Scottish Union for Education – Newsletter No87
Scottish Union for Education – Newsletter No87
Newsletter Themes: the war against boys, and the infantilisation of teachers
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This week, Kate Deeming reports on a new parents group being set up and I have written a response to the idea of ‘toxic masculinity’. There are very different perspectives and ideas about this, and none of them are straightforward. I hope this article can kick off a debate about the issue. Finally, an educator in England describes what happens when teachers are infantilised and taught to robotically ‘follow the guidance’ on all issues related to children.
Additionally, I thought it worth, if briefly, pointing out that new findings from Scotland’s Census demonstrate yet again that there is a major problem with the number of people being diagnosed or classifying themselves as having mental health problems. As we have noted here before, there is a serious danger that the therapeutic language and practices that are embedded in society, and most especially within schools, risk encouraging children to think that they are mentally ill.
Most shocking of all were the statistics on 16- to 24-year-olds, where we find that between 2011 and 2022, the number who reported having a mental health condition increased from 2.5% to 15.4%. That’s a 600 percent increase in just over a decade. Covid and the lockdowns had an impact, but this trend was already developing well before this happened.
Tragically, we find that our politicians are entirely incapable of seriously engaging with this issue. Some try to make political points by blaming the government for not providing enough services. Others talk about how this is a good thing and reflects the fact that mental health is less of a stigma today.
But was there really a 600 percent higher level of stigma in 2011 compared with 2022? It makes no sense! The reality is that children are being trained to think of themselves through mental health categories and to learn to interpret difficulties and normal experiences as expressions of ‘disorders’ and illness. (For more on this, read this assessment, which notes, ‘It turns out converting schools into mental health centres is likely contributing to the reported increase in mental health problems in kids, rather than mitigating them’.)
Without a serious discussion about this, it is inevitable that these figures will continue to rise and rise until we will find that we have created a generation of sick young men and women.
Stuart Waiton, Chair of SUE
The Scottish Union for Education will be co-hosting a debate in London on 19 October: Labour’s curriculum review: what can we learn from Scotland? This will be part of a series of more than 100 debates and discussions at the Battle of Ideas. We have discount tickets for SUE supporters, so if you would like attend, get in touch: info@sue.scot.
The Dictatorship of Diversity: Scotland’s new Sectarian State
Kate Deeming takes a look at the new parents’ group being set up in Scotland, a group that will apparently be made up of parents with certain defined ‘characteristics’, or labels. Thus, potentially creating an ‘inclusive’ group that reflects our government’s obsession with diversity, but also one that arguably is not representative of people in Scotland or of the wishes of the vast majority of parents:
The Scottish government has established a new quango: the Scottish Assembly of Parents and Carers. Pitching itself as ‘the first dedicated lived-experience panel for parents and carers in Scotland’, the new organisation sets itself up on the model of disparate impact theory. I have written previously of the danger of adopting policies based on superficial reckoning along racial lines in my review of Heather MacDonald’s book When Race Trumps Merit:
[MacDonald] makes the case that this superficial reckoning along racial lines is systemically bringing … destruction … where skin colour is treated as a scientific qualification and is undermining the very bedrock of what makes societies stable. And in the aftermath, we witness utter destruction to the very people we were purporting to ‘elevate’.
And yet it is these very superficial dividing lines which will be used to build the ‘diverse’ parent group who will inform educational policy. A quick look through their application process (yes, you need to apply) shows the forensic approach (and judgement) they will apply to people based on ‘characteristics’.
In this space, skill and competency do not factor. The fact that people achieve and do good things for people beyond their skin colour, sexuality, or economic standing does not matter. I reflect on my own experience as a low-income white solo mum who managed to raise tens of thousands of pounds and advocate for better standards for children locally. I think of all the parents who give selflessly to their parent councils and parent groups who will be excluded because they do not meet the superficial threshold for the diversity quota. What will be left?
