Scottish Union for Education – Newsletter No57
Newsletter Themes: divisions between parents and teachers, and teaching as a vocation
SUE is an organisation for parents, teachers and other citizens who want to see Scotland’s education system flourish but recognise that it is currently failing. We believe that formal education is a very precious thing for each child and for society at large.
The Scottish government sees education as a tool with which to shift social attitudes and change society, and consequently it is turning Scotland’s schools into processing centres in which teachers ‘teach to the test’ and children are no longer expected to seriously engage with our history, literature, languages or science. A new ethos of ‘inclusion’ is gradually encroaching on our once-renowned knowledge-based system. Rather than being taught to understand and develop the ability to think independently, children are being coached in model citizenship – specifically in government orthodoxies on climate, gender, race and sexuality.
SUE’s main purpose is to provide a voice for parents and teachers concerned about what’s happening, and to try to shift the debate in a country where the media has lost its teeth. We are funded by our members and run by volunteers.
The National Parent Forum of Scotland (NPFS), on the other hand, is funded by the Scottish government. It describes itself as ‘volunteer-led’, but the truth is that it is a government communications machine impersonating an independent forum. Parents can send an e-mail to a local representative, but there is no indication of who these ‘representatives’ are. The organisation’s structure and funds are not recorded on its website, which is ‘hosted’ by Children in Scotland, an ‘independent’ charity that gets its income from Scottish government sources.
Which is why I was particularly upset to see Leanne McGuire, a communications expert and the chair of Glasgow’s branch of the NPFS, appear in the papers this week as the voice of parents. Leanne was wheeled out to underline the ‘overwhelming’ support from parents for Time for Inclusive Education (TIE) and the survey on parents’ attitudes which it commissioned. ‘The best way to break down these prejudices is through education and representation. This is why it is so important for our children and young people to receive a comprehensive education through understanding the diversity of our families and communities and the prejudices they experience’, said Leanne.
The fact that the very limited and selective survey commissioned by TIE, a government-funded organisation established to promote inclusive education, didn’t raise a few red flags among journalists is disturbing. Isn’t there something fishy about a government-funded education campaign carrying out a survey to affirm the value of its own activity and then getting a government-funded parent group to congratulate them?
SUE members were not surprised by the findings of the Survation survey. What the survey shows is that most parents in Scotland support gay rights and think bullying is wrong. What the ‘research’ didn’t touch on at all was transgender ideology. There was no mention of the idea, pushed by transgender rights activism, that a child could be ‘born in the wrong body’, or the sexually explicit and age-inappropriate material which is promoted by TIE and other inclusion campaigns.
Surveyed parents appear to have been shown a very selective range of materials. If parents had been shown teaching materials that encourage children to consider the mutilation of their young bodies before they have matured mentally or physically or had the time to experience relationships and explore their sexuality, the survey results might have been very different.
What is most upsetting about the press coverage of the TIE survey was the assumption that those parents who were unconvinced by the inclusive education agenda must be bigots and homophobes who don’t value the lives children with gender dysphoria. It seems to be beyond the imagination of these journalists and campaigners to see that some parents don’t think it’s necessary or appropriate for schools and campaign groups to talk to young children about sexuality and gender.
It is because we value the lives of children and adolescents, and we value education, that we will call out the self-serving nature of the inclusion industry. The recently released Environmental Progress report on the irresponsible behaviour of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) is a tragic reminder of what happens if these campaigners go unchallenged.
This week, in the run-up to our conference, we have two articles about teachers: one by Kate Deeming, SUE’s Parent and Supporters Coordinator, and the other by Linda Murdoch, a former Director of Careers at Glasgow University. Both articles raise the question of how we can rejuvenate the authority and trust of teachers in the eyes of children and their parents.
Penny Lewis, Editor
The SUE conference: Education not Indoctrination
SUE is hosting a conference on education in Glasgow this coming Saturday 9 March. This will include a public showing of the film The Lost Boys, accompanied by a discussion with one of the film-makers. The film explores the lives of men who were encouraged to transition when they were young, and examines the reasons why some boys are attracted by the ideas of transgenderism.
Buy your ticket from Eventbrite here
How do we bridge the gap between parents and teachers?
Kate Deeming, SUE’s Parent and Supporters Group Coordinator, worked for 30 years delivering performance projects in community and educational settings. She is the solo parent to a P6 boy.
Parents often speak to me about how they ‘don’t really know’ what their children are being taught in school. I am not even speaking about the more controversial parts, but the basics: what books they are reading, what maths problems they are working on, what art they are doing etc.
Up until recently, children had textbooks that would come home, and parents could ‘observe’ passively what their kids were learning. With the advent of technology, however, books are no longer de rigeur in the home, as iPads contain apps such as See Saw and Showbie, with links to games such as Sumdog and, at most, spelling words for the week.
