We’re publishing a piece today by Hugh McCarthy, a retired Headteacher in Northern Ireland who until recently served as a Director on two of the province’s main education councils and who remains a ministerial appointment on one. He says the evidence on the masking of children in the classroom – which remains a school-enforced requirement in Northern Ireland, acting on ‘guidance’ from the Government – is clear: it is harmful and ineffective and should be stopped immediately and never reintroduced. Here’s an excerpt.
What does the science say?
A widely known experiment called the ‘still face experiment’ reveals that children become emotionally distressed when they are unable to see and reciprocate facial expressions. According to these findings, having children spend time around people whose facial expressions are masked could have potentially disastrous consequences for their social and emotional development.
Dr. Raj Persaudi, a Consultant Psychiatrist, explains that the brain fills in the gaps in what we know about others and so the brain speculates on what the mask is hiding. He says: “In a pandemic the face mask looks like it might be concealing a dangerous infection. Filling in the gaps in what you know about others but doing so under background conditions where the brain projects threat onto the outside world, is now linked to serious mental illness.”
The message projected by masks is clear: You are a danger to me, and I am a danger to everyone.
What does this mean for the primary purposes of school?
Education requires an atmosphere conducive to learning. Learning cannot take place in an atmosphere of fear and anxiety, or where the child is unable to learn due to oxygen deprivation.
Teaching and learning require unimpeded visual and oral communication. Good teaching involves a variety of strategies, which take into account the different learning styles of pupils. It involves interactivity, group work, teamwork, discussion and detailed complex explanations. Imagine a question-and-answer session, a drama lesson, a language lesson, a poetry reading, a role-play session, or a singing lesson with masks.
Do we not value choirs, clubs, drama productions or sport? These all play an important part in children’s education and development. The development of leadership, teamwork and negotiation skills are enhanced through children’s participation. The insight gained by watching children participate in a range of activities enables teachers to recognise and value attributes such as commitment, leadership, and reliability. Important engagements with outside agents such as authors, sports coaches, careers officers, counsellors, translators, actors and artists are also inhibited by the wearing of masks.
Worth reading in full.
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Sorry to hijack, but: invasion of Ukraine. I did warn it was on, folks, remember…?
Fashionable accommodation of Mr. Putin, and ‘contrary but valid’ RT news, not so wise, now, is it?
But then, who’d believe a schweinerei Polak like me?
Poland’s next, so I may have to pop down to the Consulate in London and offer my services, or go back to where I was born and join the guerrillas.
What are the motives. As sceptics I think we are all wary of following the MSM narrative. What is really going on?
It’s just brazenness. It’s ‘Russia’ all over again. Partitions by an amoral neo-Tsar. Sometimes the bleeding obvious is just what it is.
I knew it wasn’t sabre-rattling, because what does the ‘West’ have to gain from ‘provoking’ him?
What problem is there for the “West” in Donetsk and Luhansk becoming independent and, if the populations wish, integrating into the Russian Federation?
And the cr*p I hear in the western MSM about Crimea is close to taking the biscuit. The huge majority of the population there are ethnic Russian and there simply was no way that the US navy was ever going to arrive in Sevastopol and turn the Black Sea into a USA lake.
If Ukraine were to join NATO, that would mean US warplanes and use of bases on what is by far Russia’s longest European border.
Why does NATO still exist? The answers “to stop Russia helping Donetsk and Luhansk” or “so that the Ukraine can join to stop Russia from invading Poland, Germany, Hungary, Austria, Italy, France, and Britain” don’t cut the mustard.
All the “Covid” cr*p has been preparation for further ramping up of worldwide fascism. Did people not realise that war would play a role?
“It’s been a bit blowy. The authorities advise against travel.”
Russia is a great nation, but In my view, Russia needs to become a democratic country, which can accept that aggression is unacceptable. Historically, it has never been such, and has never accepted this principle.
If Russia is truly frightened of NATO invading it, then it needs to take its pills before bedtime. In other words: get a grip. It is a paranoid state actor, led by a dictator, and needs to grow up. Nobody wants to threaten Russia: nobody is invading Russia. Russia is actually invading other countries. This is surely plainly obvious.
Russia doesn’t stand out in the way you say from the world’s other great powers.
