Scottish Union for Education - Newsletter No6
Newsletter Themes: The war against boys, a lost moral language, and forcing the idea of a rape culture
In this week’s Substack Stuart Waiton looks at the war against boys that is moving into the classroom; Richard Lucas, leader of the Scottish Family Party, discusses the loss of a moral language in schools; and teacher Rob Willson describes the forced discussion about rape culture that equates the idea of ‘boys will be boys’ with the crime of rape.
How talk of toxic masculinity degrades both boys and girls
Stuart Waiton is Chairperson of the Scottish Union for Education
It is occasionally confusing to try to identify modern political trends. For example, there appears to be a strange attempt at times to clamp down on women who simply want to state that there is such a thing as a woman. But there also appears to be an attack on masculinity and what it means to be a man.
Even the very word ‘woman’, for example, is sometimes changed today by trans rights activists who want to replace it with the unpronounceable ‘womxn’, as they see this word as somehow being more inclusive. (Interestingly, this new word was originally invented by a section of feminists in the 1970s to get rid of the ‘man’ in woman).
Some of today’s attacks on womanhood could be interpreted as reflective of an emerging war against women and girls, something that is perhaps part of a war of the sexes. However, at the very same time that womanhood is being questioned and at times dismissed, we also have what some have described as a ‘war against boys’.
We saw this for example in the notorious Gillette advert (in 2019) that ridiculed and denounced men who say things such as ‘Boys will be boys’. The advert interconnected with the #MeToo movement and with the understanding that boys are educated by their fathers to be bullies and misogynists: We have to change, the advert tells us, because it’s not alright to harass women.
Up to this point I hadn’t realised what I was doing to my son, but thanks to this American brand of safety razors, I now understand how to be a good father. Thanks Gillette!
But, as we can see in Rob Willson’s article below, we don’t have to go to America or to adverts or popular culture to see how the portrayal of men and boys is often so one-sidedly negative, because the same message is coming from our politicians and is being embedded in schools.
One of the clearest academic expressions that demonstrates the demonisation of men and boys is the term ‘toxic masculinity’. If you do a Google Ngrams search, which generates a graph of the trending use of certain words, we find that this idea of toxic masculinity didn’t exist until the 1990s, but even then, it was rarely used. But from around 2013 there has been an explosion in the use of this term. Indeed, so fast has this term become normalised that on the graph it is represented as almost a straight line soaring ever upwards.
Of course, if you read around this idea of toxic masculinity, as often as not, what you find is not some particularly base and crass expression of manhood, but rather the apparent problem is quite simply masculinity, in and of itself.
In Scotland, over the past few years, a working group on misogyny has been meeting in Holyrood. Made up almost exclusively of what I would call victim feminists, the group has included inputs from people such as Professor Liz Kelly, who has described child abuse and incest as a normal extension of the patriarchal family structure.
The Scottish parliament itself established this group as one that should adopt a ‘gendered’ approach to the question of misogyny – a gendered approach being one that presumes that women and girls have ‘vulnerabilities’ generated by the unequal gender relations in society. To put it another way, the system of government in Scotland has embedded an approach that presumes that the problem for women and girls is that their apparent vulnerabilities are exploited by men and boys – an approach that I would suggest is sexist itself, to both men and women.
Within Scottish education there are various initiatives to overcome gender inequality in schools and universities. This despite the fact that it is boys, and working class boys in particular, who are well known to be the group who are falling behind.
More troubling for me as a criminologist is the way that misogyny, or what some define as misogyny, is being criminalised, with the focus often being on language and behaviour that was previously understood to be either crude or simply a form of language that the professional classes have now defined as ‘inappropriate’.
When it comes to children, this modern policing of language often risks misinterpreting and politicising the immature behaviour of boys and seeing in this behaviour ‘gender inequality’, and through the toxic imagination of individuals such as Liz Kelly and her friends in Holyrood, and the marketing team at Gillette, the wife beaters and abusers of the future.
Ironically, part of this politicisation of childhood, where we dump our ideological presumptions onto even small children, is that ‘gender stereotypes’ are now seen as something that need to be educated out of children. One outcome, as we have seen, is that we end up not only with a potential war against boys but also a war against gender distinctions themselves, until everything becomes fluid and confused.
Discussing the recent Glasgow protest against the Scottish government’s gender recognition legislation, Chris Deerin of The Press and Journal wrote of the fearless women standing up for sisterhood. But his article, entitled ‘Misogyny is taking hold in schools’, is not really about the protest at all but about the apparent fact that ‘men have always been women’s problem’. To demonstrate the problem, Deerin looks at the popularity of the sh**posting YouTube sensation Andrew Tate, who spews sexist crap online.
