Neducation is not Education

In the Border Mail a week or so back there was an article entitled “Ned and Ettie, a love story” and it featured a smiling photo of the goateed Mr Trent Cupid posing alongside a soft fabric doll with a Kelly style face mask, and in the background dozens of cheap models of Ned Kelly in armour, brandishing a shotgun. A warm fuzzy and cuddly image of the lovable Ned Kelly, and underneath a description of an upcoming lecture by Mr Paul O”Keefe in which it says “an untold love story involving Ned Kelly will be revealed”

(Never mind that he's been telling the story for at least a couple of years, or that Ian Jones would have a very different view of who Ned Kellys love was, or that from what Ive read, nowhere does Ettie Hart actually say that she and Ned kelly were lovers, or that even if she was infatuated with him that he even noticed her...but thats Mr OKeefes story...facts are not that important to kelly "educators")

All-in-all a very “touchy feely” sort of exercise it would seem, created by a man who uses the term “neducation” to describe his “business”  whose main objective  is to “cut through the misconceptions  and half truths about Kelly story ”

  

I have written about “Neducation” before. It was in the Forum that was deleted by the NKF Member running the anti-book site, so my careful thoughts have been destroyed  by these people who now profess concern about “misconceptions and half truths”. The question I raised then was why Neducation was aimed at school children, with the intent of making them understand what “really “ happened and I expressed my concern that an obvious partisan in the kelly gang story, a man who claims to be a “descendant” of the Kelly Gang is directing his obvious bias at impressionable school age children. It reminded me at the time of the Christian Child Evangelism organization, an organization like the Neducation one, which recognizes and deliberately exploits the naivety inexperience and ignorance of young innocent minds.

Given what I know about Trent Cupids role in administering the Ned Kelly Forum, of which Mr. O’Keefe is a member, and of the way in which they and another prominent member of that forum do everything in their power to suppress, deny, eliminate and censor any attempt to tell a different narrative, I couldn’t help but respond to that item, seeing it as a further example of the Kelly Propaganda machine in action, something that needs to be countered at every opportunity.  But I don’t believe, as they do, in countering opposing views by censoring them and trying to have them removed from the public domain as they do, and have done and are continuing to do to me. I am happy for them to say and do and believe whatever they like – this is an important principle of freedom of speech and a democratic principle.  Instead, I believe in countering “Neducation” with re-education, with fact, with reason and counter claim.

This was my response :

 I dont believe Mr Cupid or Mr O'Keefe are serious about cutting through misconceptions and half truths about Ned Kelly - these "Neducators" are pushing the modern airbrushed and photoshopped picture of Ned Kelly that is completely at odds with the facts. The facts show Ned Kelly was a dysfunctional antisocial stock thief who stole from the poor as often as from the rich, a bank robber who copied the style of other bushrangers of the time and a killer not just of police by a deadly ambush but of an old friend who he no longer trusted..If it hadnt been for Thomas Curnow, Kellys plan for 19th centruy terrorism - wrecking a train at Glenrowan would have resulted in slaughter of over 20 people, many of them innocent.
Neducation is about perpetuating the myths and half truths about Ned Kelly. Thomas Curnow is the man we should be celebrating, for being brave and for saving innocent lives.