Scottish Union for Education – Newsletter No 117
Themes: Crazy Nicola, toxic educators and the war on libraries
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Pass your National 5 by watching a film!
Were you aware that Scottish schoolchildren can get a National 5 qualification in English without reading a novel? Me neither. But this, according to one exasperated senior teacher, is now what is happening.
If there are any English teachers out there who can clarify this for us, that would be greatly appreciated. Contact us at info@sue.scot. But from what I am looking at, something that has now been confirmed by another English teacher, we find that half the marks in an N5 exam can be gained by watching a film or a TV drama. Is this normal? Is it right? Is the novel an unnecessary part of English now? It turns out that a child can pass their N5 without ever reading a novel, ever, in school!
I ask this partly because I set up a book club almost 30 years ago. I did this because I knew that if I didn’t, I would always be ‘too busy’ to read non-academic books. Hundreds of classic and contemporary novels later, I can honestly say that it was one of the best decisions I’ve made in terms of educating myself and finding brilliance and beauty in the world.
Today, as concerns rise about the amount of screen time that children have, this ditching of the novel seems like yet another example of the Scottish education system lowering its standards and expectations of children, and indeed, of our culture.
Perhaps we will see an avalanche of essays this year on the Adolescence Netflix series, which I guess will be killing two birds with one stone, and English can become yet another ‘subject’ that allows children to demonstrate little more than their ‘awareness’ of correct values.
For some, this need to re-educate children in correct values cannot come soon enough.
The incoming president of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) has expressed his key concerns about education, as reported in the Scotsman. Rather than focusing on the falling standards and the need to focus on subjects in schools, David Anderson believes that the problem is that schools have become a ‘battlegound of blame and violence’ and that this is due to the influence of far right and populist movements.
It seems curious to me – someone who teaches in a university where it is unusual to find a student who is up to speed with the news – to find that even primary school kids are now seen as a problem due to the influence of a political movement.
Anderson’s concern is with declining discipline in schools. This seems reasonable. What this has to do with politics, or with the ‘far right’ or any other political movement, is less clear. I also wonder what Anderson would make of the most successful schools in the UK – ones that often have a strong disciplinary approach, such as the Michaela Community School run by Katharine Birbalsingh, whose ethos may well fit with the ever-expanding idea of being ‘far right’?
I would suggest that a better message from the head of a teachers’ union would be that teachers should focus on disciplining the children in their classes by focusing on teaching their actual subject. Helped by the pressure and persuasion of teachers who – for example in the case of English – actually love literature and are able to pass on their passion and knowledge of novels, we may help to raise standards of behaviour and standards of education at the same time.
The recent successes of Reform UK is no doubt helping to create a certain amount of anxiety among what has been described as the ‘lanyard class’, and I attended a useful educational discussion on the election results last week.
One of the tragedies at the moment, perhaps especially in education, is that there is often a lack of balance or understanding from those who tell us to ‘be kind’. A lack of kindness is always presented in a politicised form, and it is imagined, by Anderson and others, that only those with ‘far right’ ideas (whatever those might be) are unkind and even violent; however, a brief look at the participants of riots over the last decade should raise at least a question about this perception.
Then there is the ‘violence’ experienced by those who don’t fit the mould, such as the artists and performers who have come out this month to explain how the suffocatingly ‘correct’ climate is making them ‘terrified to voice unfashionable opinions’. In a survey of the arts world, it was found that there has been a ‘dramatic decline in artistic freedom over the past five years’.
Rosie Kay, who participated in a SUE event last year (Stuart Waiton in conversation with Rosie Kay), helped develop this report, having experienced a cancellation of her own. Her story, and the stories of many like her, whose lives are turned upside down by the ‘be kind’ brigade, don’t appear to be considered by our politicised educators. Nor does it appear to concern them that they risk creating a climate that stifles open discussion, debate and creativity, and do so not only in workplaces with adults, but in schools, with children.
