Scottish Union for Education – Newsletter No96
Themes: Jewish teachers marginalised, universities in crisis, toxic masculinity, and the value of play
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This week SUE was contacted by some Jewish teachers who are increasingly despondent about the lack of support and solidarity they had received from pretty much all sections of Scottish society. The Jewish Chronicle reported several teachers and families saying that since the horrific attacks on civilians in Israel on 7 October 2023, and the subsequent Israel–Hamas war, there had been no effort to challenge antisemitism in their schools.
The experience of both teachers and pupils was that there had been a rise in antisemitic activity since October last year, and that one of the main promoters of the growing intolerance towards Jews had become the very people who they had looked to for solidarity, namely the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) – the largest teachers’ union in Scotland.
For some reason, the EIS has taken it upon itself to produce a teaching resource about the war in Israel. These apparently child-friendly factsheets look harmless; they show children with differing experiences and suggest that children discuss their peers ‘comments. But in some instances, the EIS resource comes close to encouraging children to see the Israeli is bad, and the Palestinian is good. In one worksheet Eleven-year-old Mona says, “The fighting is between the Palestinians who have nothing and the Israelis who have everything. I don’t know any Israeli children and I don’t want to because they have the same beliefs as their parents. They believe I am not as good as they are”. Jewish teachers and the Jewish Board of Deputies are asking the EIS to review the material, but without success.
Jewish staff and pupils report an increase in antisemitic behaviour and sympathy for and solidarity with Israelis, or Jews, who want a homeland in the Middle East is rare thing in Scottish public life. Primary-school children do not need to be taught about this conflict, and secondary-school children need to be exposed to a range of different adult voices as reported in the press and media, not fed simplistic moral judgements by the EIS. Teachers and parents might want to ask if and why their school is using this resource.
Meanwhile, Scotland’s higher education sector is undergoing a reckoning. It’s hard to imagine how universities can survive much longer on the meagre funding provided by the Scottish Funding Council. Glasgow University is under investigation for apparently giving places to overseas students who don’t meet the language requirements of the UK Border Agency. Dundee University has confessed that there is a big hole in its accounts. Its principal departed very quickly this week, and significant job losses and severe cutbacks are forecast.
Universities’ management seem to think that making further cuts to teaching budgets and lowering entry requirements is the solution to the funding crisis. Many staff across the sector would prefer to see a cutback in the heavy-handed management systems. The EDI (equality, diversity, inclusion), T&L (teaching and learning) and QA (quality assurance) empires have grown significantly over the past decade as has HR (human resources). If these initiatives were cut, along with the Race Equality Charter and Athena Swan, and The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education it would have no negative impact on the quality of education or research.
However, these acronyms (EDI, T&L, QA etc.) are important to senior management; they have provided the language through which it has been possible to convert many places of learning into underperforming business, and their staff form a thick layer of middle management which insulates the executives from those ‘annoying’ academics. The new management-speak undermines the genuine intellectual content of education and private contractors ‘train’ staff how to think on issues such as gender, race and neurodiversity. Gone are disciplinary meetings on teaching and research, replaced by with a never-ending stream of new procedures that makes the Circumlocution Office in Charles Dicken’s Little Dorrit look positively efficient.
Universities across Scotland are already excessively centralised. The needs of IT, timetabling, HR and the finance departments now trump the educational needs of teachers and students. These latest financial problems will only consolidate the problems. It’s surely time for staff and students to come up with some other radical proposals to return universities to their original role as centres of learning, and the exploration of new ideas.
Both writers contributing to this issue, Kate Deeming and Simon Knight, are suggesting that schools should give children the space to develop without being overly prescriptive about language and behaviour. It’s strange, but today – when anything goes in terms of discipline, social norms and even taboos – there are some areas of children’s lives which we feel the need to micromanage. Many parents are aware of this issue and are self-consciously attempting to give children space to take risks and make their own mistakes, but some schools, particularly those with activist teachers, seem to think they can change the world by modifying the natural behaviour and curiosity of boys. Both articles below provide plenty of food for thought; we look forward to hearing from you in response. If you have any relevant stories to report, please contact us at info@sue.scot.
SUE’s last online Parent and Supporters Group meeting of the year will be held on Monday 16 December at 7 p.m. Anyone wanting to attend should email SUE’s Parent and Supporters Group at psg@sue.scot.
Poisoning our boys with talk of toxic men
Kate Deeming is the Parent and Supporters Coordinator for SUE, a long-time advocate for children and childhood, and a solo mum to a 12-year-old boy. Her writing can be found on her Substack.
She also hosts the Pink Elephant podcast, found on all podcast platforms.
