Caught, but not really repentant.
Ms Campbell’s post was picked up by bloggers Whaleoil and Kiwiblog. Her page has now been made private.
On Salford School’s website today Ms Campbell said she regretted and withdrew her comments.
“I feel passionately about National Standards and I am immensely frustrated by the damage they will do to children’s learning.”
She said she was disappointed her comments had detracted attention from debate over the standards.
“I unreservedly apologise to the parents and students of Salford for casting our school into disrepute.”
A note posted on behalf of Salford’s board of trustees said Ms Campbell’s references about Mrs Tolley had been her own view.
Frankly, the fact that the school is bought into disrepute is secondary to the fact that she made an outrageous personal slur against the education minister.
That is what she should have apologised for, and the fact she has not suggest that she is not actually sorry. Since she refuses to appologise to the minister, it’s hard to see how the apology she has given is of any worth whatsoever, since the offense essentially continues and continues to bring the school into disrepute.
Update: Monkey with Typewriter uses satire to illustrate the absurdity of the comparison.
Because the comparison does not end here. She has, through a cunning and comprehensive propaganda offensive, managed to mariginalise and persecute a small number of blameless individuals just like Hitler did with the Jews and gypsies and homosexuals, and has ‘coralled’ them into an intellectually-constructed ‘semiotic’ – if you will – ‘concentration-camp’ of the popular consciousness. A generation of children consigned to the ‘Work Makes you Free’ Belsens and Dachaus of academic failure.
When The Teachers and Principals first went to her, and came back waving (just like Neville Chamberlain) her famous pronouncements about non-aggression, did they not stand on the steps of their schools waving a similarly famous ‘piece of paper’. And then, did she not callously disregard this and storm their metaphorical ‘Czechoslovakia’ of bulk-funding and League Tables?
And now, having launched her ‘Second Front’ in the media by ruthlessly refusing to dock striking teachers’ pay for does she not remain, isolated, gibbering and trembling in her lonely bunker, as the combined allied forces of the parents, Boards of Governors, Principles Teachers and media, slowly, brick-by-brick, destroy her prized ‘Berlin’ of ministerial prerogative?
I think that Marlene Campbell is only stating what many of us think. I fear she does not go far enough.
Next week: ‘ Pol Pot and Anne Tolley – Separated at Birth?’
Something should go here, maybe later. 