To use one of their words against them, the problem is that school management, some teachers and our political educators are themselves helping to create a toxic atmosphere in schools, one that risks targeting and demonising students who lack the correct awareness required of them.
Nobody wants kids to misbehave in class; indeed, nobody wants kids to be racist or misogynistic either. But we should be careful about seeing things in the behaviour and words of children as more meaningful than they are. Sometimes, believe it or not, children act in an immature or stupid way, and they may often say unpleasant things. But that doesn’t mean they are ‘far right’.
Indeed, what we increasingly find is that behaviour or ideas that are normal, for many, are coming to be described as dangerous, damaging and far right.
The idea of misogyny is a case in point, and we can see how broad this category has become, helped by a ‘Factsheet’ on this subject provided to schools by an English council. In it, toxic masculinity is described as, ‘a term that refers to gender stereotypes associated with how a man should act. Some of these stereotypes say that men can’t cry or that they’re expected to provide for their family.’ It went on to explain that ‘these kinds of stereotypes are harmful to men and boys’ mental health’.
The term ‘Factsheet’ sticks out here, because this is less of a fact than a highly loaded, contentious and ideological opinion. We don’t have to be Neanderthals, or to think that being a one-dimensional ‘hard man’ is something to aspire to. But not wanting to cry, or wanting to have a level of emotional control, is not what most people would consider as toxic. Additionally, the idea that it is somehow bad, wrong or dangerous for young men to grow up with a sense of responsibility and a desire to ‘provide for their family’ would seem, to many, to be utterly bizarre.
But then, the ‘be kind’ ideology is often one that sees any sense of duty, or any sense of common norms, as oppressive. And so the re-education begins, and boys increasingly face an education system that demonises them for simply being boys, and wanting to be men. Or is that me simply being far right?
Finally, I cannot leave without giving our former First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, a wee mention.
In case you missed it, Be Kind Nicola has come out in opposition to the Supreme Court ruling that, in the Equality Act, states that the term sex refers to the biological fact of being male or female. She didn’t explicitly say she opposed the ruling, but her empathetic (perhaps we could drop the ‘em’) argument that life for trans-identifying people will now be ‘unliveable’ was telling.
To this, we could point to the arguments made by the social work consultant Maggie Mellon about how care homes are doing ‘untold harm’ to children by enforcing transgender ideology onto the most vulnerable of children. And we could point out that despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, a number of universities and educational institutions are continuing to ignore the need and desire of female students to have their rights protected.
Which all begs the question, who is it that is making life unliveable for so many adults and children in Scotland? The extremism that I see in schools at the moment does not appear to be coming from kids or their parents but from a lanyard class whose obsession with enforcing their correct values onto Scottish people is doing nothing for either our culture or our education system.
Stuart Waiton, SUE Chair
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Keep Kim Jong Il out of our libraries! Exposing the hidden influences on library book acquisitions
Dr Diane Rasmussen McAdie is the Commissioning Editor for Written Content and a journalist at UK Column, an independent media organisation. She is a former librarian and a cancelled professor of social informatics.
In past SUE newsletters, I have reported on the woke capturing of libraries and the destructive actions that librarians in the UK are performing against their own libraries in the form of decolonising (i.e. destroying) their collections. I have also reviewed on this Substack a dubious polemic written by ‘That Librarian’ Amanda Jones, an American school librarian who was given a platform to complain about her ‘haters’ – meaning the concerned parents who do not want sexual content in school libraries. She has brought, and is still bringing, defamation lawsuits against said ‘haters’.
Cathy Mudge, Chair of Protect & Teach, which is an organisation similar to SUE operating south of the border, invited me to speak at their 3 May 2025 conference. I was more than happy to oblige. She wanted me to share my insider knowledge of how the UK’s Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) and other influencers train librarians to provide age-inappropriate content to children in public and school libraries. This article will cover my essential findings, which would not be known to those outside the library profession. As a qualified librarian since 2001, I knew exactly where to look: primary sources such as books published by the American Library Association (ALA), Facet Publishing (CILIP’s publication brand), and other directly related organisations that librarians use to access books and receive training. It is worth noting that ALA and CILIP are reciprocal organisations, meaning that librarians who earn their master’s degree in library and information science in an ALA-accredited programme can work in the UK, and vice versa for CILIP-accredited degrees in America.
