John Simkin

I am currently working on some teaching materials on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In a few weeks time I will be asking for advice over the creation of activities for these materials. However, in the meantime, I think it might be worthwhile to discuss the content. You will find an early draft of the material at: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKindex.htm I have to admit that I am a conspiracy theorist who believes that the act was carried out for political reasons. That the plot involved the Mafia, the John Birch Society, anti-Castro Cuban exiles and senior members of the CIA and FBI. One thing that has always puzzled me is the behaviour of Robert Kennedy after the assassination. It must have been clear within hours of it happening that his brother had been killed by the Mafia with the support of rogue elements in the CIA and FBI. Yet, rather than calling for a full investigation into this possibility, he even took measures that attempted to cover up the conspiracy (taking control of the brain and autopsy X-rays that showed he had been hit in the front as in the back). Robert and John Kennedy had both upset the Mafia with its policy towards organized crime in the United States. Therefore some historians have speculated that Robert knew the assassination had been carried out by the Mafia and was taking action to prevent himself being assassinated. However, I was not convinced by this portrayal of Robert Kennedy as a coward. I came across some information yesterday that I think explains Robert Kennedy’s action after his brothers assassination. It concerns Kennedy’s attitude towards the CIA Executive Action programme. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKexecutiveA.htm Executive Action was run by Richard Bissell and Richard Helms of the Directorate for Plans (a CIA organization instructed to conduct covert anti-Communist operations around the world). Executive Action was plan to remove unfriendly foreign leaders from power. This including a coup d'état that overthrew the Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 after he introduced land reforms and nationalized the United Fruit Company. Other political leaders deposed by Executive Action include Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, the Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo, General Abd al-Karim Kassem of Iraq and Ngo Dinh Diem, the leader of South Vietnam. However, in the early 1960s the main target was Fidel Castro who had established a socialist government in Cuba. In March I960, President Dwight Eisenhower of the United States approved a CIA plan to overthrow Castro. The plan involved a budget of $13 million to train "a paramilitary force outside Cuba for guerrilla action." The strategy was organised by Bissell and Helms. This eventually led to the Bay of Pigs disaster. Afterwards, Bissell, the head of Executive Action campaign, was forced to resign by Kennedy. It has been thought that was Kennedy’s way of showing he disapproved of the policy of Executive Action. However, there has always been doubts about this because Helms took over control of the Directorate for Plans. He continued to run the organization and was responsible for the killing of the democratically elected Marxist leader, Salvador Allende in Chile in September 1973. Yesterday I discovered that John F. Kennedy did not in fact order an end to Executive Action. What he tried to do was to bring it under his own control. The plan to assassinate Fidel Castro now became known as Operation Freedom and was to be run by his brother Robert Kennedy. Of course he had to rely on people like Richard Helms to organize the killing of Castro but he insisted on being kept fully informed about what was taking place. I suspect that either John Kennedy, Richard Helms or J. Edgar Hoover (who was heavily involved with Execution Action) also told Lyndon Johnson about Operation Freedom. This is what I think happened. Senior members of the Mafia and CIA involved in Operation Freedom decided to change their target from Fidel Castro to John Kennedy. By 1963 the Mafia had decided that you would not overthrow the socialist government of Cuba by assassinating Castro. The best way forward was by having a president who was willing to launch an invasion of Cuba. Kennedy would not do that (in fact he was at that time involved in negotiating a peace deal with Castro). This is where the clever bit comes in. Helms tells Kennedy and Johnson that they have selected an agent to kill Castro. His name is Lee Harvey Oswald. They are told that efforts were being made to get Oswald into Cuba to carry out the killing. This is true although there is evidence that this was a man posing as Oswald. John Kennedy is then assassinated. Lee Harvey Oswald is quickly announced as being the killer (the original plan was for J. D. Tippit to kill Oswald but this fails and Jack Ruby is brought in to do the job). Now consider the reaction of Robert Kennedy to the news that the man he had arranged to kill Castro had killed his brother. Any full investigation of Oswald and the Kennedy assassination would reveal details of Operation Freedom. What the CIA had cleverly done was to implicate Robert Kennedy into the killing of his brother. He could now be guaranteed to join in the cover-up. Lyndon Johnson could also be relied on to join in this cover-up. Hoover had full control over Johnson as a result of what he knew about his political career in Texas (Johnson was one of the most corrupt politicians in American history). Under the Freedom of Information Act some of the transcripts of the telephone calls between Johnson and Hoover following the assassination have recently been published. These are fascinating to read as they show the political strategy being adopted by Johnson. He is willing to go along with the cover up but rejects the idea of Oswald being exposed as a Soviet agent. As Johnson points out, if this became public knowledge, he would be under considerable pressure from the American people to go to war with the Soviet Union. This would, according to Johnson, “chuck us into a war that can kill 40 million Americans in an hour”. In order that the world was not destroyed in a nuclear war, Johnson agrees with Hoover that it is important to establish that Kennedy had been the victim of a lone gunman and not part of a conspiracy. Johnson also refuses to invade Cuba as it would also probably lead to a nuclear war. Well, that’s my theory? What do you think?

