Scottish Union for Education – Newsletter No56
Newsletter Themes: academics mobbing those who challenge mainstream thinking, and the history of state interference in family life
This week we learned that Glasgow City Council is making plans to cut teaching staff. Tes (formerly the Times Educational Supplement) reported that the Council has a plan to cut 450 jobs by 2027. A Council spokesperson described the plans as ‘education service reform options’. Cuts are likely to begin in August, when 172 teaching posts will go.
Anecdotal evidence from schools suggests that Glasgow is already substituting ever larger numbers of probationary teachers for permanent staff to save money. These proposed cuts would represent a serious attack on the time, energy, and most importantly, the authority of teaching staff and the quality of education.
SUE demands that Glasgow City Council undertakes a full review of all the money spent on campaigns and woke quangos before any cuts are made to teaching staff.
‘Many Glasgow parents are wondering how the heck education is going to function. Now, more than ever, being informed, organised and active about our children’s future is vital’, said Kate Deeming, SUE’s Parent and Supporters Coordinator. ‘I have heard of one East End school that has decided to close its history department. So kids will no longer be offered history in that secondary school! Meanwhile, numerous tax-funded quangos are untouched, and queer theory–informed programmes (like TIE) are embedded into our schools. Apparently, all Scottish teacher-training courses have a visit from LGBT Youth Scotland in the first two days of their course. Woke activism is being prioritised over teachers. Kids will not be able to write or read, but they will be able to parrot slogans. What kind of society are we going to be left with when a generation of children are not given foundational educational skills? To that end, we are organising. Parent and Supporters Groups are developing across Scotland, but we need more voices and more action on the ground.’
We will be discussing our campaign work on Saturday 9 March at our conference in Glasgow. We have some excellent speakers and workshops, and we will be showing the film The Lost Boys, which explores the lives of men who were encouraged to transition when they were young. Sessions include the following:
What’s wrong with Scottish Education?
Confronting ‘anti-racist’ indoctrination in school
Challenging transgender ideology in the classroom
How do we tackle Scotland’s deteriorating educational standards
Where do we go from here?
Buy your ticket from Eventbrite here
Also, please consider supporting our work by becoming a Founding member of SUE.
Penny Lewis, Editor
Academic intolerance
What happens when academics fail to conform to the official woke orthodoxy? Professor Diane Rasmussen McAdie, who works at an Edinburgh university, writes about her personal experience of confronting an academic mob.
What is ‘inclusion’? According to the Cambridge Dictionary, it is ‘The act of including someone or something as part of a group, list, etc., or a person or thing that is included’. According to the Inclusive Employers organisation, ‘inclusion in the workplace is about ensuring that everyone feels valued and respected as an individual’.
Earlier this month, Tes published an article by Professor Ian Pace, about the case of Professor Jo Phoenix, and the mob of academics and students who came after her, calling her ‘transphobic’ because of her gender-critical views and the gender-critical research network she set up at the Open University.
Happily, the employment tribunal ruled in Phoenix’s favour, but at what cost? In a BBC Woman’s Hour interview after the ruling, she described the psychological stress of the attack on her to be comparable with that she experienced when she was raped as a teenager. As an academic who was also raped as a teenager and is now weathering her second mob in less than a year, I can confirm that she is not wrong.
The first mobbing incident took place after I attended a talk about disabled students. The speaker claimed that everyone must use ‘identity first’ language (‘disabled student’), rather than ‘person first’ language (‘student with a disability’), to talk about them. I asked my husband, who has cerebral palsy, what he thought about this. He said that labels and word order don’t matter as much as the reality of cerebral palsy itself, and he said he prefers to identify himself with the more positive attributes about himself, such as ‘creative’ and ‘musician’. He asked me to share his views on X/Twitter, both of us thinking it would contribute to an open discussion surrounding the topic.