E.g. just to take one example: Britain declared war on Germany, not the other way round, but Germany started war with the USSR.
The US and Britain have invaded many other countries.
Moving forces into Luhansk and Donetsk on request of the governments there is not invasion. It does look as though Ukraine itself may be being invaded, yes, but listen – the idea of the Ukraine in NATO is similar to punching the air in front of someone’s face and saying “the air is for everybody”.
You are right in a way, even if I may disagree with your examples.
Every nation has ‘done bad stuff’ to other nations, and that’s just the phenomenological (objective) reality of life – which doesn’t make aggression right, of course. Anything can be analyzed on different levels, as we know. But we need to synthesize the details with the bigger picture to get the overall gist of reality.
The invasion of Ukraine is wrong, and a serious mistake, but it does also show that diplomacy has badly failed. Whether Putin or the ‘West’ were more to blame is for history to try to uncover.
If he’d been a bit less of a Bond villain cliche, he could quite easily have avoided this scenario.
The reason that security has historically been a consideration for Russia in a slightly different way to how it has been for other countries is largely to do with the country’s size and the centralisation of the state (which is to a high degree) in such a large country. Which is not to say I am justifying any of that – just pointing it out. It’s gone together with a very strong internal security service since Tsar Ivan. It’s not about being childish, impetuous, or paranoid.
A final point: anybody in Putin’s position will be a bit crazy, but he’s not a full-blown crazy nutter in the way that say Trump is. Putin is a highly competent leader – more competent than Stalin for example. (Stalin cr*pped his pants in 1941 and literally resigned for a while, but it was hushed up.)
I think you are correct to point these things out, but the overall mentality which leads to unprovoked aggression is deranged.
Putin is competent and highly intelligent, but I wouldn’t say he is a benevolent leader doing the best for his country or the world. That would take more originality and guts than he has shown so far.
I disagree, Putin is a deranged nutcase. Although interestingly, he waited to see the back of Trump and waved in a lily-livered, senile, dithering old woke puppet before making his move.
There’s no way he would have done this with someone strong in the Whitehouse, for obvious reasons.
Why does NATO even exist?
To stop Russian aggression. Now it know it will always have to exist.
“Nobody wants to threaten Russia: nobody is invading Russia. Russia is actually invading other countries.”
Nobody wants to threaten the behavioural psychologists at SAGE: nobody is knocking on their front doors. SAGE is forcing face masks and lockdowns and Police fines on their own citizens.
The Russians have always had a soft spot for Czars. Putin is the same as all dictators, paranoid and certifiably insane. “Defending Russia” “Ukraine was never a country” WTF you vertically challenged idiot?
Downticks for a rational comment. Must be Putin’s useful idiots at work.
“And the cr*p I hear in the western MSM about Crimea is close to taking the biscuit. The huge majority of the population there are ethnic Russian and there simply was no way that the US navy was ever going to arrive in Sevastopol and turn the Black Sea into a USA lake.”
Looking forward to Pakistan invading the UK and claiming London.
What does “the West” have to lose from saying it doesn’t want Ukraine to join NATO?
It does want Ukraine to join NATO. Why shouldn’t it say so, and do so, if that is what Ukraine wants?
In this instance, we might we wise to follow the BBC, rather than indulge in self-gaslighting. What does your gut say: who’s the baddie?
This may be a help:
https://www.nna-news.org/news/article/former-waldorf-pupil-heads-nato
Jens Stoltenberg, secretary general of NATO, has “demonstrated eurythmy sounds in a feature about him in the evening news on Norwegian broadcaster NRK”.
Eurythmy is what the Rudolf Steiner cult gets small children to do in order to attract discarnate spirits.
“who’s the baddie?”
Looks like you’re into Hollywood ‘cops’n robbers’ crap.
It’s called ‘tongue in cheek’: do you have a sense of humour?
A few years ago there was a pro-US pro-Israeli* coup in Ukraine after the government there chose to align the country economically with Russia rather than with the EU. The installed regime’s background is the underground Banderist army. A proportion of the population is ethnically Russian, and the Banderists have been stirring up hatred towards them. They are the large majority in two small eastern regions called Donetsk and Luhansk, which voted in genuine referendums to separate.