In traditional publishing small extracts from published work is fully acceptable because it is seen as increasing the sales of the original work. The main purpose of copyright law is to protect the income of the author/artist. If you use a quotation from a published book on your website you need to place a link to Amazon where the visitor can buy a copy for themselves. If you do that you will not have any trouble from the original author. There is only one exception to that - J. K. Rowling. She has banned all quotes from her books appearing on the Internet. Copyright lasts for 70 years after the death of the author/artist. This has been done to protect the interests of the family of the author/artist. The people I feel sorry for are the families of cartoonists. The work of cartoonists are in great demand on the Internet. Yet, the original cartoonist rarely held the copyright. For example, Punch Magazine kept the copyright of all its artists. They now charge huge sums of money for people to use their cartoons although none of this money goes to the family of the artist.

It is hoped that those members in charge of the different language sections will also organize student debates.

Why, unlike authors, have there been so few female artists. Any explanations? Any ideas on what teachers could do to help improve the situation?

Why, unlike authors, have there been so few female composers. Any explanations? Any ideas on what teachers could do to help improve the situation?

When we have another schools involved in the project. I think we can create a good debate with ten schools (20 students). So far we have students from England, Sweden, China, Germany and the Netherlands. I am not sure of the nationality of the students Richard is going to provide from his international school. What about topics? Any ideas on the subject matter for the first debate?

I have a page of annotated links to Maths websites. Please send me a 200 word description of your website if you want it included in my web directory and Education on the Internet email newsletter (42,400 subscribers) http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/internet.htm http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/REVmaths.htm

I have a page of annotated links to Media Studies websites. Please send me a 200 word description of your website if you want it included in my web directory and Education on the Internet email newsletter (42,400 subscribers) http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/internet.htm http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/REVmedia.htm

It has just been reported that Becta has just negotiated a new deal with Microsoft. According to the press release schools will be paying between 20% and 37% less for licences, saving them around £47m in total. I know little about software prices but is this really a good deal?

Did you know the Adam Smith Institute, the ultra-rightwing lobby group, now receives more money from Britain's Department for International Development (DfID) than Liberia or Somalia, two of the poorest nations in the world? Last year the Adam Smith Institute received £7.6m in foreign aid. What do they do for their money? Well, the same thing they do for the British government. They advise on how to privatise government services. The advice they gave to the South African government led to 10 million having their water cut off. A similar number lost their electricity and another 2 million were evicted from their homes. As George Monbiot points out in today’s Guardian this policy was pioneered by Clare Short. This passage from Monbiot’s article is especially powerful. Aid has always been an instrument of foreign policy. During the cold war, it was used to buy the loyalties of states that might otherwise have crossed to the other side. Even today, the countries that receive the most money tend to be those that are of greatest strategic use to the donor nation, which is why the US gives more to Israel than it does to sub-Saharan Africa. But foreign policy is also driven by commerce, and in particular by the needs of domestic exporters. Aid goes to countries that can buy our manufacturers' products. Sometimes it doesn't go to countries at all, but straight to the manufacturers. A US government website boasts that "the principal beneficiary of America's foreign assistance programs has always been the United States. Close to 80% of the US Agency for International Development's contracts and grants go directly to American firms." A doctor working in Gondar hospital in Ethiopia wrote to me recently to spell out what this means. The hospital has none of the basic textbooks on tropical diseases it needs. But it does have 21 copies of an 800-page volume called Aesthetic Facial Surgery and 24 volumes of a book called Opthalmic Pathology. There is no opthalmic pathologist in training in Ethiopia. The poorest nation on Earth, unsurprisingly, has no aesthetic plastic surgeons. The US had spent $2m on medical textbooks that American publishers hadn't been able to sell at home, called them aid and dumped them in Ethiopia. http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,...1116854,00.html

