#britains fucked up education system

[lonelylesbian2]

I remember when I was younger people would ALWAYS make fun of me when I talked about my family because of what I called them. My family is Indian (punjabi to be exact) so I was subject to LOADS of mockery anyway. But when we did family trees in primary school I got laughed at so badly and so many people told me I had the 'wrong' names because my maternal uncle wasn't called 'mama', that was what my mother was called. When I tried to explain that that's what I called them in my culture I got told I was wrong. 8 year old me thought that my family tree was supposed to be filled with my family. What they were called to me. 8 year old me got told I was wrong. My teachers gave me sheets to fill out with 'uncle' and 'aunt' and 'grandma'. I grew up like that and when I was 10 years old we went to go and visit my mums family in Delhi. I called my mothers mum grandma. Now, when I visit I'm older, now I call my mother sister 'mausi', I call people who aren't related to me closely but are still very close 'mausi'. Because that's my culture. I am an only child but I have people I call 'didi', I have people who call me 'didi'. My older relatives call me 'beta'. I am not their daughter, but that is our culture. Now, I don't let anyone tell me what I can and can't call my family. Because they are mine. Now when people ask who's visiting, i tell them my 'chacha'.

I hate that I ever let anyone tell me my culture was wrong, that I had to leave my blood and roots behind in favour of what other people knew. But I was young and that was the reality of it. Everyday, my heart goes out to the little 8 year old girl sitting at the dining table, wishing she could change the colour of her skin and the blood in her veins.

[theabigailthorn]

Do you think you’ll ever write a book, either philosophy related or maybe memoirs? I really love your content and your ideas and would love to know more about how you organize your worldview.

FUNNILY ENOUGH

I've been seriously considering writing a book about the way the NHS treats trans people, and more broadly about institutional pathologisation in the current global moment we're having. I've had meetings with some big publishers, even drafted an introduction and proposal, and gotten offers back!

BUT

I don't think I'm going to do it, for a few reasons. In no particular order:

Writing a book about that subject might raise the consciousness of a few folks, but does it help build material power for trans people against my country's healthcare system, and the other systems that subjectify trans people globally? Not really, no. In fact it would legitimise the elite media consensus that engaging with elite media is the path to achieving change. Books aren't just books, they're "media events," and accordingly they increase the power and prestige of the media they happen in. If I wrote this book, newspapers would review it, chart it, I'd be invited onto Radio 4 and shit to "debate" and "discuss" it... Does doing that actually help get medicine into trans people's hands? Not really! Writing books and "getting ideas out there" is pretty busted as a theory of change unless it builds power. The fantasy of writing a really good speech or article or book and suddenly the scales fall from cis people's eyes is just that - a fantasy. No minority group has ever gotten change or justice that way. All that would happen is I'd "enhance my brand" - which means that I, with my private education and privilege and opportunities, would make money and get clout whilst contributing to the elite capture of trans rights as a political struggle. I'd become "a leader in the community" and get invited to some dinners and media events and blah blah blah - meanwhile the violence continues. That media event would also enhance the brands of those cis-dominated media outlets and the "having conversations" industrial complex, who are part of the fucking problem! The struggle should be led by the poorest and most vulnerable among us and link up with other material struggles like resisting immigration raids, prison abolition, decriminalisation of drugs and sex work, etc. So I could likely do more good for my community by donating my time and money to good causes and also by some uhhhh... other stuff - let's call it 'direct assistance' - which I already do and find fulfilling.

The offers aren't that big! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Writing that book might do harm if it's co-opted into ongoing right wing attempts to dismantle the NHS and all trans care. It'd be intellectually satisfying but not creatively satisfying or fun. I'd have to immerse myself in a very bleak world for a long time: I would enjoy having done it but not the doing.

It'd ruin my career. Right now I actually fly pretty under the radar of a lot of my country's nastiest transphobes. That would end if I wrote a book about the NHS. Newspapers, editors, publishers, journalists, and probably some MPs and Lords would become very invested in tearing me down. I've seen it happen to queer writers and journalists before. Remember, Britain is a small country and our media is run out of one city by a very small group of people who all know each other and who also know all our politicians, in some cases because they're literally the same people! That book would be like kicking a hornets' nest. Maybe they'd come after me publicly, or maybe it would be more British: somebody would make a quiet phone call and I'd suddenly be radioactive. Bye-bye acting career, bye-bye any public career.

For related reasons, writing that book and doing the necessary media campaign would expose me to a WORLD of harassment and shit from some of the worst people in the universe, which I frankly don't want. That might include lawsuits.

My dream job is to play [REDACTED] in [REDACTED]. Writing a book wouldn't take me closer to that. It would cement my brand as 'trans educational writer' instead of 'actress and writer,' which is what I am.

So yeah, all in all, I don't think I'm going to do it. Not right now anyway. I reserve the right to change my mind. Think I'll write a screenplay instead!

[princeloww]

Stuff We Know About Campbell Bain (From Both the Show and the Play)

Since the play has some things that clash/contradict with the show, things I've taken from the SHOW will be marked (S) and the PLAY (P).

- (P) Campbell comes from a small place (Hector calls it "dead wee") called Invergellen, which is in the middle of nowhere. There are not a lot of job options, but there does seem to be some kind of tourism industry - the only job options Campbell can list are "sheep", "fish" and "tourists".

