Across the pond

Since this blog is based on eye-witness reporting from Bridport, Dorset, UK I had better make it clear in the first sentence, that the streets here have not suddenly become rivers of blood. The bloody left-wing revolution in Britain, when the workers unite with their international comrades, to get rid of the capitalists, who have been exploiting the workers, has still not arrived. The Bridport revolutions, which I am bringing to your attention, were around the May Pole. And the master conspirator of these revolutions, was in fact a ‘mistress’. A female teacher at the local primary school who had clearly spent many hours of her time teaching these children all sorts of things which are not a central part of the national curriculum.

She was training these vulnerable children to enact the act of worship in which their ancestors might have participated. Not to Jesus Christ, currently represented by the Pope, world-wide, and the Archbishop of Canterbury in Britain. Not to the Old Testament God of Jehovah, who is currently a figure of controversy, because what he has to say does not quite fit in with what, that other religious leader, Allah, has to say about HIS messages from God.

This Bridport teacher was training the children to behave like their ancestors who worshipped the Pagan Gods, who were far nastier than Jehovah, Jesus Christ, Allah and the rest. (Well, that is what our modern religious leaders believe.)

But, of course, even if the ‘authorities’ read this blog the Bridport teacher is unlikely to be fired because lots of teachers are doing the same thing. And paganism, though it has been on a rising trend over the last few decades is still a minority sport, with an electorate which is probably no bigger than the voters for the BNP.

And as I watched this teacher, I thought that what she was trying to teach the children was how to co-operate with each other. To put on a performance, in which there was no ‘star’. In which they were encouraged to act as a group with their fellow human beings, and not to just further their own wants and needs, which might include being a ‘star’, or ‘acting as if they were God’.

When they got it wrong, which they did quite often, as do adult human beings, the teacher helped them untangle the knots around the May Pole. So what they were learning in this exercise was how to subject their own imperatives, and co-operate with other human beings.

But someone with a different life view than me, witnessing the events I witnessed, might well have concluded, that what the teacher was teaching, is that the best group performance was only possible if you did what teacher told you to do.