Did you know the Adam Smith Institute, the ultra-rightwing lobby group, now receives more money from Britain's Department for International Development (DfID) than Liberia or Somalia, two of the poorest nations in the world. Last year the Adam Smith Institute received £7.6m in foreign aid. What do they do for their money? Well, the same thing they do for the British government. They advise on how to privatise government services. The advice they gave to the South African government led to 10 million having their water cut off. A similar number lost their electricity and another 2 million were evicted from their homes. As George Monbiot points out in today’s Guardian this policy was pioneered by Clare Short. This passage from Monbiot’s article is especially powerful. Aid has always been an instrument of foreign policy. During the cold war, it was used to buy the loyalties of states that might otherwise have crossed to the other side. Even today, the countries that receive the most money tend to be those that are of greatest strategic use to the donor nation, which is why the US gives more to Israel than it does to sub-Saharan Africa. But foreign policy is also driven by commerce, and in particular by the needs of domestic exporters. Aid goes to countries that can buy our manufacturers' products. Sometimes it doesn't go to countries at all, but straight to the manufacturers. A US government website boasts that "the principal beneficiary of America's foreign assistance programs has always been the United States. Close to 80% of the US Agency for International Development's contracts and grants go directly to American firms." A doctor working in Gondar hospital in Ethiopia wrote to me recently to spell out what this means. The hospital has none of the basic textbooks on tropical diseases it needs. But it does have 21 copies of an 800-page volume called Aesthetic Facial Surgery and 24 volumes of a book called Opthalmic Pathology. There is no opthalmic pathologist in training in Ethiopia. The poorest nation on Earth, unsurprisingly, has no aesthetic plastic surgeons. The US had spent $2m on medical textbooks that American publishers hadn't been able to sell at home, called them aid and dumped them in Ethiopia." http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,...1116854,00.html

I don’t mind you passing comment about my ability to teach history (unless of course you are an Ofsted inspector). However, others might be deeply offended by comments like that. It is hoped that in future your contributions will maintain a more academic tone. I would hate to think that members of this forum might be reluctant to post their views because they fear you will resort to the use of irrational, abusive comments. Jews may, or maybe not, be persecuting Arabs. However, the relative numbers of the two groups is irrelevant. For many years a minority group (white people) persecuted blacks in South Africa. In fact, the idea of being outnumbered is often a psychological factor in encouraging intolerance and persecution. I was not of course suggesting that Israel was persecuting all Arabs in the Middle East. As you know, the issue here concerns the way Israel is treating Arabs in the occupied territories. You no doubt will justify this treatment as a means to punish those using acts of terrorism against the state of Israel. The problem for all occupying forces, and this includes Allied forces now in Iraq, is that it is very difficult to identify people who are terrorists/freedom fighters. The result is that you end up treating innocent civilians as if they are terrorists. The inevitable consequence of this behaviour is that more and more of these civilians either become terrorists themselves or become willing to do what they can to protect those people who they now consider to be freedom fighters. This is why the situation in Palestine and Iraq is so similar to the situation in Vietnam in the 1960s. The occupying forces do of course see themselves as liberators concerned with protecting the civil rights of the host population. However, the host population see them as members of an occupying force. The number of people resisting this occupying force gradual grows. The tactics used by the terrorists/freedom fighters becomes more and more extreme. The occupying force retaliates by using more and more force against an enemy that they find difficult to identify. This inevitably means an increase in the suffering of civilians and the production of more terrorists. My reading of history tells me that it will only be a matter of time before the occupying force realises that it has made a terrible mistake. As in Vietnam, and all those other countries occupied illegally over the years, the foreign armies will eventually leave. The longer this takes, the more bitter will be the consequences. The state of Israel is a democracy and so the answer to this problem is in the hands of the Israelis. One of the most distressing aspects of this illegal occupation is that this hardline strategy is popular with the Israeli people. History indicates that this will eventually change (although the atrocities committed by the terrorists/freedom fighters will definitely encourage some sections of the population to call for more extreme measures to be taken). It was eventually domestic democratic pressure that forced the United States Army out of Vietnam. The same will no doubt happen in Iraq and Palestine. Jews have been persecuted for thousands of years. For much of that time they identified with other persecuted groups. In South Africa and the United States they played important roles in supporting people being persecuted because of the colour of their skin or their left-wing political views. It is a reputation that has unfortunately been severely damaged over the last few years.