- (P) Campbell's dad lies about where Campbell is, telling people that he's off doing a youth volunteer placement in Africa. He even makes Campbell lie to his friends about it, too. Campbell says it's because he doesn't want anybody in Invergellen finding out. He also says his dad is reluctant to visit too often, out of fear that people will grow suspicious of his trips to Glasgow.

- (P) Campbell has siblings: an older brother and an older sister. His brother owns his own building company, and his sister works in Forestry - possibly for the government? Regardless, Campbell views his siblings as very successful and compares himself to them. He also believes that his dad compares him to them, and calls himself a "loser" who's "never gonnae amount to anything".

- (S) Despite having many past jobs and dreams he was seemingly dead set on achieving, Campbell states that he's never been good at anything other than the radio. He includes flirting with/getting girls in the things he's bad at. He also only learnt guitar to impress said girls, but must have failed pretty miserably based on his comment.

- (S) Before Campbell came to St. Judes, things must have been hard at home/school. Campbell's dad says that his mother is so worked up about the whole thing that she's had to take medicine, and (P) Campbell says that his dad says he "doesn't want to put (Campbell's aunt) through what (Campbell) put (Campbell's dad) through".

- (P) Campbell is excited when his dad is coming, and he is disappointed with him constantly letting him down/not showing up. I believe that Campbell's parents do love him and do TRY to understand him, but simply don't, and end up thinking/acting selfishly instead. They want to help but do not understand their son, and therefore do not give him the support he needs. Whatever Campbell "put them through" was likely due to them not understanding him or knowing how to react to his condition, or the education system and teachers also struggling to understand and accommodate for his needs.

I assume worry was also a big part of what he "put them through", but the line about Campbell's auntie still rubs me the wrong way.

- (S/P) Campbell's dad believes the radio is just another one of Campbell's "loony ideas" and thinks he is manic. Campbell (P) seems disappointed by this, and says he thought he'd be proud of him. Which is just kind of heartbreaking.

- (P) Campbell has to be wrestled by Stuart as he screams at his dad, the doctor and then eventually Stuart, too, to "fuck off". Which is very sad but also kind of funny because Stuart deserves that. This is after he finds out he has to go back to Invergellen (before he then fakes the manic episode).

- (P) Campbell believed he was the greatest comedian in Britain at one point and even went to the BBC in Glasgow to tell them. They were less eager to give him a chance and ended up calling the police on him. He says it's "kind of how" he "ended up" in St. Judes, which adds a bit of an extra layer onto (S) the police being called on him, Fergus and Rosalie when they snuck out.

There's probably, definitely more that I've forgotten to mention, but there's what I've got. There's obviously also the big difference between the show and the play with Perth/Invergellen, which makes some things canon only in the play and others only canon in the show. I'm totally choosing to take Campbell's siblings from the play and accept them as canon all around though,,, and the extra family details we get too.

OK thats all, stay proud loonies

(Sources - Takin' Over the Asylum (TV), Takin' Over the Asylum (official stage play script book))

[whumpinggrounds]

Disability Activists Worth Knowing

Hi! In honor of Disability Pride Month, which is July in the USA, I am writing about some disabled activists who I think are cool. Many of you are (hopefully) familiar with giants like Helen Keller and Judy Heumann, but there are a lot of really interesting people out there whose names aren’t as widely shared, especially those who are also POC, queer, and/or non-American.

Please feel free to add more disabled people, or information about people I’ve already listed! Note that this post is intended to be about people who advocate for the disabled community and are also disabled themselves. Non-disabled advocates have also done a lot for the community! But that is not who this post is about <3

Final disclaimer: This is a post that I researched quickly, and specifically sought out some new people I hadn’t heard about. If there’s someone on this list that’s fucked up, feel free to add that, and even feel free to @ me so I can reblog your correction. Please do not yell at me or assume I’m aware of every political opinion/possible transgression of the many people on this list pls

Now, in no particular order -

Javed Abidi was an activist who advocated for disability rights in India. He helped pass the Person with Disabilities act in Parliament, and served as the first director of the National Centre for Promotion of Employment of Disabled People.

Ola Abu Al Ghaib is a Palestinian activist who works to promote the rights of people with disabilities, particularly women with disabilities, in the Arab States, Africa, and Asia.

Ari Ne’eman is an Israeli-American activist who founded the Autism Self Advocacy Network, one of the earliest advocacy organizations run both by and for Autistic people. Currently, he consults with the ACLU on disability justice issues and is writing a book about disability history in the USA.

Dana Bolles is an American spaceflight engineer and advocate for people with disabilities in STEM. She also advocates for women and the queer community, and currently works at NASA.

Fatima al-Aqel was a Yemeni woman who advocated for blind and visually impaired women in Yemen, as well as opening Yemen’s first school for the blind. She later founded the Al-Aman Organization Blind Women Care to further opportunities for blind women in the social and professional spheres, as well as working to adapt literature to Braille.

Judi Chamberlain was an American activist, leader, speaker, and educator in the psychiatric survivors movement. Her book On Our Own: Patient-Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System is a foundational text in the Mad Pride movement and argues for the rights of patients in psychiatric care.

María Soledad Cisternas Reyes is a Chilean lawyer and disability rights advocate who has helped increase access for disabled people in Chile and internationally, through her work with the UN. She has also been recognized for her work on the intersection of rights of disabled people, children, women, indigenous people, and the elderly.

