Our WOKE World and Prophetic George Orwell's 1984

Our WOKE World and 

Prophetic George Orwell's 1984

2. www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woke

   Woke A word currently used to describe " consciousness " and being aware of the truth behind things "the man" doesn't want you to know i.e. classism, racism, and any other social injustices. The term comes from a genuine place but is becoming overused. People mainly use it to sound like deep thinkers when they are really just following a trend. 

   
   

   

   
   

I have been re-reading George Orwell's 1984 (published in 1949) and find it almost prophetic. For example:

1. The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat though the words were stilled distinguishable. The instrument (the tele screen, it was called) could be dimmed but there was no way of turning it off completely. 

(Watch the movie SNOWDEN and learn of how televisions not only broadcasts in but broadcasts out as well).

2. Only the THOUGHT POLICE mattered. p. 2

3. WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH p. 4

4. It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and the losers out of unorthodoxy.

p. 10

Goldstein was depicted as the greatest enemy of Big Brother. 

He abused Big Brother, denouncing the dictatorship of the Party, he was demanding the immediate conclusion of peace with Eurasia, he was advocating freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought, he was crying hysterically that the Revolution had been betrayed.

5. TWO MINUTES HATE p. 13

"Before the Hate had preceded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room."

(Today's major media Nightly news now CNN10 broadcast into classrooms across America. Remember that "technology" you raised money for?)

p. 14 Within thirty seconds any pretense was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in wit a sledge hammer seemed to flow through the whole group like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.

Ask your children/grandchildren if CNN 10 is broadcasting into their classrooms. Enlightened children have told their parents/grandparents that it is "brainwashing", but one Middle School student told his grandmother that he did not like Trump any longer because he was a "bad" person. "Where did you hear that?" his grandmother asked. That was when he told her about the 10 minutes of CNN being broadcast into his classroom. CNN10 has taken the place of the old voice of indoctrination Channel One.

Aren't you glad you raised money for "technology in the classroom"?

p. 16. It was an act of self-hypnosis, a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise.

6. The sacred principles of Ingsoc, Newspeak, doublethink, the mutability of the past p. 27

Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death. (Ingsoc is English Socialism)

7. p. 34. If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened--that surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death.

.... "Who controls the past", ran the Party slogan, "controls the future; who controls the present controls the past."

...Reality control they called it; in Newspeak, "doublethink."

8. p. 35. His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself--that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word "doublethink" involved in the use of doublethink.

8. Winston's job was to rectify the original figures by making them agree with later ones.

...p. 40 Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news or any expression of opinion which conflicted with the needs of the moment ever be allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and rein scribed exactly as often as was necessary.

for example: Biden actually criticized the travel ban implemented against China early on to slow the virus arrival to U.S. shores as “xenophobic.”

“This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia,” Biden said at an Iowa campaign stop leading up to the first-in-the-nation contest.

But he rewrites history ...

Does the Major Media correct him or continue the lie? 

9. p. 50. "How's the dictionary getting on?" said Winston, raising his voice to overcome the noise."

"Slowly," said Syme. "I'm on the adjectives. It's fascinating."

He had brightened up immediately at the mention of Newspeak. ...The Eleventh Edition is the definitive edition." he said. "We're getting the language into its final shape--the shape it's going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When we've finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all again. You think, I dare say that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We're destroying words--scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're cutting the language down to the bone.

...It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.

...Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?" In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed exactly one word with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.

...Every year fewer and fewer words and the range of consciousness always a little smaller.

...How could you have a slogan like 'freedom is slavery' when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole concept of thought will be different. Inf act there will be no thought as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking,not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, some will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. "

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This is what I saw in WHOLE LANGUAGE where a rolodex of sight words were doled out by the fifth grade and in middle school the children could not sound out unfamiliar words. Or read books with those unfamiliar words. And by so limiting their ability to read those liberation pedagogists had limited their ability to think of anything except the doled out words they were allotted.