The offhand way in which all men can be lumped into this ‘enlightened’ journalist’s concern about violence against women and girls is telling. But today it is par for the course in what is becoming part of the new elite’s bigoted view of ordinary people.
Individuals such as Andrew Tate are at times deeply unpleasant, but I suspect they are a product of a culture that is demonising masculinity in its entirety, thus leaving little or no space for a positive idea of what being a man means – a space that opportunists such as Tate welcome with open arms.
Traditionally, the masculine identity was associated with being stoic, strong, courageous and able to take care of yourself (and indeed your partner and family). As it happens, there is nothing exclusively male about these attributes, and in our more equal and better world, we can see this in the acts of genuinely progressive feminists who are prepared to stand up for the rights of women.
Boys and men, however, have a physical dimension that women generally do not, but this added strength and potential aggression is not necessarily a bad thing; indeed, it can be used for good and should not be seen in a crass and bigoted way as a ‘problem with boys’.
So, let’s let boys be boys, and let us remind children that being strong and self-reliant – being a gentleman who has both strength and self-control – is an important adult achievement that should be celebrated and not dismissed or denounced as part of an imagined problem of toxic masculinity.
Unspeakable Evil
Richard Lucas is leader of the Scottish Family Party
It can be painful listening to educationalists describing bad behaviour, as they try to funnel their intuitive revulsion through the tight restriction of the acceptable lexicon.
Wearing a blue jumper when the uniform specifies black? ‘Unacceptable.’
Swearing in class? ‘Unacceptable.’
Punching another pupil? ‘Really unacceptable.’
Throwing chairs around the classroom during a lesson? ‘Very unacceptable.’
Stabbing a teacher with a pencil? ‘Totally unacceptable.’
I’m being a little unfair: the anaemic vocabulary is actually broader. Kicking someone in the head can also be condemned as a ‘poor choice’. Telling a teacher to ‘f*** off!’ is ‘inappropriate behaviour’. Deliberately smashing another pupil’s laptop ‘goes against our class contract’.
Scottish education is a giant game of Taboo. The obvious words to use in a situation are banned, leaving players to stumble along, striving to express themselves shorn of their first-choice language.
For those new to this game, here’s the rule: moral language is not allowed. Wrong, bad, cruel, vindictive, malicious, vicious, lazy, bad-tempered – all banned. Lying, stealing – too judgemental. Disobedience and defiance? Surely that’s just a relationship issue between pupil and teacher?
There are educationalists who really believe that morality is an outdated and unenlightened concept. They reach for moral language soon enough when issues intersect with their political philosophy (sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia and environmentalism) but look down on the unenlightened who think that moral standards and personal accountability are fundamental aspects of human existence.
They believe they have risen above morality, or ‘judgementalism’ as they prefer to call it. Instead, psychology provides the framework for interpreting all behaviour. Not psychology in any academic sense, just a pop-science folk-law version that implies that no one is really responsible for his or her actions. Moral assessments just make people feel guilty. And guilt serves no purpose beyond making people miserable. Everyone has an excuse, if only we take the time to understand.
The truth, of course, is that guilt can be a valid spur to refrain from bad behaviour in the future. The very concept of morality, of right and wrong, the idea that we simply ought not do certain things, is a human universal. Or at least it was, until therapism took over in Scottish schools.
We need to worry about more than the pitiful spectacle of teachers describing bad behaviour without any moral reference. Children are being tacitly taught that moral language is superfluous, counterproductive, and certainly never applies to them. The very idea of personal moral accountability is holed below the waterline. The concept of punishment goes down with the ship.
And while the behaviour crisis deepens, politicians offer nothing more than additional support staff and the like, as though a fundamentally broken philosophy of education can be fixed by throwing money at it. More hands on deck won’t stop the ship sinking.
We need to plug the hole by re-moralising Scottish schools. There is good and bad, right and wrong, pupils are accountable for their actions, punishment can be deserved, and character development is a priority.
Education has become the means by which one generation passes on its lack of values to the next. Of all the ways our education system is failing our children, this is one of the most serious.
PSHE: ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions’
Rob Willson is Head of Design and Technology at a large secondary school in Lincolnshire, England. He also writes as a concerned parent of two young boys about to enter the secondary school system.
So, more Personal Social Health Education (PSHE) is a good thing, isn’t it? Well, that depends, but in my experience, probably no. If we consider areas such as resilience and character building, and encouraging critical thinking, then yes. But not in the areas of sex and relationships, where I believe we’ve landed in counterproductive territory. And it’s this area where some politically motivated bad actors steer colleagues with good intentions towards a more woke curriculum.
