Scottish Union for Education – Newsletter No118
Themes: transgender zoos, the ‘cultural philistinism’ in schools, and slavery – why history matters
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This week SUE’s History Correspondent writes about the rise and fall of the transatlantic slave trade. History is arguably the most important subject for adults and children, not least because it can help us understand both our past and our current world. However, today, not only do we appear to know less about our past, but we are increasingly using it in a way that avoids facing the world as it is. For activists and educators, history appears to be something that is used to both hide from the present and to avoid making moral judgements about the here and now.
Before we get into this discussion, I’d like to thank the families who have contacted us about the transgendering of Edinburgh Zoo.
Despite the Supreme Court ruling that raises questions about transgender ideology and the claim that ‘sex’ is not binary, we still find that organisations in Scotland are continuing to fund organisations that train their staff to believe the opposite. We noted earlier this month, for example, that the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) was on track to adopt the LGBT Youth Scotland Charter.
Unsurprising, we now find that there are families who have decades of commitment to Edinburgh Zoo but find themselves in a position where they can no longer support the work of the RZSS. One concerned parent has not only cancelled her membership with the Zoo but has drafted a letter to encourage others to do likewise. As she notes, there really is nothing in the charitable objective of the RZSS that requires them to sponsor the transgender ideology of LGBT Youth Scotland. After all, it is not exactly obvious what ‘promoting the conservation of species and habitats’ has to do with promoting wallcharts of myriad Pride flags (including the Aromantic Pride Flag!) or celebrating an organisation that appears to have no understanding of biology of any description. If you are a member of the RZSS and would like to send a letter of concern, you can find one here.
Aromantic Pride Flag
We would also like to thank the parents and teachers who have contacted us about the state of English education in schools.
As we noted last week, it has been drawn to our attention that children in Scotland can pass their National 5 qualification without ever reading a novel. But it gets worse, as one teacher testifies below.
I am an English teacher in Scotland, and I can confirm what you have written about N5 English. Indeed, it’s worse – you can get right up to Higher level without studying a novel.
I teach in a ‘good’ state school and plenty of pupils will have walked out our doors in recent years with Higher English (perhaps even an A grade), having studied no more than six poems and one short story (circa seven pages long) in total during S4 and S5.
I have resisted such methods, instead insisting upon the study of a classic novel with my Higher class, but I’m starting to see the outworking of the lack of rigour in the system; increasingly, many pupils simply struggle to deal with such a lengthy text.
Additionally, a parent wrote the following.
Thanks for your essential work highlighting the dire state of Scottish education.
I’m a parent of secondary school children, four of whom have passed through Edinburgh secondary schools recently and one of whom is sitting Highers just now.
I can indeed confirm that all my children have sat, passed and attained the highest grades in Nat 5 and Higher English without requiring to read through any book cover to cover.
I find this an appalling state of affairs and deeply troubling for the future ability of young people to process large amounts of text and a coherent line of reasoning or developed plot.
The constant lowering of basic standards has shifted up several gears in the past 5 years, and young people are being betrayed by the powers that we entrust with their education. It is past time for a thorough revolution of the system and a purge of local authority control of schools.
May I add that my local primary school, along with hundreds of others, was in recent years offered free Bibles by a Bible Society I support. These were King James Authorised Version Bibles and offered to all school leavers. Headteachers have refused this offer without explanation. Given the central place the Bible has in Scottish culture and language for centuries, and the key place the KJV has in the English language, is this refusal not indicative of both religious bigotry and Christophobia, but also of cultural Philistinism?
Please keep up the good work.
As well as the points raised about the philistine culture being developed in schools, this letter raises some interesting thoughts about the role of religion, even from an educational perspective.
I am not a religious person, but one thing I have noticed, especially in my reading of classic novels over the last 30 years, is the significance of religion and religious symbolism in many of the best of them. Without even a basic understanding of the history of Christianity, indeed of the struggle to find meaning in life, the deeper meaning in the writing about the human condition is something that will often be missed. For example, one of the greatest British novelists of the twentieth century, Graham Greene, can never be fully grasped without an understanding of his own struggle to find meaning in life and through religion.
