Scottish Union for Education – Newsletter No62

Newsletter Themes: hate crimes, the reasonable person, and open debate

Illustration: Alan Dunlop

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This week, we have seen a tremendous outpouring of opposition to the terrible Hate Crime Act. Campaign groups from across Scotland and the UK gathered outside the Scottish Parliament on Monday. It was fantastic to be surrounded by people taking a stand for free speech. I have campaigned for equal rights for all my adult life – the Scottish government Hate Crime Law is not about equality. This Act is not about gay rights or anti-racism; it’s certainly not protecting women or women-only spaces.

The purpose of the law seems to be to get us all to speak the same language as our political masters, to give up on our old-fashioned ways of understanding the world. Values such as nation, family, neighbourhood, church, even reason and rationality are now deemed deeply unfashionable, ‘exclusionary’ and potentially criminal. Even sex is too binary and outdated, rendering meaningless ideas of biological sex differences, homosexuality, and same-sex attraction.

The Hate Crime Act is a spectacular attack on our liberties. It assumes that we, the public, can’t get along without layers of regulations to control and monitor our words and our actions. Government has encouraged us to look at each other with suspicion rather than seeing what we have in common.  

This distrust – let’s call it hatred - of ordinary people is infecting all areas of life, even our schools and colleges. Older readers will remember a time when people didn’t look on everyone outside their family as a stranger, when we had a spontaneous sense of solidarity with people around us, when we tolerated dissent and presumed that people were innocent until proven guilty. SUE wants better education; but we won’t be able to get it until we can discuss freely among ourselves and hold our politicians to account.

This week Stuart Waiton, Chair of SUE, has been taking a closer look at the Hate Crime Act and the way in which our shared idea of a reasonable person has been replaced by a new set of assumptions about what is socially acceptable. Also, Kirsty Miller reports back on the way she has been ostracised over the past few weeks by psychologists and academics keen to put an end to open discussion.

Penny Lewis, Editor

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What is a reasonable person today?

Stuart Waiton, Chair of SUE, has been taking a closer look at the Hate Crime Act and the way in which our shared idea of a reasonable person has been replaced by a new set of assumptions about what is socially acceptable.

A major concern that has and is being raised about the Hate Crime Act is that it will be used politically to punish those who do not reflect and follow the values of the authorities.

For example, feminists and others who challenge transgender ideology feel that they may be targeted for not accepting the idea that a person can be born in the wrong body. And in education, teachers, lecturers, parents, or school and university students may fear the consequences of not using the preferred wrong-sex pronouns of others.

These concerns are based on the reality that certain values are being pushed by the authorities, while those who question those values are already either punished or looked down upon.

The Hate Crime Act, in this respect, is replicating what is happening in schools and universities, where we see transgender ideology promoted through the curriculum; or more widely, where we find highly questionable ideologies to do with race and racism pushed through policies to decolonise the curriculum or to introduce so-called anti-racism into every subject.

Over the past decade or so, we have seen a transformation in the use of law, so that rather than new laws being made that reflect the values of the public, they are self-consciously being used to ‘change the culture’. As a result, what we find is that the voting patterns in Holyrood are in direct opposition to how the public would vote.

We saw this, for example, with the Named Person scheme, something that three-quarters of the public opposed but the same percentage of politicians supported. The new smacking ban, that made even the lightest of smacks into a criminal offence, was similarly opposed by the public but supported by the political class.

With other laws and policies, we find this repeated situation where the elites talk about the need to ‘send out a message’ and then use force and policing to ‘change the culture’ of a public whom they believe are prejudiced and abusive and need to be pushed to change their ways.

What we end up with is a two-pronged approach by the political, legal and educational authorities, where on the one hand, the public is forced to understand that they must change their values or be punished, while on the other hand, at school, children are encouraged to change their understanding through a new, and largely dogmatic, social justice value system that has been embedded in the curriculum and developed into a new ethos that schools are being pushed to adopt.