The cynic in me wonders if this will also serve to stop the genuine parental grassroots activism happening, as politically motivated ideologues will claim to be the ‘parent voice’. Will a transgender parent advocate for (further) pro–self ID policies in schools? Will race activists promote more divisive race policies? And then will they claim this is what parents want? Time will tell. Do please apply and keep us posted on your progress.
In the meantime, if you would like to be part of one of SUE’s 12 regional groups please get in touch: psg@sue.scot.
Kate Deeming is SUE’s Parent and Supporters Coordinator. A solo mother to a P7 boy, she is a long-time advocate for children and childhood. Having worked developing performance projects in educational and community settings over three decades, she now has a Substack and podcast, The Pink Elephant.
The war against boys
Stuart Waiton is the Chair of SUE.
Last week, we mentioned a report raising concerns about a third of schools in England teaching the contested idea of ‘toxic masculinity’. This week, we find that high schools in Scotland are surveying children as young as 12, asking if they have been sexually abused. Meanwhile the UK government is considering plans to allow teachers to report misogynistic comments to the government’s anti-terror unit, Prevent!
In 30 Scottish schools, as part of the Equally Safe at School project from Rape Crisis Scotland and the University of Glasgow, a questionnaire was given to children quizzing them about their experiences of sexual abuse. One concern raised about the anonymous questionnaire was why, if a child said that they had been sexually abused, would there be no immediate action or support offered?
However, this begs the question about whether this type of survey should be given to young children at all.
Christopher McGovern of the Campaign for Real Education, for example, believes that ‘It is totally inappropriate to subject children to this type of mass interrogation’, adding that, ‘Many will not understand the terminology and are likely to be frightened and alarmed by it.’ He has a point.
One wonders if parents were asked to give consent for this survey to be done to their children. I suspect that, following the practices of previous surveys including questions on sexual experiences, parents would have had to opt out rather than to actively opt in, a practice that if done by university lecturers, for example, would be deemed unethical and stopped.
Here’s my prediction about the survey. I think Rape Crisis Scotland have set it up and will use it to gain ‘shock horror’ headlines in the press when they publish their report.
The headlines of news articles based on the report’s findings will read something like this: ‘OUTRAGE as “X” percent of girls are found to have been sexually abused in Scottish schools!’ The subtitle is likely to say something like, ‘Rape Crisis Scotland demands, “More must be done to halt the never-ending rise of misogynistic violent and sexual abuse of girls.’’’
The way that this ‘shock horror’ figure will be discovered is due to the feminist methodology of asking questions like this: ‘Has anyone ever done something or forced you to do something sexual?’
Based on the fact that kissing, touching, possibly even crude comments by children could be interpreted as sexual abuse, we gain the ‘shocking’ statistic followed by a call for ever more money for organisations like Rape Crisis Scotland, who want to educate children about ‘correct’ relationships.
I saw something similar to this in 2000, when the NSPCC produced a detailed document that generated the headline, ‘One in 10 teenagers is victim of violent sex’ (Daily Telegraph, 20 November 2000).
Using the same methodology as that being used by Rape Crisis Scotland, where hugging, kissing or being shown pornography when you didn’t want it were described as sexual abuse and/or violence, the NSPCC concluded that the biggest sexual abusers of children is other children, specifically boyfriends.
Here we find that adult categories of violence and sexual abuse were used interchangeably to describe the immature actions and behaviour of children. Specifically, it appeared that boyfriends (and girlfriends), who one assumes were ‘trying it on’, were now defined as the greatest sexual abusers in Britain!
Noticeably, one of the advisers to the NSPCC was Liz Kelly. Kelly’s name pops up a lot when these types of horror stories are ‘discovered’. A well-respected and very successful feminist academic, Kelly, was, for example, invited to speak at the Misogyny and Criminal Justice Working Group that was set up in Holyrood, a group made up almost entirely of what some have called ‘victim feminists’. Kelly believes that we live in a patriarchal world where women are dominated and men dominate; as a result, she argues, there is ‘no clear distinction between consensual sex and rape, but a continuum of pressure, threat, coercion and force’. In other words, she believes that sex and violence are part of a continuum.
But do most people think that there is no clear distinction between sex and rape?