Traditionally, librarianship has been a necessarily practical profession, albeit requiring intellectual ability and critical thinking. In recent years, however, insidious ideology has taken over in the training of future librarians and current practice guidelines.
After Emily Drabinski, the 2023–2024 ALA President, won her presidential election, she infamously tweeted about how she couldn’t believe that a ‘Marxist lesbian’ had won. She later spoke at a Marxist conference in Chicago, telling her comrades there that libraries should be sites for socialist organising.
John Pateman, a librarian with decades of experience in public libraries, is the author of a book series about public libraries from Facet Publishing. In his most recent volume in the series, Understanding Public Libraries: Management, Leadership and Ideology (2024), he states that ‘Management seeks to hide the class nature of organisations such as public libraries by presenting them as objective, apolitical, neutral and ideologically free.’ He believes they must have an ideology, in particular a Marxist one, tracing this assertion back in time. According to Pateman, nineteenth century libraries ‘were not a benevolent gift to the working-class from the ruling and middle classes. They were an agency of social control that posed as an instrument of social change.’ He evidenced this in part as follows:
After his death in 1924, Lenin’s vision for a public library system was carried forward by Nadezhda Krupskaya, his wife and associate, who did so much to work out the basic principles of Soviet library management: ‘The library gets the best and necessary books across to the masses, helps the reader to pick the books he needs, and advises him as to what to read’ (quoted in Chubaryan, 1972, 33). In December 1936 Krupskaya outlined her approach to libraries in ‘We shall fulfill Lenin’s instructions on library work’, her introductory remarks at the All-Union Conference on Theoretical Questions of Library Science and Bibliography: ‘Comrades, in the library sector of our cultural front our work is made much easier by the detailed instructions of Vladimir Lenin, who always showed great concern for library matters. In just the same way the Party attaches great importance to libraries’ (quoted in Simsova, 1968, 45)
Pateman spends considerable time discussing the virtues of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea). He claims that Lenin’s ideals regarding ‘leadership’ were further refined through the juche idea (or ideology) manifested through North Korea’s Kim dynasty: ‘only the “Leader” possesses the correct ideology and can disseminate this ideology. This, then, is the main role of the leader – to articulate, spread and inculcate ideology.’ He claims this ideology was best developed and implemented revolutionary exploits of Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un – ‘three exemplary leaders of the North Korean working class’. Also, Pateman states, ‘It is no coincidence that the Juche Tower in Pyongyang is directly opposite the Grand People’s Study House (National Library) in Revolution Square. Both represent the guiding ideology of the Korean people [...] Public libraries are instruments of political indoctrination [emphasis added]; they imbue the masses with the Juche Idea and maintain ideological unity in the country.’
Elsewhere in the book, Pateman discusses his many visits to Cuba and his honour of receiving the Cuban Culture Medal in 2002 for his work in Cuban public libraries. ‘The following year I was honoured to share a platform with Comrade Fidel Castro at the Third Cuban Cultural Congress held at the Karl Marx Theatre in Havana.’
This is all from one of the top current writers about public libraries in the ALA/CILIP sphere. He clearly believes the role of the library, even in the ‘democratic’ West, is to indoctrinate its public with ideological conformity, and he is training others to believe the same.
The ideology being pushed on the public of course incorporates the ‘Marxist’ principles of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI), which are at the centre of the cultural battles taking place between the so-called ‘far left’ and ‘far right’ (these are really only labels to further divide us). Beth Montague-Hellen told librarians in Facet/CILIP’s Practical Tips for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Libraries (2024) that ‘As social-justice minded librarians we should accept that neutrality is not possible; where people refuse to engage with controversial issues, the status quo is upheld (Gibson et al., 2017).’ One must ask why she has made the assumption that all librarians are ‘social-justice minded’; the answer is that they are all required to be, or else they will face action against them, as I did before I left the profession.