Tony Coelho is an American politician of Portuguese descent who was the primary sponsor of the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) and was a former chairman of the Epilepsy Foundation.

Justin Dart Jr. was an American activist and disability advocate who was regarded as the father (or sometimes godfather) of the ADA. Other notable accomplishments include founding his university’s first group to oppose racism, founding the American Association of People with Disabilities, and receiving a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Vic Finkelstein is a South African disability rights activist and writer who pioneered the social model of disability. He spent the latter part of his life in Britain after being imprisoned and banned from South Africa for anti-apartheid activities.

Chen Guangcheng is a Chinese civil rights activist, often referred to as a “barefoot lawyer,” who worked on civil rights cases in rural China. Due to his advocacy and activist work surrounding land rights, women’s rights, disability rights, and the welfare of the poor, Chen was repeatedly imprisoned and eventually left China for the USA.

Rick Hansen is a Canadian paralympian and activist, most famous for circling the world in a wheelchair to raise money for charity. His journey lasted just over 2 years, with an average of 8 hours of wheeling per day. He founded the Hansen foundation to raise funds and awareness to create a world without barriers for people with disabilities.

Abha Khetarpal is an Indian poet, author, and disability rights activist and counselor who founded a counseling/educational resource website and app for people with disabilities. Her work focuses on disability and women’s rights, with a focus on sexual liberation and sexual education and access for disabled people.

Harriet McBryde Johnson was an American author, attorney, and disability rights activist who specialized in securing Social Security benefits for disabled clients who could not work. She debated Peter Singer, arguably the most famous philosopher in America today, on the right of parents to euthanize their disabled children, an encounter she wrote about in the essay Unspeakable Conversations. 

Yetnebersh Nigussie is an Ethiopian lawyer who primarily works in disability rights and anti-AIDs activism. She is a 2017 winner of the Right Livelihood award, widely considered the “Alternative Nobel Prize.”

Satendra Singh is an Indian medical doctor who has advocated extensively for disability rights and access in India, including founding an “Enabling Unit,” a group staffed entirely by people with disabilities that ensures other disabled people are able to attend medical school and associated programs with proper accommodations and support.

Lauren Tuchman was the first blind woman to be ordained as a rabbi. She advocates primarily for disability rights and an inclusive Torah.

Emmanuel Yeboah is a Ghanian athlete and activist who rode a bike across Ghana to raise awareness about the lack of disability rights and access in the country, specifically a lack of wheelchairs. He currently works on ensuring education access for children with and without disabilities in Ghana.

Stella Young was an Australian comedian and journalist who was known for coining the term “inspiration porn.”

Nabil Shaban is a Jordanian-British actor and writer who is best known as the villain Sil on Dr. Who. He co-founded Graeae, a theater group which promotes the work of disabled actors.

That’s all I have for you! Please feel free to add :) I am considering writing up a few more posts about disabled celebrities, artists, etc, so let me know if you’d be interested <3

[wellthatwasaletdown]

I always think back to that line he said about winning a grammy, "this doesn't happen to people like me." What possibly in his mind could that have meant? Is there some context that we are missing that has not explicitly been stated about him?

Is there any scope on this blog for answering this honestly, without it being a points-scoring exercise?

There’s an easy answer: he’s British, he meant he’d been given an opportunity to get round our toxic class system. Harry was a working class boy with no connections or private education. I’m totally aware that terms like middle class, working class mean something different in the US and I hope your readers can accept that the words have non-American, non-Aussie meanings for Brits, and that our class system is insane in ways it’s hard to imagine.

He and the others in 1D actually have had a transformative experience, not just ‘oh yeah we got lucky for a while’: anyway, why he chose to say this to a room full of people where it could be so misconstrued, only he will know. He was talking like a Brit and even then probably shouldn’t have said it, because whatever disadvantages he was allowed to bypass with 1D, he is still white and of course non-white people in Britain work yet harder and have to deal with both race and class. The way race is talked about in the US is so different to over here (different history, and Britain’s way behind in dealing with its racism), and he completely fucked it up. If he’d said the same thing a week later at the Brits he’d have been understood by most people as coming at it from a class perspective.

Please note I’m not saying zero working class people get into the arts, but it’s a tiny proportion these days - James McAvoy talks about it well.

And personally I think Harry shouldn’t have tried to make the point he thought he was making, at all, but for that anon who asked if there is a missing context, yes there is, it’s called the insane and toxic British class system.

So, you basically want to spew your b.s. and not have any push back on it? LOL

It's amazing that the other British working class people who won Grammys and other major awards managed to not say anything similar to that. And Harry Edward Styles said it at 29--not as a newbie to the world of fame.

He got on that stage and said the same tired speech that he gives to his fans on a nightly basis on tour. Maybe that's because he's too dumb to memorize another one or maybe because he's too tone deaf and insensitive to realize the broader ramifications of saying something like that. Or maybe it was both.