Humza Yousaf and others claim that too much is being made of the Hate Crime Act and point to the fact that punishment will be meted out only if a ‘reasonable person’ would think that what has been reported is both hateful and would create fear and alarm. But there are two problems with this argument.

First, we know from experience, by watching the actions and reactions of transgender rights (and other) activists, that what many would think of as fair comment yesterday has suddenly become seen as hateful, offensive and damaging. Indeed, not only are words increasingly said to be a form of violence, but we now also hear the argument that ‘silence is violence’, so that even saying nothing, for some at least, can be interpreted as criminal.

Moreover, we now have the problem that the very idea of a ‘reasonable person’ no longer works in law. The reason for this, as demonstrated by the new use of law to ‘change the culture’, is that we live in a divided society – one in which the elites’ values no longer reflect those of the public but are in fact set directly against them.

In a development most noticeable from the 1990s, the commonality between the values of those in authority and those of the public has been fracturing. As a result, we find that laws, as discussed above, are supported by the political class and opposed by most Scottish people. Given this situation, it is understandable, and arguably accurate, for many people to think that the new law about ‘hate’ will be used in a way that appears reasonable to the professional and legal classes but entirely unreasonable to the rest of us.

In other words, the Hate Crime Act risks being another extension of the elites’ value system forced onto us through the use of the police, the courts, and ultimately the prison system.

The importance of the opposition to this Act, in this regard, cannot be overstated, because it is only this opposition that can hold the bias of the elites to scrutiny and potentially prevent its politicised use by those such as Yousaf, whose idea of being reasonable is very different from ours.

Reflecting the values divide in society, the Hate Crime Act is both dangerous and divisive. It risks criminalising children, whose teachers will be pushed to report name calling to the police; it is a threat to academic freedom, as universities voluntarily become ‘hate reporting hubs’ and pass on unsubstantiated claims of ‘hate’ to the police; and it is a danger to parents and the public, whose common-sense understanding of things like biological sex are no longer deemed ‘reasonable’ by an elite class who, at the moment, have the power to enforce their values onto society.

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‘Compassionate’ psychologists attack a dissenting colleague

Kirsty Miller is a psychologist who has come up against those within her discipline who are so hostile to criticism and debate that they will do as much as they ‘compassionately’ can to ensure that people with views that contradict their own don’t get a hearing.

I have been teaching psychology for over a decade, and during that time, I have seen a number of changes, both within the discipline and in how it is taught. I believe that many of these changes have come about as a result of the adoption of social justice ideology into psychology, academia, and society as a whole.

A few years back, I raised some of my concerns to the governing body of psychology in the UK, the British Psychological Society (BPS), in the form of an open letter which was published on their website. I wrote about the harms that increased politicisation – specifically the adoption of social justice ideology – has caused the discipline. I argued that social justice ideology undermines the scientific integrity of the discipline as well as psychologists’ ability to teach and practise appropriately.

Anyone remotely conversant with the principles of social justice ideology will understand my argument, as it is an ideology which privileges feelings over facts (in psychology, translating into the promotion of non-evidence–based ideas such as implicit bias, microaggressions, trigger warnings, ‘anti-racism’, ‘affirmation’ of gender dysphoric patients, etc.). This is clearly at odds with the fact that any science-based discipline has a duty to be based on evidence, and to draw on objective (shared) reality. A discipline’s failure to do this demonstrates a failure to be scientific.

Clearly, there are also implications for teaching and learning to the extent that social justice ideology prevents the discussion of ideas that it considers ‘dangerous’ or hurtful. It leads to censorship, and claims of bigotry, rather than rational, evidence-based discussion of the relative merits and flaws of different perspectives. Teaching and learning are also impossible in such a situation, with students being prevented from even viewing different perspectives of the world, let alone being given the opportunity to engage with and think about them. Indoctrination, censorship, and denial of truth have replaced evidence-based, open-minded, critical thinking.