Last month it was revealed that schoolchildren in France were to be fitted with tracking devices in their playground in order to ‘explore the theory that boys dominate recreational spaces at girls expense’.[1] The proponents of this study purport that playground games demonstrate a wider malaise in society, indicating that boys playing football at the centre of the tarmac sets a standard that leads to high rates of domestic violence and assault later on in life. Christelle Wieder, who is in charge of sex equality at the council, went on to say, ‘These differentiated and inegalitarian uses of space will progressively come to be seen as normal and be replicated … outside school’. This past autumn, I attended a Stop Surrogacy event where the lauded radical feminist Sheila Jeffreys was in attendance. While I can acknowledge the exceptional work regarding the topic of the event, Sheila’s ideas around men and ‘masculinity’, which once might have been considered ‘fringe’, are becoming mainstream. Sheila spoke openly about the need to ‘eradicate masculinity’ and went as far as to say that all sport should be abolished. This, in my opinion, is the Taliban version of raising boys.
Yet she is not alone in her assessment. This year, the Family Education Trust commissioned Lottie Moore to write the policy paper Boys and the Burden of Labels,[2] in which she explores the growing trend of teaching of ‘toxic masculinity’ in our schools. In her paper, she looks at how this contested subject area is being embedded in education across the UK. I was able to speak to Lottie about her report, on my podcast The Pink Elephant.[3]
One of the most telling aspects of these programmes is that ‘masculinity’ is to be understood only through the feminist lens, and the view is all negative. Boys are not to be understood or studied in and unto themselves, but merely in relation to girls. Think about it for a moment. How is the ‘boy question’ addressed at your child’s school? In the Glasgow City Council Education meeting in June 2023,[4] they go as far as to acknowledge ‘the problem with boys’ but then go on to say, ‘A feminist solution definitely includes men and I am glad to say this increasingly includes men, because the feminist solution is based on equality.’ Mary Robinson, Glasgow City Council Education Committee, then explains that one of the ways they are addressing the ‘boy problem’ is to have male representation in ‘Period Dignity Groups’. How is this good for boys?
We would not accept girls being studied through a ‘male lens’, so why should we accept the converse with boys? Furthermore, and as indicated by the French council, there is a growing trend of pathologising what might be considered ‘traditional’ male behaviours. Lottie Moore’s paper shows school materials which include versions of the ‘pyramid of sexual violence’, which present the idea that a man displaying ‘traditional gender roles within the family’ might go on to commit rape.[5]
Moore L. Boys and the Burden of Labels: an examination of masculinity teaching in schools. Family Education Trust. Figure 5, page 29
This also obfuscates what might be valuable insights into natural sex differences between males and females. While nurture plays a significant role in how children are raised into adults, nature plays a substantial role too. The male hormone testosterone plays an important role in boy’s lives from nursery. Numerous studies show that male patterns of socialisation and play are not merely down to how a child is raised.[6] To this end, diagnosing ‘male’ behaviours as problems, like the schoolyard programme does, undermines what might be natural development and might be better addressed in more healthy ways. Equality of opportunity as opposed to equity of outcome.
These programmes present the ‘boy problem’ solely as a problem of violence against women and girls. And while this is an issue that may be addressed in numerous ways, the real ‘boy problem’ is much more widespread than that. None of these ‘toxic masculinity’ programmes acknowledges or addresses the sex gap between boys and girls in education, where girls outperform boys in just about every metric: development, literacy and numeracy rates, and test scores. They are also far more likely to be permanently excluded from school, which has devastating lifetime consequences. This is before we even get to the fact that suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50.
To add another level of complexity to the problem, schools are commissioning outside third-party quangos to lead their training (see diagram below). In Lottie Moore’s report, she recounts how in 2021/22 one popular programme, ‘Everyone’s Invited’, asked people to share their experiences of sexual assault and violence. As a result, thousands of reports were posted onto their website through self-verified submissions. These self-reported accounts included hundreds of names of primary and secondary schools and universities, which directly implicated students. It served as judge, jury and executioner, as no controls were put into place to ensure what was being published was true. In response to the astounding level of reports, the UK government and the police carried out a rapid review of sexual misconduct in schools. To date, no person has been charged with an offence as a result of these investigations. Meanwhile, thousands of boys were implicated in something they were not guilty of. The programme succeeded in manufacturing a moral panic while not addressing what real problems might have existed.
In this context, individuals like Andrew Tate come to the fore. Andrew Tate is not a good role model. Yet is it any wonder boys look to him when the pickings are so slim in education and popular culture?
Good role models are essential in demonstrating what good men look like. For boys without fathers in their lives, this becomes even more necessary. In the case of the ‘boy problem’, this is another issue that is not being dealt with. It is no secret that stable families are what is good for children. Yet the Relationship education modules in non-denominational schools downplay this fact, if it is even acknowledged at all; instead, sexual experiences are presented as a grocery list of opportunities and body parts.