You can see this bias further when Montague-Hellen wrote that ‘Right-wing calls for censorship frequently ask that LGBTQ+ materials are removed from libraries, often in the name of protecting the children and teenagers who would most benefit from reading these books. Left-wing calls for censorship often ask that material that is racist, sexist, homophobic or anti-trans be removed. Many reading this book may agree with this stance, finding this sort of content extremely distasteful and worrying about the effect the books may have on vulnerable members of our communities.’
The hypocrisy in the indoctrination becomes evident on observing specific actions. The Free Speech Union’s 2023 report Not on Our Shelves: Soft Censorship in Local Authority Libraries describes the findings of an investigation into the presence of gender-critical (GC) and trans rights (TR) books in English local authorities. The report concluded that ‘there is a clear bias in England’s local authority libraries in favour of TR books and against GC books and the source of that bias is […] CILIP, the professional association for librarians which has been captured by critical social justice ideology, and an LGBT activist group called Book 28.’ Let’s look at these in more detail.
At the UK-wide level, CILIP’s Ethical Framework for professionals is also hypocritical; they used it against me in my disciplinary action, saying I was not following the guideline of ‘Impartiality and the avoidance of inappropriate bias’, for example, by stating my own beliefs on my own Twitter account. CILIP has an LGBTQ+ Network, which supports library staff and library users with this identification; they have become increasingly influential in recent years. Binni Brynolf, a senior CILIP member who identifies as non-binary, runs a Padlet entitled LGBTQIA Resources for Library Workers, to which others contribute resources as well. Additionally, devolved nation has a separate CILIP branch; I was President of CILIP Scotland when I decided to resign from the professional body after too much ‘mediation’ and eventual disciplinary action against me for questioning the capturing and sharing my gender-critical beliefs, which did not fit the ideology; their LGBTQ+ Resources for Libraries and Librarians page provides insight into how Scottish librarians place related content into their collections and Services.
ALA, being larger than CILIP and therefore more influential, has a range of resources for librarians doing the work of pushing the ideology. ALA’s Rainbow Round Table supports programmes similar to those of CILIP’s LGBTQ+ Network. ALA also provides a yearly list of challenged books; many of them contain age-inappropriate content within children’s books. They do this on the premise that books are ‘banned’ in the USA and that everyone should have the ‘freedom to read’, although in actuality no books are banned in the States. Their activist campaigns have big names behind them. George Soros is a known donor to these campaigns, Oprah Winfrey endorsed Amanda Jones’ book on its back cover, and Sarah Jessica Parker is the Executive Producer of a film about Jones and similar librarians claiming to be fighting American ‘book bans’.
The ‘book ban’ claim trend is happening in the UK but on a much smaller scale. The Guardian covered CILIP’s 2023 survey research which found that a ‘third of UK librarians [had been] asked to censor or remove books [...] members of the public using increasingly threatening behaviour about the removal of books on empire, race and LGBTQ+ themes’. The hypocrisy is evident in the industry, as is clear when you consider not only FSU’s report cited above but also another FSU article, stating that Literature Alliance Scotland had issued guidance such as ‘Don’t sell Terf books/platform Terf authors. Don’t expect trans booksellers to sell them. Trans people who see Terf books or ‘gender criticism’ in a bookshop will understand that the bookshop doesn’t want them there’. Similar warnings have been issued to librarires, such as those from Book 28.
Book 28, mentioned in the FSU’s report cited above as another imortant influence, runs a small specialist lending library in London. It also provides a document called Welcoming LGBTIQ+ users: advice for public library workers. It instructs librarians how to secure LGBTIQ+ books for children and young adults as follows:
The number of LGBTIQ+ titles published by mainstream UK publishing houses is steadily increasing, and as a result, titles are more likely to arrive automatically through your regular library supplier. However, there are some types of stock that may require a little extra effort to seek out. These include: Books for younger children (board books, picture books and middle-grade books).