PSHE is now a major point of attention in schools, with multi academy trust CEOs and headteachers twitching about imminent OFSTED inspections where they might fall outside the new framework and be labelled inadequate.
‘In the new inspection model, we are particularly interested in how schools contribute to the personal development of children. This area is now a judgement in its own right. This makes more space in inspection for discussing things like the PSHE lessons in which wider life issues can be explored.’
Ofsted Chief Inspector Amanda Spielman, July 2019
This directed expansion of PSHE education, particularly the now statutory inclusion of relationships, sex and health, has opened a Pandora’s box. However, although they are complicit in this, we can’t solely blame government. To the knowledge of very few, the white paper ‘Sexual violence and sexual harassment between children in schools and colleges’ was withdrawn in September 2022 due to question marks over the validity of the data gathered. Although probably better, the replacement framework put in place is open to interpretation. It does specify that rape, grooming, female genital mutilation (FGM), sexual exploitation and domestic abuse, including coercive and controlling behaviour, should be addressed but clearly also states that this should be done in a sensitive and balanced way. It is the interpretation of this which has allowed what I would call ‘Marxist divide and rule’ content to creep in. This content is also encouraged by prevailing media narratives and interpretations given by the many NGOs and think tanks that surround and influence education. There is also the ‘long march through the institutions’ documented by many esteemed academics, citing how education has been overwhelmingly infiltrated by those of a so-called progressive left stance, who have in turn both narrowed the Overton window and nudged it leftwards.
Lauded Marxists Antonio Gramsci and Rudi Dutschke both argued that radical social change in highly developed societies would be the result of long, patient organising inside and outside of key institutions, and not simply or primarily a quick, frontal assault through mass actions. This is Dutschke’s long march through the institutions, what Gramsci called the ‘war of position…’. Noam Chomsky, discussing institutional change in his book ‘Manufactured Consent’, said, ‘The general population doesn’t know what is happening, and it doesn’t even know that it doesn’t know’.
In my 18-year career I have never known the academic conversation to be more stifled; ironically, in a time when diversity is supposedly championed, this doesn’t include diversity of thought, which is belittled and demonised.
Allow me to give you a specific example. I was informed that when the subject of rape was being taught in my school, students as young as 12 were being shown the ‘rape culture pyramid’.
Credit: www.11thprincipleconsent.org
I believe this kind of content is dangerously misleading and should not be in teaching materials for the following reasons. First, and most importantly, parents have not consented to the delivery of this content. I have spoken to a number of parents, from different walks of life, all shocked by what I showed them, who said they would not consent to this specific content being delivered to their children.
To justify the introduction of these new statutory requirements the government, using textbook manufactured consent, conducted a consultation. I’ll allow you to decide if you think the major stakeholders, namely parents, had enough influence on its conclusions: Relationships and Sex Education consultation response (publishing.service.gov.uk).
That said, this specific content is not stipulated in the PSHE National Curriculum statutory requirements and has been introduced by certain staff because of ideological activism. The diagram is also presented as fact when it is only opinion, and the language is misleading. It is egregious to depict use of the expression ‘Boys will be boys’ as part of a pathway leading to gang rape; there is no evidence to support such a claim. For me, ‘Boys will be boys’ reminds me of my own school days back in the early nineties, when my friends and I were no doubt guilty of laddish behaviour and use of inappropriate language at times, but we have since all grown up to be decent human beings.
The source of the diagram is the www.11thprincipleconsent.org website, which was founded by Jaime Chandra and Ranger Cervix, who are ‘hard left’ openly Marxist activists. I would not expect to see ‘hard right’ materials ideologies pushed in lessons, so the same principles must apply here otherwise we have double standards. There is also the matter of being age appropriate. In my view, this is not appropriate for students as young as those in year 8. I accept there could be an argument to use it as a discussion prompter for a sixth form lesson; however, it would need to be made very clear that this it is opinion not fact, and the biases of the source would need to be evidently identified.
I would like to make it clear that I do not take the subject of rape lightly; I believe it to be abhorrent. Do I think it’s as systemic as often portrayed? No. (Perhaps in places such as Rotherham, but that doesn’t fit the Marxist narrative because British Pakistani men were overrepresented among the perpetrators, and the victims were predominantly white British girls). Do I think rape should be discussed in school? Yes, but such discussion must be age appropriate and delivered in a balanced and sensitive way by someone who is professionally trained and without bias.