This separation from schoolwork and school time has been exacerbated by an increasing separation between teacher and parent. In theory, the Scottish school system is based on a ‘community model’. In times past, the schools were not only located in the areas where their students hailed from, but their teachers were too. So you might expect to see Mrs Smith and Mr Jones not only in school but also in church, at the local shop, and in the community.
This created an informal social network in which parents actually knew the teacher and the teacher had to face parents day to day. Neither was an anonymous force. Now our teachers have 30 hours’ intimate time with our children every week and we are lucky if we see them at the school gate ... from a distance. Many parents are told they are not to contact the class teacher directly, and that all problems or questions should be directed to the headteacher and then delegated as appropriate.
This is odd, right? I have been told that school access and security (and parental access to school) shifted immeasurably after the Dunblane massacre in 1996. I understand why this was done, but the repercussion is that it created a divide between parents and schools and, more specifically, teachers.
So what do parents do? We frantically try to put the pieces together. We drill our children at the school gate. We form WhatsApp groups with other parents and collectively dissect what our individual children tell us. It doesn’t really help; it feels like strangers are teaching our children. This is not to say that teachers are not nice, or doing good teaching, but just that we have no way of knowing and, as is the way with human nature, not all of them are nice.
At my son’s old school, I got thirty minutes with his class teacher per year, ten minutes per term. The teacher didn’t even bother to bring along my son’s schoolwork when assessing his progress. It was only through independent assessment that I discovered he was at P2 level in P5. There were no tests or report cards – vague expressions such as ‘he is on track’ were the most one might hear.
Teacher training doesn’t seem to be helping matters. I sat in on one Time for Inclusive Education training session for teachers, and the teachers regularly made disparaging comments about parents which were not corrected or challenged by the trainer or university lecturer mediating the session. The general sense was that parents, on the whole, are ‘dinosaurs’ who don’t want to teach their kids ‘the right education’ (in relation to LGBTQ+), and so teachers should step in.
I have heard from students doing teacher training courses that this is standard. New teachers are trained to keep parents held at arm’s length (at best). This attitude follows trainees into the classroom.
One early-years teacher confessed that they were glad that, post Covid, the schools had not reinstated the practice of teachers coming to the gates during pick-up and drop-off. This teacher implied that parents were a hassle getting in the way of the smooth operation of the class and school.
Despite this teacher’s viewpoint, we know both historically and statistically that parental engagement with learning leads to the best outcomes. Keeping parents at arm’s length might make for an easier life for the teacher, but it is not leading to good outcomes for kids.
The Scottish government says repeatedly that they want parents to be engaged, but what actually happens more often than not is involvement, not engagement. Schools welcome parents as fundraisers and organisers of school events, but this is not the same as educational engagement. Being engaged with learning is about genuinely understanding what is taught in the classroom.
Of course, there are good teachers doing good work in this system, but even they are undermined by the current situation. We are at a critical time within our educational system. Keeping parents out is only going to further exacerbate decline. As we reflect on how to save, improve and elevate our educational standards, we must bear in mind that allowing parents better access to classroom materials is important if we are to genuinely get anywhere.
Please get in touch with Kate if you have any issues to report, need support within your school, or would like to be part of a local Parents and Supporters Group: psg@scottishunionforeducation.co.uk.
Teaching: not just any old job!
Linda Murdoch is the former Director of Careers at the University of Glasgow. She is concerned that many of today’s teachers have lost a sense vocation.
In June 2023, a report from the Education Policy Institute stated that retention rates of teachers from when they first entered the job had been falling for decades, with a massive 32% now leaving after the first five years.
This report is one of many that blame overwork, over-accountability and low pay for undermining teachers’ sense of vocation. These reasons for feeling unhappy in their work might imply that teachers have a special grievance, but a closer look shows that they are identical to those the rest of us cite when we are complaining about our jobs.
According to a Resolution Foundation Report of 2021, the way that teachers feel about the profession, and their reasons for leaving, can be understood as the result of a shift in all our expectations about what work should do for us personally. In other words, what has changed is that everyone, including teachers, expect work to guarantee to enhance our sense of self by making us feel valued and fulfilled. Teachers, like everyone else, want their jobs to make them feel good about themselves.
So since when did enhancing your wellbeing mean you had a vocation? Teachers of old did not take up teaching to feel self-fulfilled, far less valued by society. Part of the reason why those of us in the older generation are scratching our heads trying to work out why teachers are leaving in droves is that many of us remember our own teachers as people who would never have considered leaving the job, such was their sense of a duty of care to their pupils. Indeed, many of us were taught by teachers who also taught our parents! The profession’s relatively modest social status and pay were less of a deciding factor for would-be teachers, as in many ways it was the job that chose them rather than the other way round. They had little choice in the matter because preparing the next generation to inhabit the world was so important to them that it could not be left to chance.