In 2008 Israel armed Georgia and tanked the country up to provoke a war with Russia. Senior members of the Georgian government were Israelis. (I do not mean Jewish. I mean Israeli.) In 2020 they did something similar by arming Azerbaijan to attack Armenia. (Incidentally, Azerbaijan is mainly Shiite and the idea that Israel has a strategy of backing Sunnis against Shiites is absolute tosh. Shiite Iran in that war mostly backed Christian Armenia.)
Watch that nutter Jens Stoltenberg. He is a Steinerite loon.
Note
*) Some are unaware of this, but if there’s an ethnic group that the Zionists detest most of all it’s not the Germans or the Arabs – it’s the Russians.
Are you trolling or what? If you are really Polish, don’t you know what the horrible Banderist attitude towards Poles is?
Ukraine was once part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; I personally like Ukraine. Sure there were confrontations in the past, but Russia, not Poland, is Ukraine’s enemy. I’m just giving my personal opinion.
The west has said we want dialogue, but made it clear that they would make zero concessions to Russia, and in fact said they would simply increase sanctions and not appease them.
It was a great negotiating tactic.
Maybe so. But you can’t invade countries on such grounds: on any grounds. A Just War this is not for Russia.
Putin would have been wiser to have tried being nice to people, and could have gained a lot of allies in Europe that way. Now he has turned potential supporters, into horrified opponents.
Is it an invasion? Or is it a response to a Western backed coup in 2014 that installed a pro western puppet government (and nazis!), who then tried to ban the Russian language? The US/ EU caused this problem to begin with, no?
Sounds far fetched to me. It’s an invasion.
Since when did such ‘reasons’ from 8 years back justify this war?
Maybe, though, there are psychopaths on both sides: I can concede that is plausible.
I followed the Maidan coup very closely at the time, and I remember Victoria Nuland being caught on a hot mic in her infamous “Fuck the EU” moment. The US state department orchestrated the coup, I think that’s petty clear. And Donetsk and Luhansk have spent six years trying to breakaway, being intermittently shelled and begging Putin to be absorbed into Russia, which he’s said no to. Ultimately though, the reality is that Putin is playing his part in globalist theatre; war is clearly the next phase of the coup and the victims, yet again, will be all of us.
If the US can’t meddle in Ukraine, why can Russia?
If we have to choose between West and Russia, it’s West for me.
Well that’s a bit reductive, but if I was forced to choose I’d think about the trail of devastation left behind by the US/UK/ EU in particular I’d look at what they did in the Middle East, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya etc and I’d look at what effects their supranational institutions like the World Bank have had on the peace and stability of the world. But look, you’ve been involved with debate on this website long enough to know this isn’t about this country vs that country. It’s an assault by the wealthiest globalists against all of us. War will continue this assault on civil liberties, freedom, privacy. War (and Covid!) is a racket.
I’m Polish, so I have a different mindset. Poland is integral to the West, yet has battled against enemies and invaders from all around the compass in its history. We fought for our freedom, and the West’s freedom – a West that has shafted us, too, and used and abused us.
The ‘West’ – I have no illusions about it. But I won’t accept being invaded by tanks and armoured cars. We have to choose sides: we’re not an island. Freedom is always one aggressor away. And geography has cursed us. Globalists and covidians? I’ll take them all on: I’ll fight for other people’s freedom, but I’ll die only for Poland.
I completely get that, and have encountered similar feelings towards Russia from other Eastern European friends. Old grievances die hard. I don’t really see modern day Russia as significantly different to the west, same economic system, an oligarchy (like the west), and no significant ideological differences. But what I have been particularly upset about for the past 20 years is unbridled US aggression, especially in the Middle East, which I know quite a lot about. I think my calculation on Russia is that I would rather have a counterpoint to this dominance. This was especially true in Syria, where Russia stopped the wholesale destruction of the country by western backed Islamists in their tracks. Left to the the Americans, Syria would now be an ISIS caliphate and failed state.
Please don’t gaslight me with ‘Eastern Europe’ construct: a Russian enslavement notion.
And that’s the problem the UK has. Too many people residing here with zero respect to our culture and zero loyalty to the nation that gives them a great lifestyle. I would round the lot up and send them home and start again with real British values.
Maybe you should get some multicultural, cosmopolitan, values?
I think you’ve unwittingly killed your own argument with that cops ‘n robbers bit of simplification.