There is a certain type of teacher who gravitates towards delivery of PSHE content. In my anecdotal experience, activist-type teachers are drawn to this area because it allows them to forward their ideologies. I suggest that they are probably the wrong teachers to deliver this content because they are unable to restrain their biases, which go unnoticed by sympathetic leadership. However, it is the fault of teachers such as myself and school leaders who have in the past shied away from the confrontation and allowed them to drive this area of education.
Almost half of secondary school teachers (46%) said they do not feel confident about teaching sex and relationships education, a new survey has revealed. The findings - from a joint NASUWT and NSPCC survey of 1,034 secondary school teachers in the UK - come just a year after the compulsory curriculum came into effect in England.
Organisations such as the PHSE Association are dominated and steered by activists – a fact they don’t even hide for those prepared to look. Take the recent guidance document ‘Addressing misogyny toxic masculinity and social media influence in PSHE education’, which was part advised by Laura Bates, Guardian columnist and author of ‘Men who Hate Women’. Why are the voices of eminently qualified sociologists such as Stuart Waiton and many others not heard?
The rape culture pyramid is just one example of many messages, overt and subtle, that students are subjected to which make them doubt themselves. It’s like death by a thousand cuts! The cuts come from all angles, concerning issues relating to other content such as critical race theory, gender theory, polyamory and climate change, but these are subjects for another article.
So why is this content so damaging, particularly to boys? We’re currently facing a mental health crisis with young people, so to project these extreme assertions, accompanied by fear and guilt, onto their young developing minds is not only morally wrong but is actually causing psychological harm.
I really dislike putting people into groups, but I need to here to explain my point. When examining young males, aged 11–30, almost every measure you look at paints a bleak picture. Over the past decade, the gender gap in education has widened. In 2017, girls were 12.5% more likely to participate in higher education than boys. However, research suggests that there are no major differences in cognition between men and women, so why the gap? Girls achieve a higher score than boys, across every ethnicity, between 11 and 16 years of age. The average Progress 8 score for girls is 0.22, while the average score for boys is –0.25. This means that, throughout secondary school, girls have been shown to make more progress in their academic career than their male peers.
Sadly, it doesn’t get better when we look beyond education. In 2022 there were approximately 76,226 males (96%) compared with 3216 females (4%) in prisons in England and Wales in 2022. Suicide rates are significantly higher for males, with the leading cause of death for males under 50 being their own deliberate actions.
Credit: ResearchBriefingGenderSuicide_2021_v7.pdf (samaritans.org)
So why are we putting down boys so much? Why are many masculine traits being labelled as toxic? Do young men feel they have a place in society? Although I don’t have the answers to these questions, I do know something is going wrong.
I believe many of these young men are lost, nihilism has crept in, and they are unable to be their true self because the messaging, which starts at school, is suppressing this. Yes, it’s a complex picture and there is a culture war going on in adult life, but I suggest we start by taking schools and education out of this, in fact making them a sanctuary from this.
In recent years the environment within schools has been emasculated, which contributes to boys feeling ostracised and with very few masculine role models to look up too. Remember those ‘alpha’ no nonsense teachers? The ones who could issue a proper good bollocking, doing the dirty work that allowed schools to function. They are now a very rare breed: retiring, pushed out because of their ‘toxic masculinity’, or disempowered by weak unsupportive leadership. I’m referring to those firm but fair teachers who stood for no nonsense in terms of polite classroom behaviour but allowed open debate and free speech, encouraged critical thinking, and understood that learning can also come from failure. They could also appreciate a joke, and often years after your school days, you might bump into them in a pub and share a pint, and they were genuinely interested in how your life was turning out.
So, what’s the solution? The current bias of the system is out of our control, but what we can control is how we react to it. Parents need to opt out of PSHE content. We have the right to do that. If more parents opt out and the numbers of students not participating in PSHE lessons grow, schools will have to respond by separating out the content from subject curriculums and daily tutor time routines where these ideas are stealthily introduced.
It is also an awareness and a numbers game. If enough of us challenge the status quo, it will change. Remember these are our schools, our children, and that the power lies with us as individuals. Too many, who know the direction of travel is wrong, are happy just to be spectators waiting for a saviour to resolve it for them. One will not come; we have to do it ourselves.
Libertarian-minded people such as myself understand and accept that schools cannot correct all of wider society’s ills and believe they should focus on teaching the national curriculum subjects expertly and fostering polite open-minded discourse, developing resilience through taking personal responsibility and application of critical thinking. This would allow the overwhelming goodness that exists in humanity to prevail naturally.