[sonic-wildfire]

hey there! i saw your post about british vs american people and as a working-class british person who is now based in the us, i wanted to add my two cents. i think something a lot of americans don't realise about brits is that our class system is so deep-rooted in our society that seemingly trivial things such as accents are in fact an integral part of it. accents in britain are not indicators of where you live or where you come from, but whether you are "rich" or "not rich". people with, say, east london or liverpudlian accents find it much harder to gain social status or high-paying jobs regardless of their education or financial situation because the assumption is always that they are poor and stupid. people who come from working-class backgrounds are mercilessly mocked and at worst actively discriminated against for their accents in traditionally middle-to-upper-class areas such as universities, and end up changing their accents to blend in, so it's really a self fulfilling cycle. slang such as "innit" or pronunciations such as "chewsday" are inherently working-class, and as such, people mocking them will be perceived as classism by most working-class brits. what you're seeing is not a country full of snobs unable to take criticism, but people who have been ridiculed for their accents their whole lives, and have the ability to strike back without major consequence. the problem here isn't either of you, it's the lack of knowledge surrounding each other's cultures, as a seemingly innocuous comment from you can be seen as a direct attack to someone else regardless of intent. this was very long and rambly but i hope it clears some things up! top of the mornin' to ya, guv'na, and maybe next time we can come together and roast the shit out of the english upper class :)

as a final note, id like to say that obviously none of this justifies the disproportionate response you describe in your post, and i hope that both of our fucked up systems improve soon and no-one innocent gets hurt in the process (<- this was very poorly articulated but i hope you understood what i was trying to say!)

I will admit, you have given me a new perspective on the matter of accents. I had figured there might be some form of class differences at play here, but I hadn’t realized just how deep those differences are rooted over in the UK.

In all honesty, taking a jab at accents was certainly not the best example to use, to put it lightly, and I apologize for that.

Thank you for taking the time to write this out; a friend of the working class is a friend of mine :)

[krikeymate]

You headcanon Tara is a sickly child. Are you interested in writing about their childhood? About the times when Sam had to take care of Tara when she is ill and such? Like times when they thought they almost lost her?

I honestly love all your posts and fics by the way.

I would love to, but I don't think I could do it justice. I might try anyway! I could do a 5 times Sam almost lost her sister kind of thing.

I have no experience with hospitals, or being seriously physically ill, which is why I hesitate. I don't even have any experience with asthma, I was so bizarrely terrified that the way I wrote it would be so wrong and jarring it would take people out of the writing lol. If anyone does have experience with these things, I would love to hear from you.

My reason for that headcanon is :

1) The ages are seriously messed up. If 5 is Sep 2021, Tara is 18 soon to be 19, and in her final year of school. If 5 is Sep 2022 (as stated in 6), Tara was 19 soon to be 20 in her final year of school!

ALSO, in 5 they (Tara + twins etc.) were just starting their final year of school, and 6 is 13 months later... but they had been in New York for 6 months? They finished their school year in February or March? Did they 'graduate early', that's a thing in America, right? Somebody who knows about the American education system chime in because none of that is possible in Britain.

2) It works with my interpretation of the characters and their dependency beginning from a very young age, it makes Sam's need to run away more tragic, and it fucks Tara up even more. So it makes their transition into entirely codependent post-5 work so well.

A problem I would face in writing about their childhood: what are the parents like? Now, I have a very low opinion of their parents and would make them the worst. Where do I start, where does it end? It's so hard to decide because I think the implication in the movies is that they had a happy normal childhood until Sam found that diary, and that just doesn't sit right with me.

I won't lie, I have some pretty dark thoughts about potential childhood trauma/shitty parent headcanons that I will not be talking about at this juncture, maybe after Scream 7 lol. One is even an actual AU and their father doesn't leave for the reasons we get in canon, and exists solely to hurt Tara & Sam.

Final note, they should retcon when Scream 3 happened or make Tara's actual DOB (as in this was a secret even to her) even earlier (or a combination of both!) because I want Roman to be Tara's bio father lmao. I was pretty disappointed when I googled Scream timeline stuff after watching 5 and realised that that wouldn't work out.

[mollieblue]

Hey #labour, you should hire me to talk at you about how to actually fix Britain:

Terfs are the enemy, Trans folx are the people.

Small businesses need support on the ground level in order to foster amazing communities.

Invest in education to the point teachers are as paid well as their private peers or dare I say as well as an MP. I would say that if an MP describes their role as being vital, integral and essential to running the country, who receives a handsome tax paid salary with expenses paid with the public purse, why is it that other public sector roles are paid relatively below minimum wage? This applies to all public sector workers; civil servants, NHS staff, and teachers of all stripes. They are just as vital, integral, and essential to running the country, if not more so, than the openly profiteering geezers in Westminster.

Why is it that the rule makers are more important than those ensuring that the rules work? Those holding up society and holding it together are so sorely underpaid in this country that they are giving their lives to you at pittance so you can be okay. The NHS is a wonderful thing, and it breaks my heart that we don't fully fund it. The same goes for education, social services, community organisations, and libraries. These currently literally keep people existing at the bare minimum, but when fully funded and staffed, they transform lives for the better.

Equal pay for Equal work 》 Equal pay for Equal Importance. Ignore the 'we can't pay them the hundreds of thousands that MPs get' elephant in the room. I want you instead to imagine a world in which all public sector workers are paid the exact same amount regardless of hierarchy or public aspect they interact with. I'm no expert, but I reckon £86,584, the basic annual salary for a UK MP in 2023, would be an absolute god send to a junior doctor on roughly £38k. My partner practically works at minimum wage for 50 hours when you account for the marking, the planning, the organisation of your entire schedule to an impromptu meeting with angry parents and worrying about ofsted. It has worn them down, mostly because we can't have a social life, spending money on the theatre, in shops, on things that make us happy and human. We can't save, and we can't afford nice things. That fucking sucks. It wears a person out and throws them out of the system that's holding up the world.

