I remember how it was -- JR
Schoolchildren Are Being Indoctrinated With Hard Left Ideology Under the Guise of Teaching Them to be ‘Inclusive’
Not so long ago I rewatched the original Jurassic Park and was struck by Ian Malcolm’s monologue in which he says to John Hammond, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” It struck me that this unintentionally captured the essence of a growing problem in today’s education system: EDI. School managers and teachers are so eager to rush into whatever is trending in EDI. So convinced are they, without any evidence, of EDI’s supposed moral, ethical, educational and societal benefits that they neglect to consider whether they should be promoting it.
The virtues of EDI are extolled throughout the education system and my own school is no different. Schools openly bow down to EDI and an entire industry has developed to ensure EDI is embedded across the education system, despite evidence that it has had detrimental effects in the workplace. It is commonplace now to see schools advertising themselves as “inclusive” and numerous websites have popped up to promote EDI, such as the Inclusive Schools Network. The EDI approach has ostensibly been embraced because Britain is now a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic society and it’s supposedly essential to help tackle discrimination, break down stereotypes, facilitate better communication and foster social cohesion. However, I think the push for “inclusivity” distorts education, disempowers the individual and poses a threat to a free society.
One assertion that’s frequently made these days is that “inclusive language” should be used in lessons. But what, exactly, is it? Who defines it? And how can such a thing exist in any case? The economist Ludwig von Mises observed in Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis how Marxism thrived on “dialectic artificialities” and a “word-fetishism” which made it “possible to unite incompatible ideas and demands” (e.g. Queers for Palestine). This linguistic sleight of hand can be used to brainwash the broader population, and this is exactly what “inclusive language” does. Those who advocate for “inclusive language” claim it’s a tool for promoting open conversations. But for “inclusive language” to exist and function, it must by its very nature be at odds with intellectual diversity, free speech and democratic values. It requires a central authority to dictate what is or is not inclusive, thereby strengthening that authority’s power, while discriminating against those who are deemed to have said something offensive.
The drive to use “inclusive language” and to be “inclusive” is in reality exclusionary and intolerant. A cursory glance through some typical ‘guidance’, such as that produced by the University of Leeds, reveals that it usually focuses on what not to say rather than on what to say. The implications of this are worrying as it’s a method of importing identity politics and ideological authoritarianism into schools. As John Stuart Mill noted in On Liberty, “all silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility”. By pursuing “inclusive language”, school managers are going along with this linguistic totalitarianism and, in my experience, are never open to any discussion about whether they are embarking on the best approach for pupils and staff.
On one level, the emphasis on “inclusive language” encourages others to find offence where none is intended and in doing so undermines resilience. It feeds a culture of victimhood and is hardly beneficial to learning, where failure is often a necessary precursor to success. On another level, it establishes a right not to be offended. This type of approach is fundamentally unworkable, as we have seen through inane legislation like Scotland’s Hate Crime Act. By seeking to protect certain identity groups from being offended, it introduces a form of bullying into a school since it provides bad actors, both pupils and staff, with the perfect cudgel to attack their opponents.
Offence is, after all, in the eye of the beholder. It requires no evidence other than someone’s claim they were emotionally harmed by something that was supposedly said, regardless of the speaker’s intention. It is extremely easy to make an unfounded allegation because it’s so difficult to challenge without seeming to disbelieve a ‘victim’ about how upset he or she really is, and, therefore, extremely hard to defend against. Besides teaching children to simply accuse, rather than debate, an obvious consequence of this is the sewing of suspicion and distrust. According to the Mental Health Foundation, 20% of adolescents currently suffer from some form of mental illness. Mental Health UK notes that 92% of teachers distrust their line manager and 88% of teachers say there is a negative ‘team culture’, with 86% saying they don’t feel supported at school. One cannot help but wonder whether EDI initiatives, which promote linguistic totalitarianism and thereby create an environment in which one must constantly tread on eggshells, are contributing to this state of affairs.
Besides being contradictory in a theoretical and philosophical sense, the censoring of language is extended into censoring or distorting curriculum content. This is why we see misguided initiatives, embraced by the Historical Association, among others, to ‘decolonise’ the curriculum, as well as a growing tendency to exaggerate the negative aspects of British and Western history and culture. Thus, as many readers will no doubt already be familiar, pupils are spoon fed narratives in which Britain is cast as an evil slave trading nation with few redeeming qualities, if any. Little mention is made of all the other countries that trafficked in slaves, or of Britain’s key role in suppressing the transatlantic slave trade.
