Children to be taught traditional English values of exploitation and colonialism
15 May 2006
Children are to be taught traditional English values at school in response to last year's London bombings, the new education secretary had announced. Bill Rammell said that he wanted citizenship classes to be adapted to encourage pupils to follow time-honoured English customs."I want to instil a new sense of colonialism in our young people," Mr Rammell said. "As we saw with Iraq, few children these days have the desire to invade a foreign country on a spurious excuse and exploit it for all it is worth. That is a great shame, because historically it is something we have always done well."
Although rejecting the idea on human rights grounds that slavery could be reintroduced, the minister did say that young people should be forced to watch cricket and learn to speak in unnecessarily flowery language.
Suggesting that the minimum wage could be abolished, Mr Rammell went on to call for the poor to be beaten, forced to work long hours and live in squalid conditions, such as Birmingham. "There is a lot to be said for a bit of old-fashioned oppression," he added. "It keeps people in their place."
"That, in essence, is the problem with the youth of today. Their place isn't to plan suicide bombings or go on anti-war marches, it's to go up chimneys, tidy their rooms and sacrifice themselves on some godforsaken battlefield for no good reason. The earlier they are taught this the better."
