating consequences. Marxism especially has been a font
Students who organised school climate action are now planning a general strike that will last an entire week! Now it is getting ridiculous. Where are the parents in all this? I would be reading my children the riot act and telling them that they can protest on their own time,
That is seriously suggested, not only for the teachers but for everyone. We have to save the planet and the only way is a 75% pay cut according to UK’s Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell. McDonnell has suggested that a future Labour government might introduce a 10-hour working
I recently reported that the appointment of Australian academic Professor Dawn Freshwater as Auckland University vice-chancellor promised to be a rare breath of fresh air for New Zealand higher education. Where other Kiwi universities, especially those headed by Aussie academics, are clamping on intellectual freedom, Professor Freshwater was at
In Daniel Gasman’s The Scientific Origins of National Socialism, he lays out in detail how many of the seeds of Nazi doctrine were sown in respectable, mainstream German scientific journals and debates in the late 19th century. Today’s transgender ideology springs from obscure academic debates in the 1980s
There is a lamentable tendency in some circles to dismiss the Humanities as irrelevant and unnecessary. This is a mistake. Understandable, perhaps, when Humanities departments have been so assiduously white-anted by Marxists, but that kind of misses the point. Just because a bunch of loons are in the driver’
Financial activism has long been one of the favourite tools for the left to punish Wrongthink. Not that the right is immune, as recent boycott campaigns have shown, but the left have raised the tactic to a dark and dubious art. By the 1980s, vexatious lawfare, particularly by race-activist
Nothing perhaps better illustrates the sorry decline of free speech and intellectual freedom on university campuses than the starkly different receptions given to two flamboyant superstars of conservative politics, 42 years apart. In 1974, John Wayne accepted an invitation to speak at Harvard. Never one to do things by half,
By Alwyn Poole First published Tuesday, May 28, 2019 Tomorrow thousands of teachers walk off the job and it looks like about 2000 schools will close. Our two State Schools will be fully staffed and fully operational – and for good reasons. Firstly the children who come to South Auckland Middle
A bunch of kids decide to wag school but Auckland Councillor Penny Hulse reckons it’s all good. Quote. On the same day as the nationwide schools strike for climate change action, councillor Penny Hulse has announced the council’s Environment and Community Committee will have the declaration put in
Shock! Horror! White supremacists are rampant at Auckland University. How do we know? Because the university’s Students’ Association says so. But the fascist Vice Chancellor is denying it, which of course is proof that it’s true. quote. Auckland University’s Vice Chancellor maintains students’ claims of a growing
Too Right A regular column by John Black The Black Sheep Blog Rightminds Information Satire As somebody once said, You should try everything once except incest and Morris dancing. (Who exactly said that we are unsure but when you reflect on how they knew to steer clear of the first
Read all about it; Fake Science, brought to you by Victoria University and published in the Sunday (All the news that’s fit to fake) Star Times of April 7th. Breathlessly beginning the fakery with “Almost half of respondents to a large-scale science survey believe toilet water spirals in
As the old saying goes, those who can, do; those who can?t, teach. Apparently that includes those who can?t spell. Even elite private schools should hang their heads in shame. Quote: School principals and teachers deserve an F for making a slew of spelling mistakes in newsletters and
