Unlearning Together

Steyn On-line ^ | December 2, 2020 | Mark Steyn

[Twotone]

The attack on London Bridge - no, not the 2017 attack, the new one - broke just as I was heading off to guest-host Tucker's show at Fox News. There is a small and rather sad "Christmas market" of pop-up stalls at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 44th Street - surrounded, of course, by large concrete blocks placed there in case any radicalized SUV or extremist mid-size rental car were minded to drive up on the sidewalk and mow down shoppers. In more sophisticated societies such as Angela Merkel's Germany, the so-called "Merkel Lego" barricading Christmas fairs is painted to look like giant, ill-proportioned candy canes or huge misshapen holly leaves, to add a festive gaiety to security measures. But in New York the concrete blocks are unadorned except for the stark blue lettering of "NYPD". I passed them almost every day in the last week, and reflected each time on how we've agreed to let everything get so bloody ugly in order to avoid addressing what we once used to fret over as the "root causes". Mid-town Manhattan traditionally look beautiful and magical at Yuletide, but that was before it was agreed that, as a young German lady put it to me three years ago, "Christmas will be a target." So, an hour or so after the first reports out of London, the NYPD swung into action and the ugly concrete blocks on Sixth Avenue were augmented by a police cruiser flashing blue lights and officers prowling the perimeter - to reassure the public that it's possible to shop here with a minimal chance of being stabbed, run over or blown up. That is, if you're the sort of Christmas shopper who likes to do his Christmas shopping in a sealed fortress.

[conservative98]

What is Learning Together?

In January 2015, Drs Amy Ludlow and Ruth Armstrong were successful in obtaining support from The University of Cambridge’s Teaching and Learning Innovation Fund to pilot a new educational initiative called Learning Together. Since then, Learning Together has attracted funding from the British Academy, ESRC and HEFCE and has become a national initiative with growing international connections. Learning Together was highlighted as an example of best practice by Dame Sally Coates in her 2016 review of prison education. Amy and Ruth have since received a Butler Trust Award and awards from the Prisoner Learning Alliance and the University of Cambridge for public engagement with research for their work on Learning Together.

Learning Together brings together people in criminal justice and higher education institutions to study alongside each other in inclusive and transformative learning communities. Learning Together partnerships provide higher education opportunities for people to study together, and learn with and from each other through dialogue and the sharing of experience. Learning Together courses are academically rigorous and their design and delivery builds upon and, through evaluation, advances educational, sociological and criminological research and best practice.

‘Learning Together made me realise my world was small. I know a few people, on a few streets. I thought universities and places like that were spaces I couldn’t go to, but now I realise I can go there. I can exist outside of my small world.’ (Eugene, Learning Together student 2015)

https://www.cctl.cam.ac.uk/tlif/learning-together

[karpov]

I posted several articles about Usman Khan and Jack Merritt this weekend, but I knew that Mark Steyn would do the story justice. Quoting Steyn:

‘Jack Merritt was a 25-year-old Cambridge criminology graduate and an administrator of the “Learning Together” programme. He had written the dissertation for his Doctorate of Philosophy on the “over-representation” in the British prison system of young ethnic-minority males, such as Usman Khan. He had apparently donated to a charity fun run by two Cambridge professors that raised money to buy a laptop for Usman Khan.

Usman Khan used that laptop to explore his continuing-education interest in global jihad, and then he asked permission to go to Fishmongers’ Hall in London to attend the “Learning Together” anniversary event.

Jack Merritt saw Usman Khan as his friend, proof of the validity of his thesis, a testament to the success of the programme. Usman Khan saw Jack Merritt as the other, the infidel. So he killed him.’

[chrisser]

Ack. There are so many buzzwords in that description, I want to hurl.

How can a bunch of people who consider themselves to be so smart get sucked into the sort of groupthink required to regurgitate nonsense like this?

[BillyBonebrake]

Want to make a bloodthirsty 9th-century Islamist even more bloodthirsty?

Expect him to go along with some kum-bi-ya virtue signaling.

[HighSierra5]

Is the dirtbag terrorist related to the London mayor? They have the same last name. If not they have the same philosophy.

[decal]

“Drs Amy Ludlow and Ruth Armstrong”

What's the over/under on when these two have Mohammedan cephalectomies?

[Moltke]

Cambridge PhDs? Sorry, I just see two gullible idiots in that picture.

The blurb has all (or at least some) of the key buzzwords...”inclusive”...”transformative”...”communities”...”dialogue”...”sharing of experience”...etc. Uhh!

[Moltke]

You beat me to it...

[Twotone]

I think I’ve read on other threads that they are indeed related.

[ClearCase_guy]

I blame the Marxist Post-Modernist for the word salad stuff. I don’t think it means anything.

They focus on the praxis of the trans-linear post-patriarchal hegemony and the transformative aspects of sub-literacy dichotomies bumped up against egalitarian social structures, and pretty soon they think they’ve won an argument.

[Rummyfan]

Jack Merritt was a 25-year-old Cambridge criminology graduate and an administrator of the "Learning Together" programme. He had written the dissertation for his Doctorate of Philosophy on the "over-representation" in the British prison system of young ethnic-minority males, such as Usman Khan. He had apparently donated to a charity fun run by two Cambridge professors that raised money to buy a laptop for Usman Khan....

Jack Merritt saw Usman Khan as his friend, proof of the validity of his thesis, a testament to the success of the programme. Usman Khan saw Jack Merritt as the other, the infidel. So he killed him.

[Rummyfan]

In the early hours of December 13th, one of two men will become the United Kingdom's Prime Minister: on the one hand, Jeremy Corbyn, a man whose sympathies his entire adult life have lain with terrorists, whether Irish Republican or Islamic, and who is all for early release for persons he doesn't think should be banged up in the first place; and on the other, Boris Johnson, whose party talks tough on crime, immigration, terrorism and everything else, but under whose showboating butchness nothing ever changes.

Usman Khan was an ill-educated fanatic, but, up against all the sophisticated stupidity of the elities, he figured that out at least.

A great Steyn. Thanks for posting.

[Rummyfan]

Learning Together courses are academically rigorous and their design and delivery builds upon and, through evaluation, advances educational, sociological and criminological research and best practice.

Pardon me, but I fail to see how such a program can be academically rigorous. Are they studying basic sciences, i.e. chemistry, biology, and physics? Higher math?

[Rummyfan]

Is the dirtbag terrorist related to the London mayor? They have the same last name.

Khan is the Smith of Pakistan....

[Moltke]

LOL - well stated!