Is it any wonder our children are confused? It is clear to me that discriminating against boys, for being boys, is the last acceptable biases allowed in our society. Yet as Lottie Moore reminded me, the equality law, for all its faults, is quite clear. Discrimination based on sex is not allowed for females … or males. And we’d be better to remember it.
As the solo mother of a son, I must admit I have skin in the game. Since his babyhood, I have become heightened to the increasing amount of negative messaging around boys, at the same time seeing how boys are struggling. It’s nonsensical. It’s like a diet wherein all nutritive food is denied while being bombarded with messages of how disgusting and fat you are. Hardly a winning combo to be healthy. We need to give our boys good messaging and opportunities so that they can grow up to be stable and functioning men.
Psychologist Dr John Barry writes that, ‘The evidence is much clearer therefore that it is not masculinity that is the problem as much as our attitudes to it. It cannot be good science to pathologise half of the human race. The fact that we can even seriously entertain the hypothesis that half of our gender spectrum in the human species is faulty shows evidence as to where the real problem lies.’[7]
References
1. Sage A. ‘Pupils will be tracked by GPS ‘to make playtime more inclusive’. The Times, 18 November 2024. https://archive.is/HtlXO.
2. Moore L. Boys and the Burden of Labels: an examination of masculinity teaching in schools. Family Education Trust. https://familyeducationtrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Boys-and-the-Burden-of-Labels-Lottie-Moore.pdf.
3. Deeming KE. ‘Toxic Masculinity’: in Conversation with Lottie Moore. Podcast.
4. Glasgow City Council Education, Skills and Early Years City Policy Committee, 1 June 2023. https://onlineservices.glasgow.gov.uk/councillorsandcommittees/viewSelectedDocument.asp?c=P62AFQDNZ3ZL0GDNZL.
5. Moore L. Boys and the Burden of Labels: an examination of masculinity teaching in schools. Family Education Trust. Figure 5, page 29. https://familyeducationtrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Boys-and-the-Burden-of-Labels-Lottie-Moore.pdf.
6. Archer J. Sex differences in the development of aggression from early childhood to adulthood. Encyclopaedia on Early Childhood Development. January 2012, page 4. https://www.child-encyclopedia.com/pdf/expert/aggression/according-experts/sex-differences-development-aggression-early-childhood-adulthood.
7. Barry JA. The male gender empathy gap: time for psychology to take action. New Male Studies: An International Journal. 2016;5(2):9. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1534129/1/Gender Empathy Gap Seager Farrell Barry 2016.pdf.
Leave those kids alone!
Simon Knight has a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Strathclyde. He has been working with children and young people in a variety of social care, youth work and school contexts for 35 years. He has two school-aged children.
A recent article in the Times details a new research project in Parisian schools. Worried about inequity between boys’ and girls’ use of space in school playgrounds, the plan is to fit children with GPS trackers to establish the problem, make an ‘intervention’, and then re-assess the children to show an impact. Eyes rolling emoji, sigh, where to start?
To begin with though, having been involved in research projects looking into the independent movement of children around communities, I have no issue with the use of GPS trackers and the gathering of that information. No, I don’t think that it will condition children to become compliant adults, as some have suggested. Politics is what determines how we respond, both as individuals and as groups, to demands infringing on freedoms, from the state or big business. There were no childhood-tracking devices that made us all stand outside our front doors and show our ‘Two Minutes Love’ for the NHS during lockdown (one of the most Orwellian experiences of my life!). That parents will be bypassed in the decision-making process around this research is significantly more insidious and an already established subplot to most of what already occurs in our schools.
Good data is good data. It is how that data is interpreted that gives meaning to the findings. Unfortunately, the premise to this research initiative already gives that game away. Boys, or rather football, dominates most school playgrounds. We’re not delving into rocket science here. Football, as with many ball games, is an expansive activity where participants are focused on an object, and an outcome, in a competitive context. This tends to blinker those involved, to the exclusion of other considerations. So yes, in playgrounds with no physical separation of ball games, those games often come to dominate the available space. And, although now undergoing significant change, boys still tend to be the main participants. Installing a multi-use games arena (MUGA), as many of the school I work in have, might be a more positive approach?
The extrapolation of this instinctively understood ‘truth’ into a libel on the adults these boys will become is entirely illegitimate. The article is sprinkled with pixie dust phrases like ‘gender discrimination’, ‘marginalise girls and certain boys’, ‘interiorisation of behaviour’ and ‘little monsters displaying toxic masculinity and engaging in virile games’ and concludes with this thoroughly decontextualised paragraph: ‘More than 320,000 women in France are subjected to domestic violence each year, while 217,000 are raped or sexually assaulted, government figures show.’ Seriously? The die is cast! Allowing boys to play football at school, as sure as night follows day, leads to rape? There really isn’t an emoji that captures what I’m thinking now.