As I said, it was a turn of phrase. I’ve yet to hear any arguments against the reality of what is going on – as opposed to castles in all your ‘sceptical’ fevered minds.
Doesn’t look like there is much ’empathy’, ‘critical engagement’ with reality or ‘different’ views going on today!
You’ve mostly all been fooled by this invasion: which destabilizes your ‘sceptical’ orthodoxy, rendering it solipsism.
77th Brigade? If I’m peddling a gov line here – why aren’t they upticking me?
So maybe it’s you guys with sour grapes, or Colonel GRU having a go?
You’re telling us to believe what the BBC says. That’s never gonna fly here is it?! I’ll tell you what I think: the establishment has pivoted from covid to war, and I would trust the BBC to inform me about neither.
You can choose to read the BBC or not, believe it or not.
But we shouldn’t gaslight ourselves: refuse to trust the BBC just because it was wrong about covidianism. Aren’t we all original enough, and capable enough, to pivot on a tactical intellectual, provisional, level: to trust the BBC if we want to, and ‘read between the lines’?
I don’t accept that the Establishment in the UK have started a war on Russia. This is surely tendentious in the extreme. But of course we can all say and hold what views we think are right.
The BBC has been propagandising against Russia for at least a decade, most recently in their ridiculous unintentional comedy about the Salisbury poisonings. So with Russia, as with most every thing else, a good time of thumb is that whatever the BBC says, the opposite is usually true.
Let’s agree to disagree – hopefully, in full mutual respect.
Absolutely, I have complete respect for your opinion on this and other matters.
Are we grown ups, able to doubt our OWN scepticism, yet?
The problems in Ukraine are due to the US backed coup going back years as described here https://off-guardian.org/2022/02/24/timeline-euromaidan-the-original-ukraine-crisis/?fbclid=IwAR2AWsJ-h2KuGm5sSw_HcqHEbFJ08J8oUfTybn5TS4erfoZx1AGrTbJJ2sA
That was my reading. A problem of US/EU making.
But now you may be having second thoughts?
No.
Why believe this source? Do the Russians agree with it, too?
The source is all referenced so you can check for yourself.
There are many other sources saying the same thing.
Does it justify this invasion?
As far as I can see, they are protecting the two breakaway regions. I’m not trying to defend Putin, he’s a WEF globalist like the rest of them. I think this is just more distraction, plus it’s in US interest to stop the Nord Stream pipeline.
Not so sure about that. He strikes me as a Russian nationalist – a particularly smart one.
Particularly self-destructive, more like. It’s PRIDE that will be his downfall.
Yes, to stop the genocide of the Russian speaking majority in the east of Ukraine by US backed fascists.
Respectfully then, I must contradict you on this. We won’t be agreeing on this matter; I think I have made my point clear.
It’s up to you if you want to disagree with the truth.
Don’t believe what the main stream media are telling you.
I won’t – I’ll believe the truth.
I followed it obsessively at the time using all kinds of sources. This was a classic US orchestrated ‘colour revolution’ and it was incredibly reckless, given the cultural make up of Ukraine.
Yes I remember writing at the time that Russia was fully justified invading Ukraine up to the Dnieper river to stop the genocide of the Russian speaking majority in the east by the US supported fascists in Ukraine.
Sounds a bit pompous.
The Russians? Which ones?
The ones invading Ukraine. Are there any other Russians?
You may joke but here in Finland people are getting worried, especially after the President and Prime Minister said on TV this morning “Not to worry”!
I expect those two have their private jets standing by, ready to flee the country.
But what’s in any of this for Russia, with its endless natural resources, land, gold and strong relationship with China? What possible reason would Putin have to attack and destabilise Europe? I’m not buying the Russian aggressor trope; This isn’t an invasion, it’s a military intervention in defence of ethnic Russians against a western backed puppet government who have been attacking them for 8 years and want to join NATO so that more WMDs can be installed on its border. No country in its right mind would accept that.
I’m not a Putin fan, especially after watching Russia conduct the same Covid campaign against its own population. But we only have the US to blame for this war.
Then you are being very naive.
I can understand anyone of Polish origin having a wariness of Russia, given the history – a history that also highlights the malleability of national identities, however.
