Scottish Union for Education – Newsletter No82
Scottish Union for Education – Newsletter No82
Newsletter Theme: obsessing over racism, a parent’s experience
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This week we print an article from a parent in Edinburgh. It is important for us to hear from and to be able to publish letters and articles from parents who are experiencing at first hand what is going on in schools in Scotland and, indeed, across the UK. Please get in touch if you have a story to tell.
The article below is about the divisive policies and practices that were adopted at an Edinburgh school, policies and practices that this parent believes encourage divisions between kids who are being labelled based on (among other things) the colour of their skin. Tragically, it is those people in schools who call themselves anti-racist who are doing this. I’d like to say, as is often said, that they are doing this with ‘good intentions’, but I think we need to move past that argument. Many people have done atrocious things throughout history because of their ‘good intentions’.
I would accept that some of those pushing so-called ‘anti-racist’ politics onto children are simply against racism. However, there is a lot more to it than that, and for activists and the authorities who push this stuff in schools, there is often a much darker side to the story.
I had an academic journal article published this week, entitled, Elite Hatred and the Enforced Knee-Taking of the Aware ‘Class’. In it, I attempt to explain why football players were encouraged (some would say forced) to embrace the BLM knee-taking gesture, and why fans who booed this were represented as racists.
Interestingly, one of the few academics who bothered to talk to football fans found that the majority were against players taking the knee, and the reasons for them opposing it were rarely to do with racism. What’s interesting is why, during the entire process of players doing this, nobody else bothered to talk to football fans. Similarly, why were the fans who booed almost universally denounced by the authorities and the commentariat as racist?
The question of racism is worth thinking about and discussing, but so too is the issue of anti-racism. It is interesting to consider, for example, that at a time when being racist is essentially a secular sin, there is, according to activists, so much racism. The American critic John McWhorter, whose book Woke Racism is well worth reading, describes the current form of anti-racism as a new religion. It’s a useful way to think about what is going on because it turns the issue of this anti-racism on its head and suggests that what we should be looking at to understand this issue is not the racists but rather the sense of virtue being experienced by those who proclaim themselves to be anti-racist.
The reason I think this is so important is because if McWhorter is right, the role of (official) anti-racists today is not to overcome racism but to permanently discover it. Why? Because it has become one of the few ways for those who run things to have a sense of moral worth and purpose.
This helps to explain the strange situation we find ourselves in today in which almost everything, and every institution, is said to be racist, and yet it is so hard to find any actual racists.
There are, of course, individuals who are racist, as we have seen with some of the recent riots. But when Dundee University, for example, proclaims itself to be a racist institution, despite the reality of their own research, we need to ask, what on earth is going on here?
It is important to work on this issue, not least because, as the parent explains below, anti-racist politics are being pushed into schools and onto children. At first glance, it sounds like a good thing; after all, who’s in favour of pushing racism onto children? But the more you look at the details of what is happening, the more it appears that this particular anti-racism could itself be described as a new form of racism. This is not simply because it labels all white children as having ‘white privilege’, but because it is helping to re-racialise society – something that any genuine progressive and liberal anti-racist must surely oppose.
The colonisation of a school
A concerned parent contributes their personal experience of the introduction of critical theory–informed social justice ideologies into schools.
The past four years have been – how shall I put this? – an education. This is an account of how an ideology became established in one Edinburgh primary school. I use the word ideology because the ideas being promoted are arguably based on dubiously reasoned, poorly evidenced and controversial opinions (as opposed to facts). This ideology has been developed in repudiation of the moderate, traditional or neutral stances held by the majority of the population. The non-democratic imposition of a non-majority belief system through ‘updating’ policies and the teaching of contested ideas constitutes a form of colonialism.
Step 1. A new vision and values are introduced
Around the time of the pandemic, my local primary school announced that it would carry out an exercise to determine a vision for the school and to identify a set of values shared by all members of the school community. Parents were asked to contribute. The results were then presented in the form of a word-cloud graphic comprising glittering generalities – the kind of words and phrases that are emotionally appealing but convey little in the way of information and are therefore often employed by advertisers, politicians and propagandists. One of the largest words in the graphic was inclusive. How did the school go about putting ‘inclusion’ into practice?