There are those of course who think differently. That education is a tool for social engineering and can bring about change, moulding students with communitarian ideologies so the great utopia can be reached. Dare I use the word indoctrination? In the words of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, ‘Education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished.’
At present the audacious comrades are winning over the intimidated or unaware silent majority, but slowly more are gaining the courage to challenge. This should not be a battle, but sadly it is, so we must remember that our ideas are just as valid as theirs and we must make them heard.
Everybody forgets the second part of the title quote: ‘The road to heaven is also paved with good intentions’. I write this article with good intentions.
News Round-up
A selection of the main stories with relevance to Scottish education in the press in recent weeks.
Dave Clements, ‘Why are schools excluding so many vulnerable kids? Special educational needs get kids in serious trouble.’ 27/02/23
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/02/following-science-covid-lockdown-not-when-came-children-apparently/ Sarah Knapton, ‘Following the science during Covid lockdown? Not when it came to our children, apparently. Emerging data and evidence point to Government not doing what was best but rather what was easiest when it came to schools.’ 02/03/23
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/02/28/how-our-schools-lost-control/?fbclid=IwAR1mtviVmtCg4SpOE4xELjYt4vr0rHXCNyH8BF_d9nh5HHRY4tRjrLd6rSk#leqwl3zla86nqnsb5rq Joanna Williams, ‘How our schools lost control. Pupils are protesting and rioting and teachers seem incapable of stopping it.’ 28/02/23
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/february-2023/i-regret-to-inform-you/ An Admissions Don, ‘I regret to inform you… An admissions don at a major British university lays bare the quota-driven process of student selection and imagines what honest acceptance and rejection letters may look like.’ February 2023
https://www.teachwire.net/news/behaviour-management-approaches-teachers-authority/ Kevin Rooney, ‘Behaviour management – Let’s stop taking sides and restore teachers’ authority. Proponents of “Warm-Strict” and “Trauma-Informed” behavioural approaches continue to miss the real problem – teachers’ lack of authority…’ Retrieved 03/03/23
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/school-defends-decision-replace-mirrors-26377222 Alexander Brock, ‘School defends decision to replace mirrors in girls' toilets with “motivational posters”.’ 03/03/23
https://archive.is/2023.03.04-084220/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education-and-careers/2023/03/04/masturbation-lessons-100-genders-what-children-taught-school/#selection-1167.4-1167.16 Louisa Clarence-Smith, ‘Masturbation lessons and 100 genders: What our children are being taught at school. Why are pre-pubescent pupils learning about “rough sex” and preferred pronouns in secret?’ 04/03/23
https://www.scotsman.com/education/landmark-scottish-education-review-calls-for-significant-reduction-in-exams-4050224 Martyn McLaughlin, ‘Landmark Scottish education review calls for 'significant reduction' in exams. The frequency of examinations in Scottish secondary education should be “significantly” curtailed, with an end altogether for exams for those S4 pupils who intend to study at Higher level, according to a long-awaited report.’ Retrieved 06/03/23
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2023/03/01/young-deserve-answers-lockdown-politicians/ (Paywall) Editorial, ‘The young deserve answers from lockdown politicians. They are facing possibly permanent damage to their educations, careers and mental health as a consequence of these decisions.’ 01/03/23
Frank Furedi, ‘The all too casual deployment of the politics of fear By Matt Hancock. Project Fear was the inevitable consequence of institutionalised social engineering.’ 06/03/23
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We need to talk about children (and in particular males) growing up without fathers. This is one of the most significant issues of our time. And I speak very personally as a single Mum to a male child. My son’s father left me when I was pregnant, the implications of this are huge on social, economic and psychological levels. Match that with the lack of positive male ideas in school (in particular white males) and we have a perfect storm. I have raised this in numerous professional, educational and community forums and am more often then not told ‘your son will be ok because he has you’. They don’t know that. The stats don’t bear it out. It is worth noting in the Sewell Report addressing racism in the UK absent fathers was another commonality amongst boys who did not ‘advance’ in society. I can see the direct implications of this in my own community of Pollokshields wherein many boys fathers are only nominal and those are the kids who get in trouble. Added to this the lack of opportunities for sport, physical activity etc etc etc. Even with this awareness of how things are for us I sometimes despair as the systems in place actively inhibit us & my son from rising above it all. I hope and I pray (and campaign) for different - but it seems the world wants to sleep on this one.
And I think to the ideal of a moral code is important because the current system seems to focus on the ‘have nots’ and not the ‘haves’. The seven deadly sins is balanced by the seven deadly virtues. What positive framework are we building for our kids to fit into? For them to structure around their lives?