What happened, however, was that I offended someone to the point where they filed a formal grievance against me. The basis of the grievance was that, just because my husband doesn’t find his disabled identity as important as others, it remains offensive to said abstract group to call them ‘disabled people’. I was accused of ableism, gross misconduct, and more. The complaint was not upheld thankfully.
When I asked the person conducting the investigation why this sort of vexatious grievance was allowed to go ahead, she said it was ‘inclusive’ to make sure people who have a grievance have the right to complain. How was it ‘inclusive’ to me, whose career was threatened based on a few tweets about my husband’s opinion? Or to my husband, who was deeply hurt and felt discriminated against, like his own views didn’t matter compared with those of this abstract group?
I am now amid a second mob. It appears that a few people don’t like everything I tweet, so anonymous complaints about several of my tweets or retweets (I don’t know if they are from five different people or not) have been made about me indirectly. The attack is ongoing as I write. The mob met without me present to decide what to do about me, and they decided I should go into mediation, with them on one side and me on the other side. As has now been ruled in recent cases such as Professor Jo Phoenix’s and Professor Kathleen Stock’s, it is considered illegal harassment to mob someone for personal views or protected characteristics.
A summary of my offensive tweets and the subsequent complaints can be seen as a case study in the exclusionary nature of ‘inclusion’.
I questioned why the need to protect the Cenotaph on Armistice Day was considered ‘far right’ (How is it ‘inclusive’ to expect us to remain silent when there is a real possibility of violence against the brave war veterans who attended the National Service of Remembrance?)
Sharing a photo from a pro-Palestine protest in London, which suggested that the protesters are jihadis. (How is it ‘inclusive’ that frightened Jewish people living in London should suffer antisemitism without any solidarity from non-Jews?)
Expressing annoyance, as many women did online, that a transwoman called ‘Steph’ had been named the chief executive of an endometriosis charity. Endometriosis UK says, ‘Endometriosis impacts on the physical and mental health of 1 in 10 women and those assigned female at birth in the UK’ – the ‘AFAB’ tag is considered ‘inclusive’ – but Steph wa[1] s ‘assigned male at birth’ (i.e. he is male). (Endometriosis is a disease that affects women. How is a transwoman’s appointment ‘inclusive’ to those of us who are biologically susceptible to the illness?)
Just last week, I tweeted a meme from a member of the Fornethy House Survivors Group, highlighting the disparity between the lack of support for her campaign and the £200,000 given to a Glasgow mosque for ‘greening’. The Survivors Group, which is for women that suffered serious abuse when they attended Fornethy Residential School between 1961 and 1991, has been denied support or redress open to others. Within two hours of posting the image and a comment, I received an anonymous complaint saying that I was sharing ‘misinformation’ and promoting bias, which was unethical for me to do as a professional librarian. (How is that inclusive to the women, who are only trying to find ways of raising awareness about their case?)
The academic mob has used these tweets to come after me; they have sought to ostracise me and have attempted to end my career, as a member of the professoriate who has dared to share views that question the current trendy standpoints and go against the mainstream orthodoxy. This is being done all in the name of ‘inclusion’, to protect the sensibilities of those who felt offended by my legally protected views. In doing so, members of the mob have excluded someone with cerebral palsy, distinguished war veterans, Jewish people, endometriosis survivors, and child abuse survivors.
But in the world of equity, diversity and inclusion, some people are excluded so that certain people or groups can feel safer. Any academics’ attempts at publicly speaking out in support of people who are not prioritised within trendy woke ideologies are susceptible to academic mobbing. James Lindsay, of New Discourses, explains that in critical social justice (the dominant ideology of woke), the term ‘inclusion’ ‘always implies restrictions on speech’. I could not agree more. As Professor Jo Phoenix and I, as well as a growing number of other leading academics, can attest, ‘inclusion’ mobbing can lead to psychological stress and health problems – inclusive, indeed!