10. All over Oceania this morning there were irrepressible spontaneous demonstrations where workers marched out of the factories and offices and parted through the streets with banners voicing their gratitude to Big Brother for the new, happy life which his wise leadership had bestowed upon us.

________________

Does this sound to you a lot like the Mayor of Seattle calling riots "mostly peaceful" predicting "A summer of Love".

p. 62. "That's a first-rate training they give them in the Spies nowadays--better than in my day even. What d-you think the latest thing they've served them out with? Ear trumpets for listening through keyholes.

11. p. 70. Until they be one conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.

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Hillary Clinton: “Attempting to define reality is a core feature of authoritarianism. This is what the Soviets did when they erased political dissidents from historical photos,” declared Clinton in What Happened. “This is what happens in George Orwell’s classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, when a torturer holds up four fingers and delivers electric shocks until his prisoner sees five fingers as ordered.”

“The goal is to make you question logic and reason and to sow mistrust toward exactly the people we need to rely on: our leaders, the press, experts who seek to guide public policy based on evidence, ourselves,” she continued, seemingly misinterpreting Orwell’s message.

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Doublespeak? I ask.

What about the mistrust the Left sows about the Police? Homeland Security? Our President. What is their purpose?

12. p. 80. "In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. (COMMON CORE MATH)

...For after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external. world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable--what then?

...Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted all else follows."

12. p. 154. "Who cares?" she said impatiently. "It's always one bloody war after another, and one knows the news is all lies anyway."

Sometimes he talked to her of the Records Department and the impudent forgeries that he committed there. Such things did not appear to horrify her. She did not feel the abyss opening beneath her feet at the thought of lies becoming truths."

p. 153. "Do you realize that the past, starting from yesterday, has been actually abolished.

...History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the party is always right. "

A Commentary on Education in Dothan with a Lifetime Perspectiv

A Commentary on Education in Dothan 
with a Lifetime Perspective

by Sharman Burson Ramsey

I graduated from Dothan City Schools during the Golden Age of Education (or so said Nell Brown, one of Dothan’s premier teachers). At that time, it meant something to have attended Dothan City Schools. Then, according to Lois Baker, another of Dothan’s stellar teachers, with the close of the sixties we acquired a new batch of administrators who advocated the new and improved methods taught in the colleges of education. I graduated from the University of Alabama about that time and know personally what she was talking about. I also graduated thinking that what I was taught was “research based” and the best of current knowledge.

I was wrong. The older traditional teachers had it right.

In the meantime, Dothan threw away money on buildings with pods that had to be divided up because of the noise and confusion.  Then came the 90s and Goals 2000. The community was “Delphied” into acceptance of Whole Language /Progressive Education.

What is the Delphi technique?

 The gist of it is that the technique is used to reach a predetermined conclusion. In other words,to manipulate the group. It has evidently become popular within politics to give the impression that public input is actually having an impact on decisions when in reality, the decision has been made already, and the group is being guided, unknowingly, toward that end."

That does sound unethical, and to be sure maybe we should look at the definition of 'ethical'. I think we all know and understand what is and isn't ethical behavior. It's doing the right thing for the right reasons. However, the actual definition of the word places it in the context of the standards of the profession. 

There is an old axiom that the only difference between motivation and manipulation is intent, and I think that is the issue here. There are ethical ways to employ the Delphi Technique and there are unethical ways to use it to manipulate data and people.

Consider the difference between motivation and manipulation. But, of course, the ends justify the means.

The first time I remember getting Delphied was when Auburn’s Dean Kunkel came to Dothan to speak at Northview in support of Goals 2000. I cornered him there and asked for research supporting the effectiveness of Whole Language. He said and I quote, “I can’t give you any. It’s current wisdom.”

Obviously not good enough or we would not still be battling continuing illiteracy in our schools.

It was the early 90s. Goals 2000 won. Drill and kill--what the “current wisdom” labeled Phonics --lost. Except in sports where coaches always knew that drill developed skill. That matters because winning teams on sports fields brought money into the coffers of the schools. Unlike Reading and Math. Failure there brings in more money.