If you are interested in writing about the role of religion in education, and in schools, please get in touch. And if you are an English teacher or indeed a parent with a passion for novels and reading, or have concerns about what is happening in schools, contact us at info@sue.scot.
As well as English, another great subject that can help us understanding humanity, is History.
In a number of conversations and events over the last few weeks, it occurred to me that history appears to be everywhere, but also, strangely, nowhere, in the world today. Perhaps nowhere is a little overstated, but from my experience as a lecturer, I can tell you that it is rare to find a student who knows much about the past. But at the same time, the past is increasingly used to take a stand on more and more key events today.
The issue of slavery is a case in point, something that children do receive a significant amount of information about through our education system, and in conversations about racism today, even in the UK, the issue of slavery is often the starting point for those who want to talk about ‘institutional’ or ‘systemic’ racism.
I had an argument with my younger brother about this issue, where I noted that when I was involved in anti-racist work, we never talked about slavery; in fact, to my knowledge, nobody did. There were no activist groups campaigning around it, little or nothing being written on the subject, no slogans or arguments about racism that started with the issue of slavery. Rather, racism was about the here and now – about inequality in the workplace, or police violence, or racist immigration controls. All the discussions were about the current state of affairs and what could be done about it.
That was the 1980s. Today, in comparison, forty years on, when slavery is even further away from our actual ‘lived experience’, the talk about slavery seems to be increasing all the time, but why?
One reason may well be that actual, visible and identifiable racism – from the police, immigration officials, employers and so on – is far harder to find. But there also appears to be something else going on, something more akin to a form of moralising than of political anti-racism, something through which a new type of original sin is found, not in the activities or even the beliefs of people today but in their essence – in their ‘whiteness’.
In case you are unaware, every school subject in Scotland is meant to incorporate an anti-racist dimension. This is not any old anti-racism, nor is it the colour-blind anti-racism that many of us grew up with. Rather, this is the ‘anti-racism’ of critical race theory (CRT).
CRT, an outlook adopted in books like the bestseller White Fragility, is, at times, a confusing theory. It appears to be highly sociological and political, talking about the systemic nature of racism in society and connecting this to the history of racism and oppression, particularly in the United States. But at the same time as being abstract, social and historical, it picks up the weight of history and places it inside individuals, both black and white. In so doing, it is no longer the institutions of society that become the focus of attention, nor is it the ideas that people believe that are key. Rather, CRT understands that every individual in ‘the West’ is now either embodied with white privilege or a victim of it.
As a result, history, in a literal sense is something that happened in the past – indeed, in the distant past – is both set in stone (slavery happened, with all the barbarity it entailed), while also being brought back to life through the ‘lived experience’ of all black people, and in the embodied privilege of all white Westerners.
Rather than make history, this approach encourages a sense that history, literally and directly, makes us. Of course, this starts to get a bit confusing when we think of a five-year-old kid, on an estate like Easterhouse in Glasgow, embodying ‘white privilege’. But CRT activists can always turn to their abstract reasoning about whiteness in general, and about the history of slavery, to shoehorn in some general sense of privilege even when at the level of the individual it makes no sense.
Tragically, this approach can encourage two overlapping sentiments in society: white guilt and black victimhood. It inevitably separates people due to their essential nature based on colour and on a history that cannot be changed. It also depoliticises the issue of racism, undermining the understanding that racism is an idea or belief that can be challenged, by turning it into an ever-present and unresolvable embodying of history.
Even more tragic and degrading than the recreation of racial separatism that CRT promotes is the breakdown of basic standards and the expected behaviour of different ‘communities’ or ‘groups’. This helps to explain why the brutality of the ‘grooming’ gangs was able to go relatively unchecked for two decades and arguably helps to explain the significant increase in young black men in London who are responsible for so much knife crime in our capital.