Everyone I know is feeling like the above, regardless if they're private or public, freelance or salaried. One solution to help is basic universal income. Give everyone over 16 £500 & everyone over 18 £1000 each month for a year and see how awesome it would be in a year's time. I already know how much good that would do to me and everyone I know.

So pay everyone £12,000 a year and then pay all public sector workers the base salary of £86,000 rising in step with inflation. If the private sector can, in theory, pay whatever wages it wants, having a guarantee that your basics are paid will eliminate sooooo much stress. Rich folx can donate theirs, college kids can do interesting work at college because £500 buys a lot of art supplies and travel to museums, exhibitions, and events. Youth would have means to explore the nation before university or set up in an apprenticeship. Our elderly can use it to afford end of life care provisions or enrich their retirement or hell, just keep the lights on. Working folx would undoubtedly benefit the most and would probably like their jobs much more if they know things are covered.

To foot the bill, impose a commons tax on all privately owned land that fairly compensates the commons, ie, the UK public, back.

Make the North part of your game plan, rather than a foot note.

On a serious note; nationalise the railway system and expand the network. It is hell going east to west here, up to 3 hours to go 50 miles west and just 3 to get to London from Selby in North Yorkshire. How is this acceptable?

Invest in working class politicians to bring the reality of Britain back into government. Without our views or experiences on the table, why are we surprised when the Tories fuck us over again? If you want true, enthusiastic support from the British people, do not talk at us as if we're irresponsible children and actually engage with the very liberal and progressive discussions we have daily. Especially people under 40 - the older generation that pulled us out of the EU will be gone soon - you need to court and actually help out.

[emmashouldbewriting]

I don’t know anything about the US education system but since Archie and Lili have British titles even though they’re not working royals, they should go to British schools and learn about British history etc! Yes they’re American but it doesn’t seem right that their family are British royals and they aren’t being taught about things from that country. I’m British so I learnt about things like Henry Vlll, suffragettes and world war 1 and 2 etc.

American here -- we do learn about those topics in school though not to the extent that a British student does. As one would expect, we study American history so we do study WW1, WW2, the suffragettes, but through an American lens. Henry VIII, King John, Magna Carta, etc. is also in our history curriculum -- because the US was formerly a British colony, a lot of our early colonial history is tied to British history so we do study a bit of British history as it impacts the founding of the US and our parts in WW1 and WW2, but not a whole lot.

But at a minimum in terms of history, the way it's generally broken out is:

elementary/primary years (grades 1-5 or ages 6-10), you learn the basic fundamentals of American history (explorers, colonies, conflicts with Native Americans, founding fathers, manifest destiny, etc.).

middle school years (grades 6-8/ages 11-13), you do a bit of a deeper dive into American history, you learn civics, and you start learning world history.

high school (grades 9-12/ages 14-17), it's more world/western history (which covers some basic British history but still not anywhere close to the scale Brits do), another round of American history, and another round of civics/government.

And while it wasn't mentioned, I do want to give a shoutout to British literature. Our literature classes (we call them English classes here) also go into quite a bit of British history as well through the books that are read. A unit on Shakespeare or Dickens or Jane Austen/Bronte Sisters would also go into what was happening in Britain at the time to give context to the stories, characters, and settings.

The way the US education system works is that it's pretty fucked up. Between politics and the other thing American schools make international news for, it's been fucked up for a long time. I apologize for my French but there's really no other way to describe how messed up our education system is. Almost any American parent you speak to, we would all JUMP at the chance to send our kids anywhere else in the world for their education. That's why Meghan's choices to leave the UK and raise her children here in the US is so mindboggling to many of us (well, me and my friends). Yes, the US is her home and yes, she deserves the chance to raise her children the way she was but: why would you keep your children in a country where they may not ever come home from school one day when you have a better choice?

Anyway. I digress. From a politics standpoint, every president has their own program for the education system (No Child Left Behind for Bush, Common Core for Obama, School Vouchers for Trump) so the standards change every four years based on whoever gives the president the most money for their campaign to influence the education platform. Then on top of the national education program, all the states have their own education programs, which are also at the mercy of politics and lobbyists and those are changing often too based on whichever party runs the state legislature and whoever the most powerful education lobbyist is in that state, which 9 times out of 10 is probably someone with stakes in standardized testing or textbooks.

this is from our school discussion for the sux the other day and I'm posting it even though I've forgotten half of what I was saying because 1: this is informative and 2: anon put a lot of work in so THANK YOU!

[greenerteacups]

Re economy question it tickles me how the Ministry looks like the biggest employer of Wizarding Britain…their economy is a mishmash of preindustrial commerce and landholding held together by a kleptocracy

The number of people employed by the Ministry is like, absurd. To the point where I assumed it was overrepresented for Plot Reasons. Like, we need Arthur to have a Ministry job so he has the inside scoop on Bertha Jorkins and a bunch of stuff in fifth year, we meet a lot of Aurors because this is a story about a war, a lot of the bureaucrats who get involved with Harry's hearing/school administration are a result of the Umbridge Arc, and I take it as implicit that most of all jobs Just Happen Somewhere Else, because like.