Those who sold Kentucky its education reform also sold Alabama its “reform” plan incorporating the Progressive methodology that dominated the colleges of education. Dothan City Schools paid a consultant to rewrite their Bylaws.  SEQUENTIAL  (skill upon skill) learning was replaced by THEMATIC (take a whole and break it into parts) learning. GROUP LEARNING and PEER TUTORING made the teacher the GUIDE ON THE SIDE as students became “independent," “”hands on” learners recreating the wheel rather than “standing on the shoulders of giants,” being taught what others had already discovered. 

Psychologically the group became Alpha. Blooms Taxonomy taught that children should be taken to the point of moral development where they “challenge the fixed beliefs of their parents.”  They were successful. 

The Dare program taught young children where drugs were sold and how people used them. Marijuana and alcohol, gateway drugs, became more prevalent. New Age Techniques such as role-playing opened doors that should have remained shut. 

Conflict Resolution also brought New Age techniques into the classroom encouraging children to mentally withdraw into their happy place.  Words of non-violence conflicted with the images the Southern Poverty Law Center thought necessary for small children see in the films that came with the curriculum our administration thought necessary. Topics like Bullying and Death Education guided by untrained teachers in the "therapeutic" classroom led some children to commit acts they would not otherwise commit due to the depression of those topics and the images they evoked. Cognitive dissonance.

Education did not improve. Then came another drive to “fix” our schools that wound up with the Chamber of Commerce “Delphi-ing” the community into accepting Common Core. Bill Gates of “Pirates of Silcon Valley” fame sold the community on  "21st-century skills” generally referring to certain core “competencies” such as “collaboration, digital literacy, critical thinking, and problem-solving that advocates believe schools need to teach to help students thrive in today's world.”

"The idea that the richest man in the U.S. can purchase and --working closely with 

the U.S.Department of Education--impose new and untested academic standards 

on the nation's public schools is a national scandal,” wrote one skeptic. 

The funding of the NGA (National Governor's Association) and CCSSO (Council

of Chief State School Officers) suggests where their accountability lies. Since 2007, NGA and CCSSO have accepted approximately $100 million from the Gates Foundation alone to advance the standards and the connected data-collection and assessments. These organizations do not answer to the people, they answer to an enormously powerful funder with a definite agenda. NGA and CCCSO also get substantial funding from the federal government for CCSSO, about half its operating funds). The Gates foundation spread money across the political spectrum to entities including various teachers organizations, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association and business organizations such as the Chambers of Commerce. Money flowed to policy groups on the Left and the Right funding research to scholars who supported the idea of common standards.   

Surely sales opportunities/filthy lucre would have nothing to do with Gates in partnership with UNESCO. Microsoft joined Pearson, the world's largest educational publisher to load Pearson's Common Core classroom materials on Microsoft's tablet, the Surface. That product allows Microsoft to compete for school district spending with Apple, whose iPad is the dominant tablet in classrooms. 

And how about the sales of that data on your child collected through those computers? 

What proof did they have of Common Core improving education? Other than as in the Alinsky Rules for Radicals No. 11, “If you push a negative hard enough it will push through and become a positive.” 

Sentiments prevalent in the World Core Curriculum of UNESCO permeates Common Core aligned texts. Concepts found in grade school children’s textbooks such as justice and equality are given politically biased meanings. Justice is newly defined to mean the redistribution of wealth and resources. Equality is used to dismantle preference for one’s own culture, religion and social customs. “Predictive information,” data ostensibly gathered on each student to improve performance, is in truth a measurement of a student’s adjusted attitude and behavior—a Soviet style “managed outcome” as Crisis Magazine explains. 

"Skills based" learning rather than “knowledge based” ranks right up there with one of those negatives pushed hard enough to convince the public it was a positive. And they succeeded. 