Being civil and being civilised is not a white thing or a Western thing – it is a human thing. It is enhanced through education, through our engagement with the struggle to grasp the meaning of being human – a struggle that has been at the centre of religious thought, that can be found in all the great novels of the past 200 years, and that is enhanced through a genuine engagement with history.
At the same time, the meaning of civilisation is not a static thing; it is something that must be made and made again, something that has and will change with each generation. But for this to happen we need to take our history seriously rather than be weighed down by it. Only when History is treated with respect can we both understood it and make it.
If there are any History teachers out there who would like to help us understand what is and is not happening in schools today, do get in touch info@sue.scot.
The Royal Navy and the abolition of slavery
Stephen Griffith is SUE’s History Correspondent.
Back in 2006, work began on building an airport for the small Southeast Atlantic island of St Helena. Soon into the project, human remains were discovered. Over the following years the skeletons of 325 individuals were uncovered. They were mostly young people, all under 45. One-third were under 12. Where did they come from? Were they the victims of a forgotten plague or genocide? Research confirmed that they were people rescued in a daring humanitarian mission. These people were Africans, sold into slavery to European merchants to be shipped across the Atlantic. Who were their rescuers? The British Royal Navy. Sadly, many were so weakened by the time of their rescue that they did not live to feel the joy of freedom. In all, about 8,000 liberated Africans were buried on St Helena.
It is well known that from 1562 Britain was heavily involved in the transatlantic slave trade. In all, over three million slaves were shipped from Africa by ships under British control under the auspices of the British government. This made Britain the most involved European nation in the slave trade after Portugal. The evil of this trade cannot be overstated, and the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade remains a dark spot on our history. In fact, Britain would be one of the first nations to officially recognise this. Following a vigorous public campaign, the British slave trade was abolished in 1807. Further campaigning would lead to the full abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833.
But that was not the end of the story. Other nations would continue the slave trade. Brazil did not abolish slavery until 1888, the last country in the Americas to do so. Meanwhile the Arab East African slave trade would continue into the twentieth century.
British abolitionists were not content with abolishing slavery merely in British territories. Political pressure was put on other nations to follow suit. Part of this campaign was a mission to intercept slave ships, rescue slaves, and liberate them.
The Royal Navy West Africa Squadron was established for this purpose in 1808. The targets were mainly foreign slavers. However, some British slavers had illegally continued their trade in human beings by deceptively sailing under foreign flags.
It began with two naval warships supported by two private vessels in naval service. This may sound like a meagre beginning, but it must be appreciated that this was during the height of the Napoleonic War (1803–1815), and Britain’s navy was greatly needed to keep off French invasion. On the other hand, the fact that Britain was prepared to commit naval vessels to operations not connected with the war effort shows a considerable commitment to the cause of liberating African slaves. After the war the West Africa Squadron was expanded.
In 1818 the distinguished officer Sir George Collier was appointed Commadore of the West Africa Squadron, commanding six vessels. These ships patrolled 3000 miles of Africa’s west coast. Bases were established at either end of the coast, as well as on St Helena. Slavers responded by using faster ships, such as Baltimore clippers, with which to outrun the naval patrols. In some tragic cases, pursued slavers would throw live slaves overboard to evade capture. The Squadron responded by using captured slave clippers against the slavers. The most famous such ship was HMS Black Joke, a Brazilian slaver captured in 1827. Within 12 months Black Joke captured 11 slave ships. From the 1840s, as technology progressed, the Squadron began to use steamships, which were faster and could move nearer to the coast and even travel up rivers to intercept slavers. About one-fifth of the Squadron’s sailors are estimated to have been Africans themselves. Their knowledge of the West African coast and its rivers was invaluable.
Throughout its 60-year history, the West Africa Squadron would liberate around 150,000 slaves. Sadly, it was not possible in the circumstances to return the liberated slaves to their homes. Around 60,000 liberated slaves were landed in Siera Leone, a colony Britain had established for liberated slaves. Others were landed on St Helena or other British territories. The descendants of liberated slaves still live in these places today. This brings us back to the unearthing of the graves on St Helena. In a fitting ceremony, the remains were reburied in 2022.