The active independently reasoning individual, the purpose and outcome of a good education, is dispensed with in one misanthropic, illogical leap. Schools induct misogynists by allowing football to dominate their playgrounds.
Yet, the ‘play offer’ made to children during playtime, a time that equates to 20% of their time at school, is frequently dire. Imagine a great ape enclosure at one of the world’s big zoos. As keepers of the space, humans are responsible for every aspect of these animals’ lives. We create a range of topographies and surfaces, spaces to be seen and ones to hide in, structures to encourage physical activity and ones for social engagement as well contact with nature. Now cast your mind back to another enclosure for the offspring of a great ape, the last school playground you saw. The contrast is a stark one. We can, and do, do better.
Children are different in so many ways. All differences are not inequalities. Creating spaces that cater for a range of play types need not be expensive either. Old dressing-up clothes; digging areas; small-world play; music, for dancing or chilling out to; loose parts for building with and making dens; water play (God, we have enough of it up here!); tarpaulin for shelters; arts ’n’ crafts and so on – these can all be sourced and offered at very little cost. Improving your school’s play offer, for all children, reduces boredom, stimulates exploration and innovation, and promotes the development of motor skills while teaching children how to manage their own risk and building resilience.
Wouldn’t flicking on the ‘positive bulb’ in the brains of those decision makers at an education policy level be such a happier path to follow?
News round-up
A selection of the main stories with relevance to Scottish education in the press in recent weeks, by Simon Knight.
https://archive.is/YDoUp Daniel Sanderson, Watchdog investigates children’s charity that backs puberty blockers. SNP ministers should show some common sense and pause funding for LGBT Youth Scotland, say Tories. 02/12/24
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/02/nyregion/maud-maron-transgender-nyc-school-council.html?campaign_id=51&emc=edit_mbe_20241203&instance_id=141161&nl=morning-briefing:-europe-edition®i_id=118838252&segment_id=184673&user_id=9d449ee7c19fe843b1b1eebe4eb46728 Claire Fahy, A Culture-War Battle Convulses a School Panel in Liberal Manhattan. Maud Maron, a right-wing activist, introduced a resolution about transgender students’ participation in sports. The fallout has derailed a parent council in one of Manhattan’s largest school districts. 02/12/24
https://archive.is/sW4iG Poppy Wood, Gender-critical student suspended from university radio after posting interview with detransitioner. Connie Shaw barred from role overseeing shows like LGBTQ+ Hour after complaint over blog post published on Graham Linehan’s Substack page. 05/12/24
https://archive.is/Jhywj Ross Clark, The triumph of England’s maths lessons. 04/12/24
https://www.thetimes.com/article/b0cb302e-cfed-4ea8-bba6-6e9c21c1bdb0?shareToken=675a7a22382c6576d658671a85ec26cb Stephen Bleach, The top UK sixth form that is ‘Disneyland for maths’. Inside King’s Maths School, the in-demand sixth form where the students are proud to be ‘neeky’. 06/12/24
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/12/04/schools-dont-need-an-anti-racist-curriculum/ Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, Schools don’t need an ‘anti-racist’ curriculum. Identity politics is the only source of prejudice in English classrooms. 04/12/24
https://archive.is/8M2rY James McEnaney, Why The Herald is investigating additional support needs in schools. 08/12/24
https://unherd.com/newsroom/are-teenage-terrorists-really-on-the-rise/ Liam Duffy, Are teenage terrorists really on the rise? 07/12/24
https://www.thetimes.com/article/3c08ffb6-728f-4f55-a646-61ae06a4956f?shareToken=0a7fd5ad6c44748100e3c81670b71fad Harriet Alexander, US Supreme Court poised to back ban on trans treatment for teenagers. Conservative justices appear to favour upholding Tennessee law that prohibits puberty blockers and hormone therapy for minors. 04/12/24
https://www.thetimes.com/article/2fad9927-08f3-4d1a-a74c-a10a8f0b8dc1?shareToken=51c2af4d166d47d9e765a7c4cde975ed Mark McLaughlin, Transgender youth charity facing inquiry over Cass Review criticism. LGBT Youth Scotland had issued a furious response to an immediate ban on the use of puberty blockers. 03/12/24
https://www.thetimes.com/article/770aec74-f858-4df1-827f-7a975e2ae915?shareToken=f109a0b2fbb9e6b5bf45a9c364936d5dTom Whipple, Diversity training blamed for false claims of racism. A study shows those who had read extracts by diversity scholars went on to register 35 per cent more ‘micro-aggressions’. 05/12/24
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