To avoid causing potential and genuine harms to patients, again, care should be evidence-based, appropriate, and tailored to the individual. Instead, social justice ideology calls for a one-size-fits-all approach: one in which illness is understood and treated in terms of membership of groups (allegedly oppressed) and victimhood. Ultimately, the social justice approach to mental illness is the antithesis of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), the current gold standard of evidence-based treatment. Furthermore, it encourages illness, powerlessness, and harmful thinking, rather than the treatment of these issues.

To return to my experience, the responses to my letter to the BPS realised my concerns... I was called a racist, and a bigot, and was told that my views were ‘problematic’ and shouldn’t be published. The BPS removed them from the website, issuing a grovelling apology to those who had been ‘harmed’ by reading my letter. Readers were apparently highly distressed and angry, and many tried to claim that psychology had a ‘duty’ to promote social justice to serve our clients (clearly ignoring all the concerns I had raised in my letter). Unsurprisingly, none of my points were addressed, and the only responses I received revolved around name calling and misrepresentation. My worries about the impact of social justice on the field were demonstrated beautifully: advocates could, or would, not engage with the ideas – they refused to acknowledge them, in favour of misrepresentation and performative outrage.

How, I wondered, could such closed-minded, judgemental individuals cope with the complex relationships and interactions they would encounter when working with patients? How could they treat them appropriately if they refuse to even countenance the existence of approaches or beliefs that aren’t their own? How could they support distressed patients who may be relaying genuinely distressing stories if they can’t even cope with being exposed to different perspectives? Similar questions could be raised about how it would be possible for them to educate with this mindset. Will they ‘cancel’ a student who asks a question they don’t like? Will they teach only their own pet theories and beliefs? Will they punish students who question them?

In the intervening years, there have been answers to many of these questions. We have seen the increasing politicisation of trainee psychology courses, with programmes encouraging activism and the primacy of ‘lived experience’. At the same time, attempts have been made to undermine the importance of evidence-based ‘western’ approaches. Black trainees are not to be placed in ‘white rural’ areas for their work experience; instead, safe spaces and support groups are to be provided for them, and even recruitment to training courses is based on group membership.

In the real world, we hear reports from experienced psychologists who say that their young employees refuse to take certain jobs, meaning that other clinicians must cover their workload. Some patients are given inappropriate care, and others struggle to gain access to treatment because of their group characteristics (with reports of men experiencing barriers to, or unsympathetic, treatment). Indeed, trainees and newly qualified clinicians are prone to blaming an individual’s problems on their group membership, society or the government, rather than offering appropriate evidence-based, individualised treatment.

In education, teaching materials are censored and removed on students’ demands. Lecturers are steered away from discussing controversial topics and have even been told not to inform students of evidence that contradicts the current narrative. We have had reports of staff being made to apologise to students for making evidence-based statements, and soon students may be criminalised for saying anything that is perceived as hateful.

Recently, I sent information about a SUE conference to a group of Scottish psychology teachers and received similar responses (see SUE newsletter no. 58). It was made very clear to me that I shouldn’t even be allowed to share information about an event that questioned social justice ideas. As before, there was no engagement with any intellectual case or argument, no attempt to engage or respond to facts; there were just misrepresentations and attempts to shut down views that were not ‘approved’ of.

Later, information about me was even shared by a Scottish educator in the same mailing list after I had been removed from it. It read:

Hi all, for those of you unaware Kirsty Miller (removed from this thread) came into a lot of heat back in 2020 when she wrote an article that was initially published and then removed from the BPS ‘The Psychologist’ magazine. At the time, many of us University of Dundee psychology alumni where to the BPS (as well as the university of Dundee which she was initially associated to and where she achieved her PhD) highlighting concerns at her beliefs and noting that it went against the protection of students and staff wellbeing, as we felt that social justice was an important aspect of being a psychologist or working [in the] field, and that in fact, psychology and politics were in many ways associated – especially in an applied, clinical settling (but also, in research, in our understanding of theories, the voices that get amplified etc. It is both alarming and yet deeply upsetting that she is currently working at Dundee and Angus College, and in a position to use her voice to try to push some of these beliefs on other lecturers in the field. I will say that the responses in this email chain have been compelling and have certainly made me very proud to be part of a such a caring and compassionate group of critically thinking educators.