You must believe that “21st century learners” “balk at rote learning and memorizing…” Throw away direct instruction, phonics in reading instruction, memorizing math facts … and allow the political activists like defrocked priest, guru of Whole Language and Harvard saint, Paolo Freire to revolutionize Math and Reading with his “liberation pedagogy.” Planned Parenthood develops the Sex Education curriculum integrated into curriculum on every grade level. 

And now Dothan’s newest Superintendent has “innovated” the system to do away with the old Dothan High School to bring all Dothan Middle Schoolers under one roof at the old Dothan High School building calling it Dothan Preparatory School. An elite sounding name for recycled Progressive concepts. And Northview is now Dothan High School …with a different mascot.

During the late nineties Dothan Director of Instruction Susan Lockwood got the Board to back the “four period day.” They paid for teachers to fly to Frederick, Maryland to “see” a school that had used that method for a couple of months and then come home enthused enough for the system to print glossy brochures and a video on the “method” …and then send our own teachers out to sell the method. Lockwood used AP Geometry and Algebra students in our system as guinea pigs for her dissertation. Their scores on the Advanced Placement Test showed they scored poorly and eventually the method (which gave Band and Sports students 1/4^th of their school year to their extracurricular “subject”) was replaced. ONLY TO RETURN WITH THIS NEW SUPERINTENDENT. 

Since our child would be affected when this “innovation” was first proposed, we got the principal of the Frederick, Maryland high school to cite to us a study on block scheduling. We called Dr. David Bateson, author of a study on Block Scheduling of over 20 years, who was then on vacation on an island off the coast of British Columbia. He sent us his study. His conclusions? "The four period day is detrimental to academic achievement."

 Lockwood saw scores drop six points for minority students from 42 to 36.White student's scores dropped 2 points. Although Lockwood drew the conclusion that this was not statistically significant thereby enabling her to recommend block scheduling. Yet, before long, Block Scheduling was dropped. 

By the way, Lockwood, then became Dr. Lockwood with a PH.D. (She used our daughter as a guinea pig for her dissertation WITHOUT OUR PERMISSION and went on to become superintendent of Eufaula City Schools in Alabama.

They say we are no longer Common Core schools. Yet, the laptops still utilize Pearson curriculum and the same Progressive methods. Point being there has been no improvement on the curriculum of our schools. It is still based on “current wisdom” (Progressive Education) as Dean Kunkel explained thirty years ago. Only now it is on steroids as a consequence of Common Core. The current Superintendent appears to be a Master of that philosophy.

So be it…as long as the community understands what their tax dollars support. Though it appears to some of us that the chairs on this Titanic continue to be rearranged for the benefit of administrators making points with their fellow educrats, getting degrees, promotions, and recognition from their colleagues. Not for the benefit of our children.

We took a wrong turn in the late 60s and have only gone further off course. Like sheep our School Boards have followed the dictates of the automatons in administration who no longer look to the children they serve as proof of their success but for promotion to the next pay raise to elevate retirement pay. 

Now, we must rethink our schools as a consequence of Covid 19. Does a crowded single high school and middle school make sense? Should those abandoned schools be reopened to alleviate crowding? In the process, how about actually revolutionizing the schools by using methods proven to actually educate children in the manner expected by the public that funds those schools. Like those traditional methods used in private schools. Fortunately, the private school my grandchildren attend does not buy into that foolishness. They use Orton-Gillingham for Phonics/Reading and Saxon Math. But through our taxes, we are all forced to support the “current wisdom” and sad individual and societal consequences of Progressive Education. 

Be prepared--the demand for more money to use another gimmick to “fix” education will be coming soon. 

Vile and Nasty Feminist v Church Lady

Diane Sullivan Reeves Joel Ramsey Vile and vulgar are the new moral standards for the Party of Family values, the 21st century Republican Party, got it!

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Joel Ramsey Diane Sullivan Reeves Ms. Reevea you seem to be consumed by your hatred. I feel sorry for you. But I do have better things to do than communicate with a hater like you.