In the grand scheme of things, 150,000 liberated slaves may seem a small number compared with the total number of slaves shipped across the Atlantic – some 12 million over 400 years. At the same time, the diplomatic pressure that the Squadron brought to bear on international shipping would hasten the gradual abolition of the transatlantic slave trade by other nations.
In modern discussion about Britain’s historic role in the transatlantic slave trade, the heroic effort of the West Africa Squadron deserves to be remembered. This is not to make light of Britain’s legacy of involvement in the slave trade. Yet at the same time, the West Africa Squadron was an effort by a country to right its own wrongs and ensure that the same evil was not continued by others. This effort was at some cost to Britain both financially and in the lives of personnel. The Squadron is estimated to have cost 2% of Britain’s GDP – in today’s terms, the equivalent of the UK’s current defence budget. Some 1,600 Royal Navy sailors died on duty in the West Africa Squadron from disease or hostilities from slavers.
For younger readers (12+) wishing to learn more about the history of the West Africa Squadron, I recommend the article by Historic UK published in 2023 by Jessica Brain: The West Africa Squadron. One of the best books on the subject remains W. E. F. Ward’s The Royal Navy and the Slavers: The Suppression of the Atlantic Slave Trade, first published in 1969. More on the discovery, interpretation and reburial of the slave graves on St Helena can be found at https://sainthelenaisland.info/slavegraves.htm.
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/iUeE5 Dana Goldstein, Has America Given Up on Children’s Learning? Politicians used to care how much students learn. Now, to find a defense of educational excellence, we have to look beyond politics. 10/05/25
https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/05/12/edinburgh-harry-potter-tour-lgbtq-pride-jk-rowling/ Sophie Perry, A tour guide in Edinburgh will replace Harry Potter themed tours of the city with LGBTQ+ ones for Pride Month, after feeling “conflict” about the personal opinions of author JK Rowling. 12/05/25
https://archive.is/DCMkj Michael Searles, ‘Trans toddlers’ allowed gender treatment on NHS. Under-sevens to be seen by clinics as health service ‘caves in’ to activists on age limits. 15/05/25
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/05/15/the-greens-a-party-of-thickos-cranks-and-cultists/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR7271JEr1oGETrJjH9766Q5UDISBcr3LupswgR-O0DWuuTz0Vz3RUIGTmz-Uw_aem_jhkQnl4kkE4Gl_L1jm-M6w Gareth Roberts, The Greens: a party of thickos, cranks and cultists. Outgoing co-leader Carla Denyer is still befuddled by the concept of biological sex. 15/05/25
https://archive.is/LrmzY Andrew Learmonth, NHS Fife bid to block livestream of Peggie hearing dismissed. 14/05/25
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/book-of-the-day/2025/05/modernity-has-killed-the-private-life Nikhil Krishnan, Modernity has killed the private life. Society is forgetting why time away from the public gaze matters. 14/05/25
https://archive.is/z2lBV Poppy Wood, Children to be taught to show some ‘grit’. Pupils need more robust mental health, say ministers in drive to tackle worklessness crisis. 16/05/25
https://schoolsweek.co.uk/ministers-are-wrong-to-let-an-app-undermine-results-day/ Jon Bryan, Ministers are wrong to let an app undermine results day. There’s a certain hypocrisy in rolling out an app that will keep kids at home while professing concern about their mental health. 16/05/25
https://archive.is/Te6W5 Jon Hasson, We shouldn’t downplay the risks of ADHD medication. Surely there are other – better – ways to help a child who is struggling at school than to accept medication as an easy option. 06/05/25
https://archive.is/ackqS Patrick Sawer, Union tells teachers to bring ‘Palestine struggle’ into schools. Critics accuse NEU of spreading ‘brainwashing’ propaganda about conflict in Gaza. 17/05/25
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