We have noticed recently that UK LGBTIQ+ YA [Young Adult] titles now do tend to arrive automatically through mainstream library suppliers (a very welcome improvement compared with just a few years ago!). We have therefore not included YA titles here; however, it is worth looking beyond the UK, as US publishers still produce a wider range of titles covering a broader range of LGBTIQ+ and multiply marginalised identities. Some useful sources for ideas are linked in the next paragraph.
We have listed some UK children’s titles below; many of these may also come through your mainstream suppliers, but as there are relatively few available, we recommend having multiple copies across your library system. However, for children’s titles, it is essential to look beyond the UK. Useful sources of ideas include our list of library suppliers and LGBTIQ+ book awards, as well as the Sheffield listchallenges, which also include children’s titles.
Montague-Hellen recommended other ‘practical tips’ for enacting library EDI, such as bringing in Stonewall and Gendered Intelligence for staff training, or hosting a Drag Queen Story Hour, which she claimed ‘can be a lovely event for small children where books are read by excellent performers’. She also tells us how to counteract ‘unwanted attention from violent or bigoted groups’ that might attend events, according to CILIP, including that ‘it is helpful to charge a small price for tickets and require that they are bought online in advance. This ensures that a valid payment method is used in case you have to track troublemakers later.’ CILIP also recommends informing the police or hiring private security for the event.
Sandra Hughes-Hassell wrote in ALA’s 2020 Collection Management for Youth: Equity, Inclusion, and Learning (second edition) that ‘To ensure equitable library collections for all youth, library staff who act as collectors must adopt a structural ideology [emphasis added] perspective that recognizes the role of systems in marginalizing and oppressing marginalized-identity youth’. She claimed that ‘Library staff must pay attention to issues such as racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism, and economic inequality. They must develop strategies for addressing the inequities marginalized-identity youth experience in all aspects of their library work, including collection development.’ She claimed that this could be achieved by creating an Equitable Access Environment, which is a ‘theoretical platform’ that asks librarians to work with the community ‘and centers equity’ for developing collections. Keep in mind that equity is a Marxist term that ensures everyone ends up in the same place; do not confuse it with equality.
Facet Publishing’s Creating a School Library with Impact: a Beginner’s Guide (2022), coauthored by several school library leaders in the UK, said that ‘Diverse books enable all students to explore their identities without comment, criticism or censure. This is an essential aspect of reading for children and young people.’ It also cites the UN Convention on Rights of the Child, now embedded into Scots law, which some believe gives children the right to consent to things which their parents may not agree they are ready to do. The book stated that ‘under the Equality Act, one group cannot deny the needs of another. Thus, for example, a group of parents and carers from a particular religion cannot force the library not to stock books with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBTQ+) characters using the argument that it is against their beliefs. The Equality Act protects the library from enforced censorship and challenges to resource provision.’
Informing school librarians that they should do audits of their school’s population compared to the library’s collection, this book also had the following to say about LGBTQ+ identity:
The government estimates that 5–7% of the population are LGBTQ+ and Stonewall, an LGBTQ+ charity, supports this figure. Numbers are difficult to ascertain, especially amongst children and young people, because: people keep personal information private – this is due to many reasons, for example, they may fear bullying or they may have family who would not support them they have not yet decided who they are the terminology used in data collection can skew results – if the only gender choice is male or female, there are no means to collect an accurate representation of the LGBTQ+ community. The school library should support all students regardless of their gender, including those undergoing gender reassignment. Additionally, it is important to ensure that the ethos of the library, including the signs and language used, does not reinforce gender stereotypes.
It is also vital to look at the role of library book vendors and associated book charities in supplying these books to children’s libraries. Kate Deeming, also from SUE, has covered the role of charity Book Trust in providing these materials. Also look at vendors such as Love Reading 4 Kids and Peters; vendors will frequently offer ‘packages’ of books to school librarians that are sold as being time-savers for the librarians, meaning in actuality that the librarians might not know what books are in the packs. Peters works with the charity Inclusive Books for Children to make recommendations to vendors and, therefore, librarians.