More specifically, do the researchers for Rape Crisis Scotland hold this view? Indeed, we could ask if Holyrood itself is dominated by this perspective; after all, in setting up the Misogyny and Criminal Justice Working Group, Holyrood specified that the group would be looking at this issue through a ‘gendered analytical lens’, in other words, using a specific feminist ideology (one that, it is worth noting, nobody has ever voted for).
In 2013, Christina Hoff Sommers, a critic of modern feminism, wrote The War Against Boys; the book was subtitled, How Misguided Policies are Harming our Young Men. Sommers describes herself as a classical-liberal feminist who believes in equality but who also opposes ‘victim feminism’, which she believes embodies an ‘irrational hostility to men’.
In Scotland, and indeed across the UK, we are arguably seeing the influence of victim feminism being played out in our schools. Helped in part by the obsession with the online ‘sh*t poster’ Andrew Tate, there is a growing belief that boys are getting worse and worse, more and more misogynist, and abusive. As the journalist Ella Whelan noted, the Times has even produced a handy diagram portraying ‘jokes about harassment’ as ‘one step towards groping, flashing and rape’.
As she notes, the reason Tate is treated with such contempt is actually because the norms of British society include a revulsion towards the abuse of women and girls. To believe that boys are robotically being turned into beasts by watching a few hours of TikTok, Whelan notes, is more of a moral panic than a statement of fact or reason.
I mentioned last week that the issue of boys and ‘toxic masculinity’ is well worth debating. Older school pupils should be encouraged, in my opinion, to debate the pornification of society and the potential problems of all the online crap that exists out there.
What we should not be doing is carrying out the ‘mass interrogation’ of children, or forgetting that children are in fact children, and that their immature behaviour should not be viewed through adult eyes or categories. If we continue down our current path, literally treating crass adolescent behaviour as seriously as terrorism, then we risk ending up with something that really does deserve a shock horror headline.
If there are more problems with boys at school, perhaps the problem lies with teachers and their unwillingness or inability to assert their authority over children and to create a disciplined respectful environment?
Perhaps instead of using therapeutic techniques on the one hand, accompanied by the terror-police on the other, schools should encourage young boys to be upstanding gentlemen. But I guess, through the eyes of people like Liz Kelly and her ilk, this approach, which promotes a positive and strong view of masculinity, would be seen as ‘toxic’.
Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps young boys and men really are the women-hating violent abusers that our governments appear to be portraying them as. However, if they are, then I can honestly say from my experience with young men at university, I don’t see it.
But as with all these issues, it should be up to you, the parents, to have a say and to influence school policies and practices. So, get in touch and let us know what you think: info@sue.scot.
Staff training: induction or indoctrination?
An anonymous education worker in England reflects on his first day back at school.
‘Why should schools inform and involve parents when considering the needs of gender-questioning children?’
It’s induction day, and staff are undergoing the annual torture that is statutory safeguarding training. Our DSL (Designated Safeguarding Lead) is testing us on the latest updates on KCSIE (Keeping Children Safe in Education).
‘Anyone?’
‘Er, because some parents have religious and cultural differences?’ fumbles one of my colleagues.
‘Well yes there is that, but…’
‘Because they’re the bloody parents!’ I think to myself, looking incredulously at my colleagues, who seem to be happily going along with it.
The ‘answer’, of course, was whatever it says in this year’s guidance, exactly that and only that. And to be fair, thanks to the findings of the Cass Review, this year’s guidance is much better on the matter of ‘gender-questioning children’ than last year’s guidance. But it seems there is such an absence of common sense, dissent or even disagreement. It’s all about the non-statutory guidance, i.e. the policy, rather than what any of us think might or might not be the right thing to do.
Thankfully, someone called out the ‘right answer’ and everyone clicked their fingers in approval, or relief. And on we went. Now it was the turn of the DDSL (Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead), who kicked off by reassuring us that we were allowed to ‘step outside’ momentarily if we felt uncomfortable or if it was all a bit too much. I was sorely tempted.