You later corrected this to John (John Kelly or John Simkin?). Not that it matters, as I don’t believe either of us were guilty of being vitriolic. Nor do I believe we were straying from the original topic. Teaching the Holocaust inevitably means that teachers will have to look at modern examples of persecution. Teaching history is invariably more about trying to understand the present than the past. After all, the conflict currently taking place in Palestine is strongly linked to the persecution of the Jews in Europe. The state of Israel would not exist today if there had not been a Holocaust. John Kelly is right to ask about the political reasons for studying the Holocaust. The historian A. J. P. Taylor upset a lot of people when he pointed out that the majority of people who died in German prison camps during the Second World War were non-Jews. However, he was factually correct and one has to ask political questions about why and how we study certain subjects in the way that we do.

I have produced some material on some early experiments to produce flying machines. This includes people such as Francesco de Lana, Laurenco de Gusmao, Joseph Michel Montgolfier, Jean Pierre François Blanchard, George Cayley, Henri Giffard, Louis Charles Letur, Alphonse Pénaud, Alexander Mozhaiski, Otto Lilienthal, Clement Adler, Percy Pilcher and Samuel Pierpont Langley. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Aviation.htm

The plan is to create a forum within a forum. These carefully selected students will only be able to post within the Student Debate section. If we find the 14-18 goes well we can introduce a 11-14 section.

I have produced a comprehensive encyclopaedia of how British women got the vote. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/women.htm I have the same thing for the Americans. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAwomen.htm I also have a page of annotated links to websites on Women’s History. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/REVhistoryW3.htm

I have produced a page of annotated links to websites that can be used in Geography. Please let me know if there are any other good ones that I should include (they also appear in the Education on the Internet newsletter (42,400 subscribers). http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/REVgeography.htm http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/internet.htm

I have also produced a page of annotated links to websites on MFL. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/REVlanguages.htm Adeline - send me a 200 word description of your website and I will include it in a future edition of Education on the Internet (42,400 subscribers) http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/internet.htm

Could not agree more with this. Harold Wilson once said that the OU was his greatest achievement in government. Interestingly, it was based on the ideas of his former political mentor, Aneurin Bevan. That is why he selected Bevan’s widow, Jennie Lee, to take the bill through parliament. The Conservatives originally opposed the scheme and planned to axe the measure. However, as Margaret Thatcher pointed out in her memoirs, when they were in government they realized it was a cheap form of education and allowed it to continue. I was a first year student of the Open University. I was one of those who joined without any formal qualifications. I had left a secondary modern school ten years earlier completely disillusioned with education. The reason the OU was such a success concerned the enthusiasm of the tutors. They were fully committed to the idea of bringing higher education to the working classes (although most of the students, like in conventional universities, were in fact from the middle classes). Everything I have done in education since, including the development of my website, has been based on what I learnt from the OU. It is no coincidence that the enthusiasm of the early pioneers of online learning, is very similar to that of those of OU tutors in the early 1970s. What the government needs to do is to recapture that vision and enthusiasm that it managed to achieve with the OU.

One of the problems seems to me that the government has tried to create an artificial structure rather than working with teachers who had already made inroads into online learning. For example, members of the Association of Teacher Websites, who have created websites without commercial considerations. Their main objective was to create online teaching materials that their students could us in the classroom. We made many mistakes but gradually effective strategies began to emerge. The establishment of the ATW and forums like this one has helped a network of online educators to evolve. The obvious strategy was for the government to use the experiences and skills of these pioneers of online learning. Instead, the creation of Curriculum Online was an attempt to help commercial companies to survive in a weak marketplace (although I accept Graham’s point that this has actually hurt some small companies – but then again, they were not really the ones the government was trying to help). By placing the emphasis on subscription content, those teachers and small companies trying to provide teachers with the content they needed, have been marginalized.

I have just checked it and it seems to be working if you follow these instructions: Select My Controls (top, right of the screen). On the left-hand side click ‘Edit Avatar Settings’ (under Personal Profile). Go to the bottom of the page where it says ‘Upload a new image from your computer’. Click ‘Browse’. A box will appear at the top that will show what is on your computer. You now have to find your photograph (best to leave it on your Desktop – if not, find the folder where you have stored it). Click the image and then click ‘Open’. Now click ‘Update Avatar’. You picture should now appear on the screen. It will now appear every time you make a posting.