Okay sidebar about the Ministry. Let me talk to you about the Ministry. Can I talk to you about the fucking Ministry? Put aside the fact that there are more named Ministry employees in this story than there are normal taxpayers. Put aside the fact that the banking system being run exclusively by a disenfranchised underclass that you happen to treat like shit is a policy move that ranks up there with "invading the Soviet Union in December." Put aside the fact that this is basically a modern welfare state stapled on top of a market that's still hammering out the kinks of industrial economics in 19-fucking-91. Here's my question, alright:

WHERE IS THE MONEY GOING?

Let's do an exercise. In 1990, public sector employment was 27% of the British national workforce (and growing). The population dynamics of Harry Potter are irrevocably fucked, so this is only going to even-sort-of-work if we fudge it, as I'm about to do: I'm setting the number of Ministry workers, e.g. salaried bureaucrats, at 10,000. Base pay for a government bureaucrat in 1990, is, what, £25-30,000? Let's say so. Multiply that by 10k, you get a personnel budget of £300 million. Sounds like a lot of money, right?

Except what the fuck does the Ministry do? The reason employment costs balloon in the late twentieth century is because we see the rise of social services that require a lot more administrators to vet and deliver — social security in the United States, the NHS in Britain, public education, etc., etc. Public housing! This is why Maggie Thatcher goes postal and starts hack-sawing the national budget. But what, exactly, does the Ministry of Magic deliver? We don't see any poverty relief programs being administered to the Weasleys. Pensions are a thing, but only for Ministry workers. Health services? Sure, let's say St. Mungo's is a public hospital, fair enough. And Hogwarts is free for all British citizens, that's cool, that's probably some expense. But those are two institutions. Where's the rest of it? Where are the big-ticket items that justify this huge corpus of employees? A pure regulatory state does not require this much personnel! There's a whole Department for Games and Sports (e.g. quidditch — oh wait, that's a private league sport!), but not a Department of Energy, or Department of Housing? Fuck off! There is not!

That's not even the biggest problem, though. There's a much, much bigger issue with Ministry organization: There's no fucking Inland Revenue! It doesn't matter how the budgets are balanced, frankly, because unless IR is hidden somewhere in a secret department we don't know about, nobody is paying the government for fuck!

Admittedly, this is pedantry, at some point. JKR was frankly under no obligation to explore the finer points of tax collection in her series of children's novels. I get that, I do. But I'm reminded of what George R. R. Martin said about his annoyance with fantasy novels — the fact that you never got to judge these mythical kings and Chosen Ones by their actual leadership choices. You never see what Aragorn's tax policy is like. And in reality, that's much more important than how good you are with a sword. So — especially in things like The Cursed Child, which actually does try to explore the "adult" world of Harry Potter — it's fascinating that there are so are so many parts of the universe that just live in the world of inference.

[archiveofpiaandkathi]

Question: Why does Hogwarts only get the students from Ireland and Great Britain? Like France is as big as GB and Germany even has 20 million more habitants, why do they have to share with other huge countries?

Also, what do muggle-born students do? Pure bloods sure get educated in French from an early age, guaranteeing that they’ll be able to get a proper education - but Spanish or Portuguese students?! The first language muggles learn in primary school is English, how are they supposed to keep up with the drunken disaster of a language that couldn’t even make up its own word for ninety?!

Durmstrang too btw. I mean English is slightly better, but still, why does a country like Germany with fucking 82 million people not have single magical school?!

Actually fuck that, why doesn’t every country have it’s own school? My neighbour village growing up had a school which was visited by ten students in total and they kept it running, you cannot tell me, that the wizarding world wouldn’t be able to construct a similar system.

[insertcleverusername101]

I've always said that the United States doesn't really exist, and as weird as that sounds, I think you can follow my logic.

It has a generic national identity shared by hundreds of nations around the world ("we overthrew the British for freedom"). However, unlike other countries that share that national trait, that's it. It's all they have. Because Britain put the people who eventually became the USA there.

It has unified no national identity, no binding economic or social ideals, no unified governmental beliefs (see: the idea of a "red" or "blue" state, vast differences in policies between the two).

There isn't really a national education program (nor is there even really the idea of a government education at all, given the prevalence of private schools, and ticket schools). No real overarching social services. There's like, roads, power, and hydro, but they're crumbling, and some states are just disconnected from it (see: Texas). Plus, most of that stuff that isn't on the brink of collapse (and some stuff which is) is maintained by the United States Army (An entity which I will talk about in a bit). And I mean honestly, even though it wasn't nearly as big as the Roman road network, the Romans managed to maintain a fairly massive 250,000 kilometer road network over 2,000 years ago. And they've lasted a hell of a lot longer than their American counterparts.

Even your guys's idea of law enforcement is incredibly vague and fractured. You have very few federal agencies, and those who do exist are rarely involved in day to day police work except under very specific circumstances. Most of your enforcement is done by the functionally random in scope and scale, with very little oversight, local police departments. And most of them are corrupt autocracies that run amock with practically no discipline, not much different than a wild west gang. I mean, San Francisco literally has police for hire (most notably the San Francisco Patrol Special Police) who are overseen and trained by the Municipal government. Detroit has also recently seen an increase in private security.

As a matter of fact, it's possible you may go your entire life without directly interacting with a federal entity other than the DMV, and the IRS, given some certain specific circumstances. And even the DMV has pretty wide variances from state to state.