This article has shown how a large system of networked groups within the circle of librarianship, from training and trade books to professional bodies and their funding sources, as well as the vendors and charities that enact the agenda, have placed a platitude of potentially age-inappropriate books in front of our children in school and public libraries. There is more that could be said, but these are the largest forces pushing the ‘ideology’ that Pateman admires so much in Lenin’s ideas which led to North Korea’s National Library and the pride evident in his own award from ‘Comrade Fidel Castro’. If we want the West to maintain what might be left of its precious democracy, including the rights of parents to have a voice in what books their children take out of the library – not to mention the entire approach to libraries being free and open space for those who love reading and knowledge in all its forms – we must act now, and act quickly.
News round-up
A selection of the main stories with relevance to Scottish education in the press in recent weeks, by Simon Knight.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/05/07/nicola-sturgeon-has-learned-nothing-from-the-trans-debacle/ Iain MacWhirter, Nicola Sturgeon has learned nothing from the trans debacle. The former Scottish first minister remains totally unrepentant about her war on women’s rights. 07/05/25
https://archive.is/Q7Lv4 George Chesterton, ‘The Supreme Court gender ruling had given us clarity. Now this Labour law will torpedo that’. Women’s rights campaigners warn that a Government bill could endanger vulnerable women by blurring the lines between sex and gender identity 07/05/25
Stella O’Malley, Subversive Parenting in an Age of Ideological Capture - Frank Furedi. 08/05/25
https://www.transgendertrend.com/uk-supreme-court-judgment-schools/ Transgender Trend, UK Supreme Court judgment – what does it mean for schools? 29/04/25
Fontini Hamplova, Three. Understanding Classical Education. 15/04/25
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/head-cash-strapped-scots-university-35204641 Jennifer Hyland, Head of cash-strapped Scots university where staff face job loses enjoyed luxury junket to Barbados 11/05/25
https://archive.is/mqzS7 Rachel Sylvester, Estonia’s curriculum is one of the best — what can it teach us? Schools in the Baltic former Soviet state excel in reading, mathematics and science as well as fairness and happiness 21/11/24
https://archive.is/uW25e Poppy Wood, Teaching union will fight for trans access to female lavatories. National Education Union votes to defy equality guidance and may provide legal help to transgender teachers. 12/05/25
https://archive.is/80qXt Celia Walden, Britain’s ‘wokeist’ university has finally seen sense. Oxford University’s backtracking on the removal of some gendered language is an extraordinary U-turn. But what has prompted it? 12/05/25
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“This, then, is the main role of the leader – to articulate, spread and inculcate ideology.’” Wether Lenin, Stalinist or Marxist, I immediately recalled this statement "It's much broader than that. It's a cultural issue, and therefore we're going to have to look more broadly, work as a society on this, and discuss it, which is why I'm really pleased that Adolescence is now going to be shown in schools free because I do think young people should be watching it."
Ironically from the same “working man” who also said this in a press conference “He said the online world and social media means “ideology” can be “pumped directly into the minds of our children”.
The show shines a light on issues that people do not know how to respond to, he said. (From the former newspaper The independent)
“Pateman spends considerable time discussing the virtues of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea). He claims that Lenin’s ideals regarding ‘leadership’ were further refined through the juche idea (or ideology) manifested through North Korea’s Kim dynasty: ‘only the “Leader” possesses the correct ideology and can disseminate this ideology. This, then, is the main role of the leader – to articulate, spread and inculcate ideology.’”
I have to take issue with drawing a continuous line connecting the leadership in Korea with the thinking of Lenin. Clearly, Pateman is cynical and shallow in his ‘thinking’. It is also rank cynicism in a ploy for historical legitimacy by subsequent communist leaders to connect themselves to Lenin. To accept historical distortions by Stalinists though is just lazy thinking.