Posted on 03/27/2002 11:49:48 PM PST by JohnHuang2
"Thus are the young condemned to live in an eternal present, a present that merely exists, without connection to a past that might explain it or to a future that might develop from it. Theirs is truly a life of one damned thing after another."
– Theodore Dalrymple
For those of us who know that life today in Britain is the future in America a dozen years down the road, Theodore Dalrymple's book, "Life at the Bottom: The worldview that makes the underclass," is a frightening prospect (Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 2001). Some things are different, of course: America's immigrant groups are primarily Asian and Mexican, while Britain's are East Indian. Our underclass is predominantly black; theirs white. And of course, Britain has arrived first.
That being said, our final destination is not in doubt. The title, "Poor, white stupids," comes from Dr. Dalrymple's description of the beating that children studying to do well in school receive if they venture into the area where the "poor, white stupids" live. "The cult of stupidity has become in England what the cult of celebrity is in the United States," he writes. "Very few of the 16-year-olds whom I meet as patients can read and write with facility; they do not even regard my question as to whether they can read and write as in the least surprising or insulting ... Even those who are under the impression that they can read and write adequately are utterly defeated by words of three syllables, and while they can sometimes read the words of a text, they no more understand them than if they had been in Church Slavonic."
Not a pretty picture, but Dr. Dalrymple divides his time between the prison and the hospital in a London slum. He writes from what he knows to be the truth "after over 10,000 patient interviews."
After introducing us to the sad reality these kids are condemned to live, Dr. Dalrymple takes us to the root of their plight: "Since failure [in school] is now regarded as fatally damaging to self-esteem, anyone who actually presents himself at an examination is likely to emerge with a certificate. I recently encountered a boy aged 16 in my clinic who wrote 'Dear Sir' as 'deer sur,' and 'I'm' as 'ime' ... who has passed a public examination – in English."
One can only imagine the dull, expanding horror of being a dedicated teacher confined within the walls of such a school, living in constant fear of losing one's job for doing one's job – correcting children so they have a chance in life. Even worse, the author asserts, are schools that limit corrections to five per assignment – lest the children become discouraged.
Here the psychiatrist in the author emerges, as he explains that in a world of random discipline, "everything is reduced to a mere contest of wills, and so the child learns that all restraint is but an arbitrary imposition from someone or something bigger and stronger than himself. The ground is laid for a bloody-minded intolerance of any authority whatever." The bottom line is that for the underclass, education is no longer a route out of the slum, and the author sees no change anytime soon, as the educationalists are fully in charge.
Now comes the interesting part:
In the neighborhood in which I work, there are many immigrant groups. The largest are those from northwest India, Bangladesh and Jamaica. There is also a large and settled white working class. The children from all these groups go to the same bad schools with the same bad teachers, but the results are dramatically different.
The children of poor and unemployed immigrants from northwest India are never illiterate or semi-literate; a very respectable number go on to further education, even at the highest level, despite overcrowding in the home and apparent poverty. The other groups vie with each other to achieve the lowest educational level.
So why does the underclass in Britain disdain education?
Their disdain for education enables them to maintain the fiction that the society around them is grossly, even grotesquely, unjust, and that they themselves are the victims of this injustice. If, on the contrary, education were seen by them as a means available to all to rise in the world, as indeed it could be and is in many societies, their whole viewpoint would naturally have to change.
Instead of attributing their misfortune to others, they would have to look inward, which is always a painful process. Here we see the reason why scholastic success is violently discouraged, and those who pursue it persecuted, in underclass schools: for it is perceived ... as a threat to an entire Weltanschauung [worldview]. The success of one is a reproach to all.
Translated to America, does it not go a long way to explain black hatred for Clarence Thomas as a Supreme Court Justice, and the worship of rap stars imprisoned for living their lyrics?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.