And then, once you're inside the legal and judicial system, it's the same deal. Generally municipal and state judges. If you've somehow ended up in front of a Federal Judge, you've fucked up colossally, given there's roughly 600 that don't sit on either appeals or international trade courts. Most of the time you'll be overseen by random municipal or state judges.

Then, after that, you end up in a prison system which, again, by and large isn't administrated by the US Federal government. Even the US Federal prison system has a decent share of corporate run prisons.

So no overarching culture. No global set of values. No unified judicial or prison system. Lax federal laws and agencies. No global education, and next to non existent federal services. So what binds this shit heap together?

Ladies, gentlemen, and others, I introduce to you the two most overarching elements of American "society" that tie every American together. The United States Armed Forces, and megacorporations. Everyone's shopped at Walmart, and everyone's seen the Army.

The country exists as a point of sale, and HQ, for some of the world's most powerful businesses, with its own army to defend it. This nation exists only to power the industries of these corporations, and to help that, keep the military cogs turning, to keep America powerful world over.

That's all America is. An army for corporations.

Literally the only binding feature of the United States is as a war treasury and and global imperialism PMC. Everything else is left up to the petty dictatorships of state governments to do as they please like bratty feudal lords on a power trip. Want to roll back some marginalized group's rights by a decade or five? Go right ahead. Daddy has a proxy war to fight on every single contient. There is nothing else to its national character besides imperialism and death.

[nonbinary-hacker]

Idk why I, a meme blog, have decided to get on a soapbox about this all of the sudden but you know what, here we go.

Why is it that when there’s any mention of various countries (frequently Britain and Canada, but others as well) in a critical context, or even in a joking sense, the first reaction is to jump to the point of Americans being stupid, fat, lazy, etc.? Don’t get me wrong, America has Problems, but no people are a monolith, and the US isn’t the only one with a bad track record. Yes, America is incredibly corrupt and only masquerades as a “free” country. I’m not making excuses for any of that. But to claim it’s the only one is revisionist and honestly irresponsible. In the spirit of openness, I’m gonna address things here so I don’t have to in the future.

Yes, America has a gun problem. But using “ha ha well at least our kids don’t get shot at school” as an escalation to friendly teasing isn’t the gotcha you think it is. Especially if it’s followed by the “well you shouldn’t have voted them in then”. Who. Who did I personally vote in. Was it when I was a toddler? Earlier? Let me know because if I was there in 1787 when the second amendment was drafted up then I’m sure scientists would be thrilled to know. And it also shows that you have no clue how our electoral system works, since the majority of voters can be in favor of something, only for it to be denied, or vice versa.

Yes, America has a problem as the tenth most obese country in the world. But a lot of that comes down to the lack of access to healthcare and healthy food in areas where fast food and less healthy alternatives are cheaper. “Well it’s not hard if you meal prep and budget right and buy organic and try this detox te-” shut the fuck up. Managing a minimum wage (or lower because that’s a thing) job with raising children, and feeding a family doesn’t always leave enough time to focus on healthy eating. And food deserts are shockingly common, especially in predominantly poor neighborhoods and for people of color.

Yes, America has a problem with healthcare. But in a country where people would rather take painkillers than go to a hospital when they have a serious illness because they can’t afford the bill, people are more afraid of the hospital than the actual injury.

Yes, the American education system isn’t great, but point to Montana on a map without looking it up. New Mexico. What’s the capital of New York? It’s not New York City. Our states are the size of most countries. As far as math and science, I’d argue that we can compete on a global scale. Ignorance comes from everywhere, not just here. I’ve also never actually met someone who thinks that London is a country, or that the sun turns off at night. I’m sure they exist somewhere, but there’s an equal chance they’re in your town as they are in mine.

Point is, we get it. I get it. I wrote this entire thing because I get it. But I’m also fucking tired. Using murdered children to win an internet battle when someone jokes about how you stole shit for a museum is,,,honestly just sad. Making jokes or talking about shit you know nothing about isn’t helpful to anyone. It’s not as easy as voting them out, or a glorious revolution. Expand the depth of your knowledge on the subject before you start shit. And check your own hands before you say shit about the blood on ours. We’re aware of the horrendous shit our country’s done. It’s broadcast 24/7. Just because yours isn’t on the global news doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

A lot of us are scared about the upcoming election, doubly so if we’re PoC, queer, disabled, etc. A lot of us are facing some very grim realities right now, and we’re terrified. We don’t need the constant reminders of how fucking bad we have it.

[bitcell]

Heyo, so, i dont recognize most of the books in your book recs post so i dont actually know if style-wise this would fit your taste in books, but i know youre a fan of linguistics from some of your qsmp meta posts and the few books i recognized are fiction, so with that in mind id love to reccomend you Babel Or The Necessity of Violence by RF Kuang.

Its a historical fiction book with a soft magic system based on linguistics, the art of translation, and what gets culturally lost when you translate something. It also deals with some complicated issues like when is it worth taking direct action against an opressing force, especially in the context of colonialism.

The novel takes place in britain right after the end of slavery in the mainland, and follows Robin, a chinese boy that gets adopted by an english linguistics professor and taken to England in order to be educated and brought up with the sole purpose of growing up to be a chinese to english translator. And besides the first few chapters that follows robin as a kid dealing with the change in culture and such, the novel mostly takes place while he is at the university of oxford studying to become a translator in the renowed tower of babel and research silver and the magic system in place. While there Robin finds the towers conections with the colonial system, the inherent and non-magical power of language, and if its really worth it assimilation to a metropolis' culture at the expense of your own.