For some parents, this description of teachers is a far cry from what we have today. That teachers themselves no longer consider the education of the young in this way was brought into sharp relief during the pandemic. Teachers invariably went along with the government’s extended lockdowns which kept kids out of the classroom, with many even lobbying for longer and harder restrictions on movement. To these teachers, pupils were a plague-carrying menace rather than proteges who desperately needed sustenance, advocacy and guidance. Is it any wonder that this behaviour broke many parents trust in teachers?
Even during the Second World War, when large numbers of lives were really at risk, teachers stayed in the classroom; not even an existential threat could destroy the responsibility that they felt to prepare children for whatever future they might face. Unlike then, today’s society seems to have lost any strong sense of the vital importance of educating children, and we no longer seem to appreciate that this education can only be undertaken properly by those who treat it as a vocation. Perhaps this loss of an understanding lies in our failure as a society to appreciate the protective requirement of teaching.
Teachers who in the past had a strong sense of vocation understood that introducing the young to the world was also the way in which they would be protected from it. By teaching children to comprehend the world’s truths, teachers are providing them with a framework which enables them to master reality and shields them from ideas which might in isolation disturb them. In essence, this framework of a solid foundation of knowledge about the world enables children to get to grips with the world as it is and gives them something against which they can compare and contrast controversial ideas.
It goes without saying that children and young people have no or little experience of their own and are therefore impressionable and vulnerable. If children are taught ideas that contradict reality, such as the idea that people can change sex, this can damage them and leave them rudderless and mistrustful of existing knowledge.
Current teacher-training syllabuses are based on the notion that it is better to expose children to controversial ideas when they are young, or to ‘get them early’, so that they are equipped to change society in the future. This idea is very dangerous. Without the knowledge against which pupils can judge these minority ideas – such as transgenderism and white privilege – young people risk becoming hyperpolitical, espousing social justice causes uncritically or becoming completely indifferent to broader knowledge and ideas.
It is highly possible that the trend for teachers to abandon their duty of care has some bearing on the recent reports of unprecedented high numbers of young people aged 18–30 who feel too stressed and anxious to face the world or hold down a job. Teachers who adopt social justice–based approaches to the pupils are treating children like puppets instead of their proteges requiring education and protection. Parents trust teachers with the responsibility of preparing their children for the world. Expecting the young to change the world before they have come to terms with it is wrong.
Today, more than ever, teachers need to return to the idea of their job as a vocation. In other words, society needs teachers who have a strong attachment to the teaching of truth as we know it, and who reject the new social-justice-activism approach to teaching. Despite the difficulties that this is likely to present them with, many teachers are capable of stepping up to the challenge, and although it is unlikely to make them feel valued and happy in their work, generations of children are relying on them to do so.
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/gdAfQ Gwyneth Rees, How Britain created ‘generation anxious’. A new study finds that poor mental health among the young is damaging the economy. Does ‘generation sicknote’ just need to toughen up? 27/02/24
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-68380264 Katy Scott, Glasgow University students’ anger over reintroduction of in-person exams. 29/02/24
https://archive.is/qSvk9 Jeremy Peters, The Young Black Conservative Who Grew Up With, and Rejects, D.E.I. Coleman Hughes wants a colorblind society. In his new book, he recounts how schools emphasized his racial identity – and other students’ white privilege. 01/02/24
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/march-2024/its-time-to-stop-the-rot/ Edward Skidelsky, It’s time to stop the rot. Students denounced, lecturers cowed and managers with little interest in truth. March 2024
https://archive.is/OMDHA Theodore Dalrymple, It’s time to eliminate the concept of ‘mental health’. 02/03/24
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/24158094.jenny-gilruth-questions-hayward-recommendations-reform/ Garrett Stell, Jenny Gilruth questions Hayward recommendations for reform. 02/03/24
https://archive.ph/2024.03.02-214530/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-to-fix-scottish-education-by-the-ones-who-ought-to-know-8vzhvxn5v Helen Puttick, How to fix Scottish education, by the ones who ought to know. Violent pupils, disrupted classes, teachers on the brink of burnout. The Sunday Times asks frontline staff and experts: where do we go from here? 02/03/24
Andrew Doyle, Why are the woke afraid of books? There is nothing progressive about censorship. 04/03/24
Joanna Williams, History teaching in crisis. Education is intrinsically connected to the past. 04/03/24
https://archive.is/2024.03.04-173525/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/welsh-education-failure-is-a-lesson-for-labour-f6trs0d6t#selection-2555.0-2573.132 William Hague, Welsh education failure is a lesson for Labour. England’s return to knowledge-based learning has improved results, but the ‘progressive’ approach of the regions has been disastrous. 04/03/24
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