Excellent work Nick. The animations are tremendous. Look forward to seeing you tonight at Anne's. (I expect you will be late as I’ve noticed Southampton are playing Newcastle tonight).

It might be a good idea to use this quotation as the basis of our first International Student Debate. http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=116

There may be a misunderstanding of how the project will work. It is for the teacher to select two very able students who will be able to cope with a high-powered debate.

I agree with a lot of what you say. I began making predictions about the revolutionary nature of the internet for online learning in 1997. Since then I have worked as an educational adviser for two very large corporations trying to get into the educational market. I still have copies of the documents where I outlined the changes that would take place in education. In most cases I was wrong. However, not because of what I said did not happen (although some of my predictions have not happened yet). My major mistake was to overestimate the speed it would happen. There are two major reasons why the speed of change has been much slower than I predicted. (1) I overestimated the willingness of the government to spend money on the training of teachers and the provision of the equipment to make online education a reality. This was a silly mistake on my part. I was also involved in the first computer revolution in schools that began in the early 1980s. I observed at first hand how the government was slow to put money into the right areas and as a result many of those computers ended up being locked away in cupboards. Online learning in the classroom will only take off when teachers have access to enough computers with broadband connections to the internet. Over the last couple of years I have made several visits to the International School of Toulouse. They have these facilities and they have experienced this revolution. Unfortunately, the vast majority of schools in the world has not reached this stage yet. (2) The other reason is because of our current economic system. We live in a capitalist society where companies are willing to make large scale investments in order to make long-term profits. For example, the impact of inventions such as the motor car was based on the belief that investment and innovation would lead to healthy profits. This is not the case with the production of online educational resources. Since the late 1990s conventional publishers have made an attempt to make profits out of online educational content. Large sums of money have been invested and so far they have received very little in return. At first it was believed that the ITV model would work (content paid for by the advertisers). Income from advertisers has been very poor and has come nowhere near the levels of money spent on the production of content. The long-term objective of these companies has been the introduction of the BBC model (people are charged a fee for using the content). However, all the evidence is that while there exists a large body of free content on the web, people and organizations are unwilling to pay subscriptions to obtain content. There is no doubt that without government help these commercial organizations would have completely stopped investing in the production of online educational content. The government was forced to respond to the demands that these commercial companies applied (especially as this pressure was being applied by organizations that had the power to shape public opinion). The result is Curriculum Online. This system forces schools to spend money on digital content. This has in the short-term enabled commercial providers of content to survive. However, the problem with a government subsidy like this is that it distorts the market-place. It also protects companies producing poor materials that in normal circumstances teachers would refuse to buy. Once e-learning credits come to an end, they will again refuse to buy these materials. At sometime in the future, probably after the next election, the government will bring an end to this mad scheme. The government has a two prong strategy. The decision to invest money into projects that result in content being provided free at the point of delivery is far more sensible. My complaint about this is that too much of this money is going to the BBC. As a result of pressure from the European Commission, 50% of this money has to be sub-contracted to commercial companies. Most of this will go to the multinationals (within hours of the European Commission giving permission for the government to give the BBC £150 million, it was announced that Microsoft had been granted a contract to produce a lot of this content). No doubt Bill Gates will become a significant contributor to New Labour’s next election campaign. My argument has always been that money should be going to small organizations and individual teachers to help produce free online content. In this way this material becomes available to everyone wherever they are in the world. Just think what could be obtained by just spending, say £5 million, on helping members of the ATW to produce this content. The main reason I believe this is that the best way forward is to ensure teachers play a central role in the development on online resources for the classroom. As Leon Cych (a member of the ATW and this forum) pointed out in his excellent article in yesterday’s TES: “One main focus of the e-learning consultation process is the question of how public-private models will work. So far it seems that commercial companies are given all the work and have all the responsibility. They design the resource and give it to teachers to test, before taking in a few suggestions and giving it back to teachers as a model. It is obvious what is missing here – effective pedagogy. Surely, we should start with the teachers. If the companies found and paid those who effectively champion e-learning in the classroom useful solutions would be developed much more quickly.” My only disagreement with Leon Cych concerns the relationship between the companies and the teachers. My experience of working with large organizations, including the BBC, is that teachers are treated as experts as long as their advice corresponds to the ideas of those in control of the project. I believe the funding has to be made available in such a way that gives more control to the individual teacher producing the material. This is the model that has been successfully used by Comenius. It is also the one that is currently being employed by Becta in its relationship with the European Virtual School.