The child guidance movement
In part of this series of research pieces, David Scott looks at the long history of the authorities’ interference in family life and child-rearing. David is an independent journalist with a Substack called Digging Deeper and a YouTube site (@northernexposure9510/featured); he is also on X/Twitter (twitter.com/Albion_Rover).
There is a theme in the work of the state that goes back over a century, and it is this: children won’t do as they are, and parents are to blame. The state will save the little ones from the subversive influences of their families and make of them new creatures, better than before, and heading towards perfection. This core belief is visible today in policy initiatives such as the Scottish government’s Early Child Development Transformational Change Programme. As Jenni Minto, SNP MSP, said in October 2023:
...the Parliament recognises the need for an Early Child Development Transformational Change programme to build on the excellent and world-leading practice already delivered in Scotland, and to further act on the unique and critical period of child development from pre-pregnancy to age three, when experiences and the environment shape the foundations for life and population health.
The impetus for this programme comes not from Scotland but from Washington DC. To be specific, it comes from the World Bank:
Investing in the early years is one of the smartest investments a country can make to break the cycle of poverty, address inequality, and boost productivity later in life. Today, millions of young children are not reaching their full potential because of inadequate nutrition, lack of early stimulation and learning, and exposure to stress. Investments in the physical, mental, and emotional development of children – from before birth until they enter primary school are critical for the future productivity of individuals and for the economic competitiveness of nations.
The underlying assumptions here are legion. Every state competes with every other. The usefulness in terms of productive work of the population will define success and failure in this great game, and it is the failure of societies to raise their children in the correct manner that is undermining our collective success. Intervention must start before birth, and it is in the early years that efforts should be concentrated.
And this is not new. In 1945, the Director of Education for the Corporation of Glasgow reported on the city’s scheme for short-term residential schools as follows:
Much is heard these days of the importance of character training and education in citizenship, and here undoubtedly the residential school has a valuable contribution to make. Education in a self-contained community makes it possible for precept to be supported by example and, still more important, for children to have an opportunity of living and acting as good citizens should.
Again, the assumption is that state professionals, not the parents, are best placed to shape the characters of children and impart guiding principles that will govern their behaviour as adults. This approach by the state goes back further to 1918 and the origin of the multidecade child guidance movement.
Genesis of the child guidance movement
The child guidance movement originated in the USA after the Great War. Key to its success was funding from the New York–based philanthropic organisation the Commonwealth Fund, which was founded in 1918 by Anna Harkness, a widow who had inherited $50 million from her late husband’s estate, equivalent to over $1 billion today, according to the Federal Reserve Bank. She used one-fifth of this fortune to endow the fund, mandating it to ‘do something for the welfare of mankind’.
With such resources, the Commonwealth Fund could operate internationally, and it set up the English Mental Hygiene Programme, which effectively bankrolled the child guidance movement in the UK in the interwar period. In 1926, it established the Child Guidance Council at the prestigious central London location of 24 Buckingham Palace Road. In 1929, the fund also founded the London Child Guidance Clinic in Canonbury Place, Islington. It then began a training course at the London School of Economics for psychiatric social workers.
Evelyn Fox, Acting Honorary Secretary of the Child Guidance Council, proudly stated that:
...much may be done in the early stages of maladjustment to prevent a child slipping into the ways of the delinquent.
This concept – of the maladjusted child – is at the heart of the child guidance movement. The policy paper The Dangerous Age of Childhood: Child Guidance in Britain circa 1918–1955 by John Stewart, Emeritus Professor of Health History at Glasgow Caledonian University, sets out the concept of the maladjusted child broadly as follows. The concept concerned so-called ‘normal’ children, as distinct from the delinquent child, or in the terminology of the time, the ‘mentally defective’. Thus, it was the overwhelming majority of children who were the concern of the child guidance movement. The most apparently normal child could, in the course of his or her emotional and psychological development, experience maladjustment. A child is not either maladjusted or normal; it is a spectrum of normalcy, and the point at which any child might be located can change with time and circumstances. Symptoms of maladjustment ran from bedwetting to aggression, timidity, shyness, truancy, backwardness, stealing, nervousness, being difficult and unmanageable, lying, having a temper, stammering, spitefulness, night terrors, depression, eating disorders, overactivity, and a host of other behaviours deemed unacceptable. The symptoms were taken to represent deeper-rooted problems, emotional instability or psychological disturbance, believed to derive primarily from the malfunctioning of the child’s environment and, in particular, of the parent–child relationship.