Step 2. Policies are updated
Following the Equality Act 2010, institutions throughout the country have been encouraged to address discrimination, harrassment or victimisation due to age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation (which the Act terms ‘the protected characteristics’). Thus, schools are expected to protect pupils from being bullied due, for example, to their sexuality (homosexual, bisexual or heterosexual) or racial or ethnic background (minority or majority). It would be hard to imagine anyone in the school community opposed to the school fulfilling its duty in this regard.
However, in the school’s Equality, Diversity and Anti-Bullying Policy and Procedures document, updated in August 2020, the protected characteristics are not presented as they appear in the Act but referred to using language and examples that give the impression that only pupils with specific and minority identity characteristics are protected.
Now that the Equality Act has been incorporated into school policy this way, one of my concerns is that as a negative consequence of labelling pupils differently – some being ‘special’ and others not – cases of bullying against children without one of these specific minority identity characteristics may be considered less of a priority. Simultaneously, among pupils with these characteristics, a victimhood culture is promoted, as opposed to a dignity culture in which all pupils are treated equally. This is a recipe for creating divisions within a school, with the nurturing of grievance in one set of pupils leading to resentment in others.
The document also refers to protecting those ‘undergoing gender change’, but this is not the wording used in the Equality Act. The Act refers to the protected characteristic of ‘gender reassignment’, which many people would interpret as entailing medical or surgical procedures. Furthermore, the minimum legal age at which ‘gender change’ can be legally recognised is 18. The change in language appears to have been done purposefully so that any child of any age who says that he or she identifies as ‘trans’ can be recognised by schools as belonging to an identity group with a protected status and thus deserving special rights – in other words, non-equal treatment.
Additionally, I find this approach rather distasteful because it implies that children with a minority identity characteristic are at risk from the other pupils, who are assumed to be potentially dangerous and bigoted. Surely schools should treat children the same? Bullying is bullying, whatever the identity characteristics of those responsible. Some pupils may be more likely to be picked on because they are different (not necessarily in ‘identity’ terms) or because they are considered easy targets, and good teachers should be able to recognise this, regardless of the identity characteristics of the children involved.
Step 3. Education is used to pursue a political agenda
In summer 2020, the school seemed to forget its legal requirement to provide its pupils with a politically impartial education.
The school newsletter started to look like it had been temporarily co-opted by ‘anti-racist’ activists. One had a list of one-sided ‘anti-racism’ books and a discussion guide that made the claim that white children – and white children only – show racial prejudice from babyhood. Surely most parents, irrespective of their racial or ethnic background, would be disturbed to learn that some teaching staff believe that white children are inherently racist?
The teaching staff included a self-styled ‘anti-racist educator’. In her blog, she describes how she – as a white person who has ‘done the work’ of educating herself in ‘anti-racism’ – is now ‘done with showing compassion and understanding to white people making the same mistakes over and over and never educating themselves’. No animus or intolerance there then!
The discussion guide warned us that it was ‘only the very beginning of [the school’s] journey’ … and indeed it was. Further newsletters and an on-site event appeared to endorse the BLM movement; this was all justified as a well-intentioned attempt to help pupils and their families make sense of the ‘largely peaceful’ protests that were taking place at the time. However, different people hold different opinions about BLM, particularly regarding the message that ‘black lives matter’, compared with the often-extreme politics of the BLM organisation. Making sense of current and extremely contentious political events should be the job of pupils’ families, not the school.
One poster at school stated that ‘It is not enough to be non-racist. We must be antiracist’. This message seemed intended to oblige children to become activists for critical theory and social justice politics, and to encourage teachers to practise critical pedagogy (whose purpose is to turn children into ‘active agents of change’).
There was also a P7 class on the disputed concept of ‘intersectionality’, in which pupils were invited to focus on why they might be victims of discrimination.
It is hardly motivating for pupils from a racial or ethnic majority to be taught, from such a young age, that they will be forever disadvantaged by their identity group characteristics, or that ‘rational thinking and hard work’ are not requisites for success but ‘white values’ that need to be avoided! Such examples of critical race theory (CRT) doctrine are likely to disempower them by downplaying their personal agency. Furthermore, white working-class boys, in particular, may be forgiven for losing trust in any teacher who tells them that they have ‘white privilege’ when they have been shown to ‘fare worse in education than every other minority group except Gypsy/Roma and Irish Travellers’. Tragically, this ‘anti-racism’, can fuel resentment and increase divisions among school pupils.