However, in this instance the original threat is from NATO eastward expansion, not that of Russia securing its borders and access to the Black Sea.
Just imagine the reaction to the scenario of Russia allying with an independent Scotland!
Wake up: will you still justify Hitler when he revs up the gas chambers?
No shit m, Sherlock. Anyone with an ounce of humanity knows that masking any person, particularly children, is evil.
Next he will be telling us kids should use the toilet and not defecate at their desks.
This is precisely why SAGE SPI-B wanted them.
Everyone knew this before the “pandemic” and they knew it during the “pandemic” so why didn’t anyone in politics or the mainstream media speak up about it? And, if some people wanted to speak up but were stopped from doing so – who were the people doing the stopping, why did they do it, and can we send them to prison now please?
I have mentioned this before but at my daughter’s swimming lessons there is a small viewing room for parents to watch their kids during lessons. I was the only unmasked parent and one of the other parents in there had a toddler there. The toddler was ignoring the other adults including his mother and was fascinated by me, smiling and laughing at me constantly and, naturally, I smiled back.
It was only afterwards that I realised he was probably just desperately seeking out a face without a mask to smile at. So sad we have done this (well not me, but other people, people who should and probably do know better).
I’m really worried about kids in Staziland, sorry Scotland. Teenagers here wear masks ALL the time. It’s awful. I also don’t think teachers will encourage them to take them off once Our Dear Leader deems them able to do so.
In fact I don’t think schools want to get back to normal anytime soon. Our parents evening in March is via zoom, I bet I’m the only parent to email the school to say I want a face to face appointment, there is no justification for their measures any more. Schools are NOT back to normal here, still staggered start and finish times, playtime and lunchtimes staggered, no assembly, no singing, no clubs, concerts, fetes etc. Parents still to wear face masks in the playground.
The school staff STILL wear masks. They have all lost their minds.
You gave that child a precious gift.
We know the masks are pointless, meant to remind people there is a ‘pandemic’, as otherwise we wouldn’t know.
We also know it is heinous to force them on children.
Instead of yet another article on masks, it would be nice to see an item on the article published in the German Welt yesterday, by a major German insurer, openly stating that vaxx injuries are significant and have been seriously underreported and require further investigation. The insurer’s figures are substantially higher than the official German public health figures.
Did not know about this do you happen to have a link?
https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/plus237106177/Coronavirus-Mehr-Impf-Nebenwirkungen-als-bisher-bekannt.html
More vaccination side effects than previously known
Status: 23.02.2022 | Reading Time: 3 Minutes
By Elke Bodderas, Frank Lübberding, Tim Röhn, Benjamin Stibi
An analysis of millions of data of the Insured person to the company health insurance BKK comes with the side effects of to much higher Numbers than the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut. The new data was an “alarm signal”, says BKK-Executive Board member Andreas Schöfbeck…..
David in (returned to fascism) Italy has given you the link.
I saw it last night, can’t remember where I saw it first – could be Edward Dowd’s twitter feed (worth a look, especially his take on where pfisser/murderna stock are heading – follow the money here will lead to the great unravelling). The cat (boriquagato aka el gato malo on substack – love the cat!) has a write-up, so does Eugyppius and ZeroHedge caught up with it too.
Have not seen it mentioned in any mainstream news in NL, natch.
I find the timing of the Ukraine thing just a little too convenient – the financial news on vaxx producers, increasing admissions in MSM of vaxx AEs (Gael Monfils openly admitting vaxx AE), DM carrying a story on vaxx stroke victim, more stories that this may really have been a lab leakie after all, murderna’s patent on part of the genetic sequence, now the German insurer, in essence saying the PEI is either hiding the truth or doesn’t know what is really going on, either one quite damning.
I wouldn’t be surprised if all sides of the Ukraine event are in on it, distracting from the major catastrophe that was the global response to a somewhat nastier-than-average respiratory virus.
Ukrainian crisis is absolutely a distraction. Until October then we are back on greenpass and 4th/5th jabs…
murderna 😂
checked out the relevant Substacks – thanks!
I know from a school teacher who was very into masks and now sees the psychological damage they’ve done ie children who have been told they aren’t necessary but feel very insecure not wearing one, her own child who doesnt like anyone breathing on her, eating near her and who now has skin problems through sanitising too much.