Maladjustment in childhood posed a threat to the stability of the family and wider society, and therefore maladjustment was a threat to social order. Child guidance saw itself as a form of preventive medicine, aimed at countering a threat to familial and social instability. It medicalised and pathologised childhood and moved the focus of child welfare matters from the child to the parent and wider family. It viewed both childhood and the family as inherently problematic.
Child guidance clinics
Treatment of the maladjusted child was provided by child guidance clinics, where children would encounter three professions: psychiatry, psychology, and psychiatric social work. The psychiatrist was the lead professional, despite much talk of teamwork being core to the clinics’ operations. Play was an important diagnostic tool and a form of treatment, a feature that was distinct from their American cousins’. Professor John Stewart summarised the psychiatric approach of the clinics as follows:
First, the child’s mind was deemed to be, again in contemporary terminology, ‘plastic’ in a way that was not the case for adults. It could be relatively easily influenced and adjusted, and the sooner appropriate interventions took place, the better for the child, the child’s family, and the wider society. Second, since the child’s mind was still in the process of formation, it was not advisable to use techniques such as psychoanalysis and this was especially true for younger children. Rather, for the most part all that was required was, as one psychiatrist put it, a common-sense chat, although what he did not explain was why this required the services of someone trained in psychiatric medicine.
Child guidance became embedded in the Welfare State through the Education Act 1944 and the Education (Scotland) Act 1945. This replaced philanthropic economic support with tax-funded provision, and thus led to a huge increase in the number of child guidance clinics across Britain. By 1955, there were more than 300 such clinics in England and Wales.
Glasgow
As the child guidance movement spread from the USA across Europe, Glasgow, the second city of the Empire, was at the forefront. The leaders of the movement in Glasgow were Dr Robert Rust and Sister Marie Hilda.
Dr Robert Rusk began his career as a pupil-teacher, attended Glasgow Free Church Training College, and took a course at Glasgow University, from which he graduated with first-class honours in Mental Philosophy in 1903; and in 1910, he graduated with a BA from Cambridge. He graduated again in 1906, from the University of Jena in Germany, with a PhD in Philosophy. Germany was seen as the forerunner in psychology and psychiatry. He began at Jordanhill College in 1923 and stayed there until 1946, ending as Principal Lecturer in Education. Meanwhile, he taught at Glasgow University, responsible for the EdB course, and he was the first director of the Scottish Council for Research in Education, from 1928 to 1958. Rusk’s approach to education was focused on intelligence and mental testing.
Sister Marie Hilda has a considerable reputation in the world of child guidance. In the Pastoral Review article ‘Notre Dame Training College Glasgow and the Liverpool connection’, S. J. McKinney provides a biography of this child guidance pioneer. She was born in County Durham and studied in Liverpool before joining the staff in Dowanhill in 1904 and graduating from the University of London. She lectured in history, logic, Latin, maths and psychology, but was later appointed principal lecturer in psychology.
In 1930, Dr Rusk approached Sister Marie Hilda to found a child guidance clinic in Glasgow. Sister Marie Hilda received financial support from the Commonwealth Fund and backing from the Archbishop of Glasgow and the Director of Education. Glasgow’s Notre Dame Child Guidance Clinic was opened in September 1931, as part of the Catholic Teacher Training College.