There are characters from very diverse backgrounds and with very interesting backstories and ideologies, and the authors writing style is delightfull and full of flavour. Its also very cool to read robin talking about cantonese and mandarin, and its all very accurate because the author is chinese yknow.

If this sounds interesting to you at all i highly reccomend you check the book out!!! Like i really really do!!! Its my all time favourite book and ive been trying to get people to know about it for ages lmao but like, its just really good and interesting, it takes a few chapters to get the hang of it but once robin gets to school everything just works yknow, and its very interesting bc as i read it i was like dang i also wouldnt know what to chose in his place, but also like, i became just accutelly aware of how much influence our former colonization had on my country, and its kinda still very fucked up, and i started to appreciate even more our traditions and customs

Idk im rambling at this point, i hope its not too annoying for you to read lol

Anyways yeah, thats my recomendation, plz read babel if you think it would be your thing, absolutelly no pressure to tho, i can see how its not for everyone

awwwwwwwwwww, this was so sweet!!! i actually have read babel!! i loved it, it was great to see how the importance of language is incorporated into the book and the reflects of it on colonization. and it resonated a lot with me, because by the end of college my final thesis was on the english language as a method of colonization around the world (but especially in latam) <3

[hella1975]

Ok but how does your school work? In America, university and college are synonymous terms. I’m a senior in high school (grade 12) and you seemed my age but you said something about law classes? I’m PSEO so I’m already taking classes at my local university so are you doing something similar?

college here is short for sixth form college, which is for ages 16-18. it’s very short and pointless. i’m studying law, economics and english and when i’ve finished these two years i’ll have a-levels in them. i’m not sure if there’s an american equivalent for them? but they’re like a rank below degree level

[nokingsonlyfooles]

AHHH! DAMN IT! The USA has erased its history of colonization so thoroughly that nobody has any fucking clue what Newspeak is based on!! I've been meaning to do a long post on this, but I doubted anyone would care.

THIS is Newspeak. It really exists, it got popular after WW2 and Orwell (or Blair, if you prefer) was interested in it. Its inventor said this of language:

What the World needs most is about 1,000 more dead languages—and one more alive.

— C. K. Ogden, The System of Basic English

1984, in context, isn't just about a totalitarian commie hellscape, Tumblr! Orwell seems to have thought Basic English was fine for the colonies, but he got real scared thinking someone might colonize Great Britain someday and do that to them. The States added a lot of colonies to their own empire right after the war, and Stalin was gobbling up a lot of land too, and Britain was real nervous in the late 40s. Britain is rendered as "Airstrip One" because that's how the allies were using small islands, and the US had a bunch of airbases in the UK that weren't going away. (We got the Beatles, in part, because there was a US base in Liverpool and they liked our music.)

Newspeak is the language of the colonized, dictated by its oppressors as yet another system of control. Basic English is fucking absurd and it crashed and burned, but it turns out, you don't need it to keep people in line.

You know what else gets simplified to the point of absurdity? The version of English literature we teach to bored children in the daycare centres/prisons we call a system of education. Eh, it's basically an anti-communist, anti-authoritarian book. Nobody has an issue with that, and we've only got so much time, so we'll just teach it that way. And then these kids never go back and examine any part of that lesson for nuance and accuracy. Our shared cultural mythology is based on the most simplified, palatable version of the story, with no regard for history or context.

Newspeak was coughed up by a colonizer with the express purpose of being so simple and easy-to-learn that it would erase other languages from existence. It failed spectacularly. Now, you can call the alphabet soup of neologisms we cough up to define our identities a lot of things, but "simple" ain't one of 'em.

You know what is simple and attractive to a certain type of brainwashed, oppressed zombie, though? How 'bout defining a complex, evolving social role like "a woman" as something bloodless and nuance-free, like "adult human female"?

If we actually taught the children about Basic English and colonialism as a negative, that might be a little easier for them to notice when they grow up.

One time I heard a dude online compare new and obscure LGBT terminology to newspeak. This I think is one of the biggest examples I have seen of people with their whole chest ignoring the basic themes of 1984.

In 1984 the whole point of newspeak was that it shrinks. Ideas that could once be communicated now cannot. Everything is simplified as much as possible. You cannot explain complicated ideas of freedom or equality because the words no longer exist, or they don’t mean what they once did.

More specifically, there is canonically no word for “gay” in 1984. There are only two words for the entire spectrum of sexuality. “goodsex” and “sexcrime”. If you’re gay it’s the exact same as being a pedophile. And those are is the exact same as cheating on your wife, which is the exact same daring to fuck your wife just because you feel like it. Which is no different than literally any sex act that might offend big brother.

Do you see what’s happening? In 1984 can no longer ask your wife to peg you or something because the word for pegging is the exact same word for pedophile. And you can’t come out as gay because all you can say is that you did a criminal sex act, which means you cannot make a case for your rights either.

Inventing made up words to describe obscure things that previously lacked words would literally be a perfect remedy to newspeak. This language would counter every barrier to communicating the necessary concepts. Because it’s what literally every normal non-dystopian language does.