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Sharman Burson Ramsey Diane Sullivan Reeves I wonder if you heard the language at the Woman's March. "Pussy" hats? Goodness gracious. The filth and the hate that came out of those women's mouths made me ashamed they called themselves women! Vile and vulgar is home cooking with the current Democrat party.

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Diane Sullivan Reeves Sharman Burson Ramsey In case you missed it, the Pink Pussy hats were a mockery of you morally self-righteous church women who knowingly elected an admitted sexual predator as President of the United States. We are not the ones who wrap ourselves in the mantle of Christian values while knowingly electing a man who brags about grabbing women by their vaginas. If you like, I will happily post a verbatim transcript from the Access Hollywood recording, that was released just days before the 2016 election, of Trump’s bragging about his ability to force himself on women. Let me know and I will gladly post the verbatim transcript for you. Of course, your husband should be handy with the smelling salts when your demure church-lady persona is so insulted.

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Sharman Burson Ramsey Oh, so you consider yourself in line with the pink pussy brigade of shameful females presuming to speak for all women. "Demure church-lady" has nothing to do with it. Common sense does. You tell me where you were when Clinton was raping women, molesting supporters and employees and abusing a young intern and Hillary was defending him. When the Left's hero Teddy Kennedy killed a woman and got off scott free and JFK brought Mafia girlfriends into the White House. Amazing, isn't it that that tape "appeared" days before the 2018 election. His policies now resonate even louder now that we find out that our Antibiotics are made in China and his China ban on air flights saved lives. I wonder that the pink pussy brigade has the nerve to claim any moral high ground when they support late term abortion and killing babies! Not giving women the opportunity for an ultrasound to make them aware of the consequences of their "choice." That locker room talk does not compare to the actions of some of the Left's heroes. Seeing those women with their vile, hateful speech turns my stomach. And if you want to call me a "church lady" I will proudly bear that label along with "Deplorable." 

You have no sense of morality or shame and I find THAT deplorable. You reek of your own self-righteousness. What irony that you call others "self-righteous" because your self is the only one who sees any "righteousness" in your proclaimed morality.

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Diane Sullivan Reeves Sharman Burson Ramsey First, don't you DARE preach at me about shameful women, especially from one who knowing elected a porn-star screwing sexual predator who brags about grabbing women by their vagina just because he has recently become anti-abortion.

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Diane Sullivan Reeves First, I would NEVER presume to speak for you. I am a fierce FEMINIST who is the absolute equal of men, and I am a VERY Proud Member of the Shameful Women Pink Pussy Brigade because I stand with the absolute right of women to not be sexually assaulted or abused by powerful men - or any man. Unlike YOU, I refuse to grovel at the feet of a vile, vulgar man. I DO NOT tolerate rapists or abusers of women and girls.

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Diane Sullivan Reeves Sharman Burson Ramsey And, Bill Clinton got IMPEACHED. In NO WAY did I approve of what he did. When it was proven, I was disgusted by Bill Clinton's behavior. He lost my support and respect as a result.

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Diane Sullivan Reeves Sharman Burson Ramsey One last thing. I've noticed that you Trump Little Church Lady-groupies, when you can't rationally justify your support of Trump while at the same time declare yourselves to be morally superior, you always deflect away from his grotesque and vile behavior by dragging Bill Clinton into the discussion. That's just sad and pathetic.

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Sharman Burson Ramsey No. I just point out the hypocrisy of the Left and their determination to support Feminists who grovel at the baby killers feet and justifying it as the right of a woman to choose. They should at least get the blood money when Planned Parenthood sells their baby's body parts. Just think what could have been "harvested" when Susan Smith sent her two sons to their watery grave in South Carolina. That was her choice. And her body was denied the boyfriend she wanted. 
Feminists have led the way with their agenda to my three granddaughters probably being drafted should that come along again in the name of equity and equality. Women have participated in their supposedly righteous cause in empowering men, not women, and changing the laws so that the protections women once enjoyed have been replaced with mindless opposition. 
Put on your stupid pink pussy hat and realize it meant nothing. No Church lady was offended. Just disgusted.

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