Step 4. Concerns are dismissed, dissent is suppressed
Denial is one way in which schools can deflect criticism of ideological teaching. Concerned parents and staff may be told that ‘anti-racism’ has nothing to do with CRT, but this is contradicted by resources such as those at The Anti-Racist Educator website. Another form of denial is the claim that the teaching is not political because it is not party political, but CRT is political.
If denial fails to shut down concerns and complaints, the standard response is ‘We strive to be an inclusive school’. There may also be a reminder that ‘inclusion’ was chosen by the school community in the earlier ‘vision and values’ exercise.
Concerned parents may be told that the teaching will be carried out ‘sensitively’. But indoctrination done ‘sensitively’ and with ‘good intentions’ is still indoctrination. It is unethical for governments, quangos, lobby groups and activist teachers to use schools to advance a political cause. I did not consent to this social experiment, and I certainly did not consent to my children being used for this purpose.
Those who have objected to schools teaching questionable theories about ‘gender’ have been labelled bigots. Likewise, white parents who object to CRT being pursued in schools through ‘anti-racism’ initiatives risk being told that they are complicit in systemic racism, while non-white parents who object risk being labelled as having ‘internalised whiteness’. Most serious of all is the possible reputation-destroying accusation of plain old racism, when in fact the ‘anti-racists’ are actually encouraging a new form of racism.
Are we undergoing a cultural revolution by stealth? There is increasing pressure from governments and activists to double-down and to force everyone, young and old, to accept contested ideas. In these times of political division, indoctrinating children to see themselves as members of one identity group, in perpetual competition with other groups for power and resources, is not right. Teaching that some people can have inherited racial guilt, and that individuals should be judged primarily on their identity characteristics rather than their character, is actively promoting intolerance. An individual is more than a collection of group characteristics, but for those pushing CRT, our children are reduced to just that – labelled part of either a group deserving special protection or one requiring special policing. This is not what I, nor do I believe most parents, want from their school or for their children.
You can be against racism without being ‘anti-racist’
A short video contrasting the divisive, anti-human critical theory approach with the liberal approach is available here. Further information is available through the Equiano Project and Don’t Divide Us, who provide free, impartial lesson plans. Teaching materials that encourage older pupils to assess different perspectives on the BLM movement are available from the Free Speech Union. Opposition to critical theory has already been ruled a philosophical belief – a fact that schools and other organisation should note.
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.ph/u8586 Peter Jones, Should Labour be messing with the school curriculum? 24/08/24
https://archive.ph/2YRgz Patrick West, The culture wars are far from over. 26/08/24
https://archive.is/6CZ14 Craig Simpson, Teachers will be trained to challenge ‘whiteness’ in schools. Guidance aims to encourage ‘anti-racist’ teacher training to maintain diverse educator workforce. 25/08/24
https://archive.is/qlIJu Amy Gibbons, Teachers say trans guidance designed to protect children is ‘divisive’. Poll prompts fears from campaigners that teachers could revolt over new guidelines on the basis that they are ideologically opposed to them. 22/08/24
https://archive.ph/mZTCZ Steerpike, Librarians attending ‘whiteness studies’ to avoid ‘racist’ venues. 20/08/24
https://www.thetimes.com/article/15e92750-1b68-4760-86a0-e0d25d2c2d72?shareToken=b4243e88322a8c9291defdf277bb9937 Dominic Hauschild, 20,000 Scottish pupils missing half their classes. Warnings that the absence crisis ‘will cause lasting harm’. 27/08/24
https://www.thetimes.com/article/791f8577-d4a9-4295-9fa2-19312a301e9f?shareToken=7a2f84beddbce68f9f0cac86f70b9b15 Nicola Woolcock, Lessons in kindness: children ‘can learn empathy at school’. A science teacher and a Cambridge academic believe that the art of understanding others could play a role in curbing social unrest. 28/08/24
https://archive.is/huEXU James McEnaney, Parents and teachers hit out as school cut risks revealed. 28/08/24
https://archive.is/voO1L Ella Whelan, No wonder children can’t behave. Adults won’t discipline them. From indulgent parents to slack teachers, young people are growing up without any authority figures. 28/08/24
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