‘Everyone, put your heads on the table, facing down, and stick your thumbs in the air only when you agree with the following statements…’
I pretty much zoned out of all his questions after that. Call me old fashioned, but I was starting to feel like I was at play school. Then my attention was jolted by the statement that ‘we monitor all of your social media posts and accounts’. What? Really? Well, it’s no surprise, I guess, but I’d never heard an employer say it openly before. Dear oh dear!
And then there was ‘reporting’: report anything, report everything, don’t be afraid to report your colleagues if you have a ‘concern’. We’ll be worried if you don’t report something. ‘Report me!’
OK, maybe it’s not the Cultural Revolution, and I’m not about to be shot at dawn. Nevertheless, all the snitching and encouraging suspicion, the treating us like children, can really sap one’s morale and destroy any sense of camaraderie and trust between workmates. Every year, safeguarding, and the monitoring and rule-by-policy that goes with it, feels increasingly authoritarian and menacing.
On the whole, I like my school and have a lot of admiration for my young colleagues. They’re decent, work really hard, and are absolutely focused on the kids and their success (which is more than I can say for the 1970s ‘comps’ that educated my generation for working in factories).
So why do they put up with this infantilised and often sinister workplace culture?
It’s tempting to conclude that it’s only with age and experience that it’s possible to grasp what’s wrong, just how far the remit of schools has expanded into all the wrong places – our families, our social lives, even our innermost feelings and our mental health.
Or perhaps it’s partly because too few people are asking questions, instead putting their heads down and keeping out of trouble at work? We certainly can’t look to the old education unions for an alternative. If we can’t find ways to present young teachers with alternative ideas, then even the most warped ideas and policies will continue to get a free ride.
The formation of the Scottish Union for Education is a really encouraging development and perhaps a model for education workers here in England. If we don’t do something, then who knows what kind of whacky ideas and crackpot policies we will be clicking our fingers to come next September?
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/3WGxC Michael Mosbacher, Self-sabotaging Labour is finally waking up from its private school nightmare. Our leaders have been pushing their devastating VAT policy in the name of equality. 29/09/24
https://archive.is/B46bX Michael Deacon, Sending 70 per cent of young people to university will be the ruin of Britain. In our trade-starved economy we must do more than just saddle students with a sociology degree and a lifetime of a debt. 03/10/24
Andrew Doyle, The Shakespearean Tragedies. My new series of lectures for the Peterson Academy. 03/10/24
https://archive.is/HjZdK Anna Richards, Maths is stressful. That’s why it’s necessary for children to learn that they can’t be good at everything. 01/10/24
https://archive.is/HkKQW#selection-2313.4-2317.142 Poppy Wood, Free speech row at Durham University after debating society blocked from campus events. The registered charity hosts weekly events and debates and says its recent guests include former Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson. 02/10/24
https://www.scotpag.com/post/how-captured-are-our-councils-and-public-services?utm_campaign=d2bbaec6-948a-4ad7-92d5-9461bd6c92c3&utm_source=so&utm_medium=mail&cid=8ba70ec0-5e5a-451a-a2b5-fa029719421b scotPAG, How captured are our Councils and public services? 06/10/24
https://archive.is/dka8I Nick Gutteridge, Sex education lessons should be scrapped, says Miriam Cates. Ex-Tory MP warns against gender identity politics, urging teachers instead to focus on ‘knowledge-based’ subjects. 27/09/24
Andrew Doyle, The school chaplain accused of terrorism. The Reverend Dr Bernard Randall was reported to Prevent, the the government’s anti-terrorism watchdog, because he gave a sermon which questioned gender ideology. 07/10/24
https://unherd.com/newsroom/cheltenham-literature-festival-to-censor-harmful-gender-speech/?fbclid=IwY2xjawFzJf9leHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHbZDyYBVluwJNCwXBpVgddFey87yxVeJZmbLGRZ4mFaGmy8dozJenlDHGw_aem_TAWdKMqZ3NQiaZzOa3LzHg Joan Smith, Cheltenham Literature Festival to target ‘harmful’ gender speech. 04/10/24
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