I do not understand that a person like a teacher did not see the risks of masking right from the beginning.
“Education requires an atmosphere conducive to learning.”
Duckspeak! Quack quack! Guy hasn’t a single clue.
Down with school. Long live home education.
Exactly. All this led this Papa and Mama bear to take our two children out in October 2020, after the first school closure.
School was conflating covid/cough with effing SMALLPOX.
Never mind all the bubbles, the distancing, not being allowed to play with their friends, all the indoctrination, constant wiping of hands making the skin crack and bleed.
Home ed? It’s working well. We both feel we could do more, but what we do manage to do for them is infinitely better than anything the school system ever did.
Schools have become like the NHS – a monster.
I agree and take my hat off to you for making this decision. I wish we could do it but we just don’t have the resources. Our kids schools have been commendably relaxed about it, I think the behaviour of schools was luck of the draw and was in part dependent on how much of a moron the head was and/or how much virtue signalling they wanted to do. I’ve heard horror stories.
my youngest does come home from school talking about climate change so there’s some deprogramming required, and we may take her out if things get any worse.
Scottish schools are simply an arm of the SNP Government now, the take over is complete. It’s pretty mind blowing actually how Sturgeon has managed it.
The indoctrination in schools is disgraceful – the substitute for ensuring literacy and numeracy, I suppose.
Same with our daughter’s school re the climate emergency garbage. That will only last until she’s answered the obligatoryquestion in her GCSE paper. A friend, a science teacher in a Devon Grammar School has just retired and is pleased he no longer has to bite his tongue when delivering the “scientific consensus” to his pupils. If he wants his pupils to do well in their exams then he has to teach the garbage. The shame is on local education authorities mandating this approach; just as their public health colleagues with masking children mandates. Pond life has higher moral standards.
‘Worth reading in full’ – if Mr McCarthy has held this line for the past two years.
Why did our government U-turn from “masks are ineffective and not recommended”? Was it because they were bullied by the unions, who were going to close schools unless all children were face-nappied, or because the power-hungry tyrants realised that the sheep-like nature of the public meant that it was a very easy way to separate the public into the good sheep and the filthy sceptics?
I assume those nice men Mr Gates, Mr Schwab, Mr Farrar, Mr Fauci and Mr Soros spoke up and issued orders, ahem ‘advice’.
Any more ‘nice’ men I’ve missed off the list…?
BTW Martin Armstrong has stated that the main three on this list pushing for global tyranny, sorry ‘government’ are G, S & S.
If at all possible, remove your children from the politicised social indoctrination behemoth that is Bolloxed Britannia’s Antonio Gramsci ideology compliant Education system!
Almost 2 years later? That ship has sailed. Nice try, no cigar.
Because it’s inhuman, barbaric and ultimately pointless.
All animals are equal but some are more equal than others. “Put your masks on, plebs!”
Children count for nothing with selfish adults who want to stay saaaaaafe no matter what the cost is to anybody else.
Teachers and parents seem to be at the top of the selfish list.
Its child abuse .. simple as that really.
Hugh McCarthy has worked tirelessly since Sep 20 when they forced masks on our school kids, conversing with school boards and convincing most they were both useless and harmless, but as they are state funded they refused to bite the hand that feeds them. Globalist teaching Unions, indoctrinating young comrades early, also force Education dept and their members to ensure kids comply. MLAs are mostly WEF puppets so no joy there either. Paul Frew MLA has been a lonely but welcome voice in defence of our rights. Election soon has forced ease of restrictions on adults but our vulnerable young need frightened into taking their jabs so the propaganda continues. Our kids are useful pawns in many wars and need more like the ilk of Hugh McCarthy to break them free.
Masking was all about the teaching unions scaremongering in order to let their members do no work while still pulling down their full salary (plus ca change). As always with unions, they never let the facts get in the way of their lies. And who cares if children are harmed? That’s irrelevant to them. Worse still was the craven way the various local Directors of Public Health kowtowed to this bovine faeces (please note Mr Editor; no profanity from me!)
No-one should wear masks to protect against catching or spreading Covid-19. The pantomime paper muzzles serve no practical purpose. Anyone still wearing these ‘security blankets’ should stay at home and leave living to the grown ups! Making school kids wear them is child abuse.