Sister Marie Hilda’s saw the purpose of child guidance as being to ‘socialise the neurotic and aggressive, encourage the dull and retarded, and redeem the delinquent’. She argued that guidance could reduce the number of mental breakdowns and prison inmates:
The Clinic hopes to build up integrated personalities capable of taking their place as members of the family of the Church and of the State.
Her approach was informed by the London-based Child Guidance Council and visits to its Islington clinic. It was heavily influenced by the psychiatrist-led approach from the USA. Only later did the educationalists and psychologists in Scotland fight to shift the emphasis away from psychiatry and towards education. This debate was interrupted by the Second World War and the traumatic effects of evacuation and separation from their parents. The founding of the Welfare State in the immediate post-war years saw a huge diversion of taxation revenue into child guidance clinics.
In Glasgow, by 1961, there were four main clinics and eleven district clinics. The philosophy of child guidance and the idea of maladjustment was evangelised in public lectures and newspaper articles. In addition, residential schools for maladjusted children were founded at Nerston near Glasgow in 1940, and at Balerno near Edinburgh in 1956.
After the early 1960s, the language of maladjustment disappeared but the concept of ‘The dangerous age of childhood’ remained. It morphed and changed in professional practice, outwith the public gaze, only to re-emerge later in a new metastasised form. In Scotland this is called Getting It Right For Every Child (GIRFEC), and its flagship policy was called the Named Person Scheme.
News round-up
A selection of the main stories with relevance to Scottish education in the press in recent weeks, by Simon Knight
Andrew Doyle, Compelled Speech Must Always Be Resisted. The sacking of Fran Itkoff by the National MS Society is a warning of things to come. 17/02/24
https://archive.is/M1MGe Caroline Wilson, Education should be removed from council control says expert. 20/02/24
https://dailysceptic.org/2024/02/20/the-fact-the-government-has-had-to-tell-teachers-to-ban-mobile-phones-in-schools-is-a-glimpse-of-what-is-wrong-with-the-education-system/ Mike Fairclough, The Fact the Government Has Had to Tell Teachers to Ban Mobile Phones in Schools is a Glimpse of What is Wrong With the Education System. 20/02/24
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/feb/15/school-uniforms-may-be-barrier-to-physical-activity-among-younger-girls Rachel Hall, School uniforms may be barrier to physical activity among younger girls. 15/02/24
https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/specialist-sector/explosion-asn-numbers-leaves-school-struggling-cope Henry Hepburn, ‘Explosion’ in ASN numbers sees schools struggling. More staff and better training urgently needed to help pupils with additional support needs – even coffee shops set the bar higher for mandatory training, Additional Support for Learning Inquiry hears. 21/02/24
https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/reviews-scotland-scottish-education-money-schools Emma Seith, How much has been spent reviewing Scottish education? There has been a ‘plethora’ of reviews of Scottish education in recent years – but how much have they cost? 31/01/24
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/scottish-news/kids-young-five-dragged-toxic-32198515 Mary Wright, Kids as young as five dragged into toxic debate on gender-neutral toilets in schools. 25/02/24
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/scottish-news/parents-up-arms-mind-bogglingly-32194823 Ben Boreland, Parents up in arms at ‘mind-bogglingly brainless’ anti-racist indoctrination in Scottish schools. Critical race theory is now embedded in every subject under the SNP’s new ‘anti-racism’ programme, even maths where pupils are taught about how the Nazis or slave owners used statistics. 24/02/24
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The last paragraph (copied below) covers a huge time frame when massive changes occurred. A further article covering how we got from 1960 to GIRFEC is required.
“After the early 1960s, the language of maladjustment disappeared but the concept of ‘The dangerous age of childhood’ remained. It morphed and changed in professional practice, outwith the public gaze, only to re-emerge later in a new metastasised form. In Scotland this is called Getting It Right For Every Child (GIRFEC), and its flagship policy was called the Named Person Scheme.”
This ancient piece goes some way.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2009/07/31/how-social-work-helped-to-undermine-our-sense-of-self/