To me, the letter highlights the consequences of adopting social justice ideology; it is cowardly, it is stupid, it is self-righteous, and it is completely lacking in self-awareness (I don’t think anyone would say that speaking about others behind their backs is ‘compassionate’).

It is no surprise that the Scottish education system is the way it is when our ‘educators’ cannot cope with people who offer a different perspective. When we have individuals who ‘teach’ youngsters but cannot even read an argument, let alone respond to it, how can we expect our youth to engage with ideas? How can we expect youngsters to solve disputes with their peers, and how can we expect them to grow into well-functioning adults, when the adults around them consider ideas harmful, and the people who espouse them to be purged from public discourse?

The irony, of course, is that the individuals who espouse social justice beliefs genuinely consider themselves to be ‘compassionate’, ‘caring’ and professional individuals. However, the evidence demonstrates that they are anything but. Until we prioritise standards, evidence, reality and objectivity, rather than nebulous principles that laughably proclaim to centre around ‘kindness’, we are going to end up with a population of fragile, closed-minded, mentally ill individuals – and nothing about that is kind or compassionate.

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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/0Xr3i Andrew Learmonth, Hate Crime: Questions over Police Scotland's recording of hate crimes. 29/03/24

https://archive.is/xvgII Andrew Learmonth, Holyrood quits Stonewall Diversity Champions programme. 27/03/24

https://unherd.com/2024/04/scotlands-hateful-hate-crime-law/ Kathleen Stock, Scotland’s hateful hate-crime law. Ordinary citizens are viewed with disdain. 01/04/24

https://archive.is/pIK4c Telegraph Reporters, Teacher banned for saying Islam would take over and Westernised girls were ‘lunatics’. Professional misconduct panel sacked Aqib Khan for ‘undermining fundamental British values’. 01/04/24

https://substack.com/home/post/p-142388163?source=queue Dave Clements, Extremism at the school gates. When it comes to safeguarding have we got our priorities right? 31/03/24

https://archive.is/2024.03.30-184159/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/you-cant-police-the-world-barrister-takes-on-insane-hate-crime-law-xdsnbsnmq Mike Wade, ‘You can’t police the world’: barrister takes on ‘insane’ hate crime law. Sarah Phillimore, an English lawyer and women’s rights activist, threatens to defy new legislation by retweeting ruling over allegedly transphobic comments. 30/03/24

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13053755/As-standards-slip-SNP-pushes-lessons-Scots.html Graham Grant, As standards slip, SNP pushes more lessons... in Scots. Teachers are being encouraged to ‘embed’ Scots language into classroom – despite literacy standards falling. 06/02/24

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13253689/Pro-Palestine-Teachers-Union-debate-not-circulate-educational-resources-members-increase-understanding-Palestine-Israel.html Eleanor Harding, Pro-Palestine Teacher's Union to debate whether or not they should circulate 'educational' resources to members to 'increase understanding of Palestine and Israel. NEU bosses want teachers to 'increase understanding' of the plight of Gaza. 30/03/24

https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/teacher-loses-tribunal-after-refusing-to-affirm-girls-transition-5617057?utm_source=ref_share&src_src=ref_share&utm_campaign=mb-cc&src_cmp=mb-cc Rachel Roberts, Teacher Loses Tribunal After Refusing to Affirm Girl’s ‘Transition’. Kevin Lister said he had safeguarding concerns about a teenage girl being put on a path to surgery and sterility and claims the school had a ‘pro-trans’ ethos. 29/03/24

https://archive.is/2024.03.30-121346/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-muhammad-cartoon-teacher-was-thrown-under-bus-by-his-school-gj0frl2h2#selection-2617.0-2623.138 Charlotte Wace, Mario Ledwith, Ian Leonard. How Muhammad cartoon teacher was ‘thrown under bus’ by his school. An official report has revealed the devastating impact of the row on his life – and how interference from activists inflamed the situation. 30/03/2024

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