This highly selective approach is fundamentally driven by ideological activism and some schools encourage this by engaging in their own types of cancel culture, such as changing the names used within their own house systems for fear that the original names might cause offence. As Doug Stokes points out in Against Decolonisation, this constant denigration of Britain’s history and culture may even have serious implications for national security by virtue of the fact they instil no love and respect for, or understanding of, our country.
The drive towards ‘inclusivity’ and all the associated EDI dogma contributes nothing to education and everything towards indoctrination and the destruction of critical thinking. In my ‘lived experience’, an ‘inclusive’ curriculum often means talking more about LGBTQ+ or BAME people, although the ‘climate curriculum’ is not far behind. Charities with specific ideological or political agendas, such as Stonewall or Schools of Sanctuary, are consulted and sometimes paid to help make lesson content more ‘inclusive’ without any regard to the provisions about not indoctrinating children in the Education Act 1996. This extends into the creation of bizarre extra-curricular activities, such as LGBTQ+ lunchtime and after-school clubs. Schools also embrace various forms of positive discrimination in order to tackle imaginary biases and prejudices, such as girls-only IT competitions. It’s not clear how this sits with the emphasis on ‘inclusion’, given its prohibition on boys’ participation and the lack of provision for a boys-only competition. This is hardly a strategy for improving the performance of the demographic group most overlooked: white working-class boys. But ‘inclusion’ is nearly always about extending perks to officially recognised victim groups and rarely about helping the genuinely disadvantaged.
Furthermore, as each subject on the curriculum is forced to genuflect to the latest ideological fad, less intellectual diversity is tolerated and more groupthink emerges. The push for promoting minority narratives and victimology across every subject means the school curriculum ceases to be about academic exploration and more about ensuring a single message or narrative is instilled in pupils’ minds. Friedrich Hayek observed in The Road to Serfdom that it was “not difficult to deprive the great majority of independent thought”. Through the policing of language and narrowing of curriculum content, inclusion agendas are facilitating the destruction of individual autonomy by limiting the opportunities for pupils to critically evaluate prepackaged narratives. While this is what we might expect in a Chinese-style re-education camp, it should not be the model adopted by British schools.
A generous observer might conclude that those who signal their virtue on inclusivity simply haven’t thought this through – they mean well, even if their initiatives have terrible unintended consequences. A more critical observer might conclude that those who push EDI initiatives do so with an ulterior motive. I’m in the latter camp, and as I’ve said previously this leads to a perpetual cycle in which victory can never be secured until complete equality of outcome between different identity groups has been achieved. It’s also fuelled by self-interest. Those who work in the multi-billion-pound EDI sector need to keep finding new dragons to slay to justify their funding, often as the expense of the taxpayer. Besides, the very essence of EDI-based initiatives, such as anti-racism and unconscious bias training, is to teach individuals to take offence and actively seek out things to be offended by. This is why we see schools embarking on crusades to eliminate the use of “Sir” and “Miss”. By planting the seed that one may be committing a microaggression and establishing a culture in which speech and expression are policed, the logical response of some may be to avoid interaction altogether. Why take the risk of inadvertently treading on a landmine? Or giving a bully an excuse to persecute you? This type of backlash within the workplace has already been documented by the Government.
Why, then, are schools endorsing EDI? If we were to explore the legal roots of this phenomenon, we might look to the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, the Race Relations Act 1976, the Special Educational Needs Code of Practice in 2001 and the Framework for the Inspection of Schools in 2003. By the late 1990s, a perception had emerged that the colour-blind approach in education had failed. Among numerous other points, the inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, published in 1999, recommended that schools develop strategies to prevent racism and for the National Curriculum to be revised so it extolled the virtues of multi-culturalism. But academies and free schools, which as of January 2024 account for nearly 82% of all secondary schools and nearly 43% of primary schools, don’t have to follow the National Curriculum. Independent schools, which constitute nearly 10% of schools, don’t either. Thus, it is the Equality Act 2010 and schools guidance from 2014 which form much of the bedrock of current practice. The relevant parts of this legislation basically set out a duty of care and make it illegal for schools to discriminate against pupils based on their protected characteristics, such as race, religion, sexual orientation or gender.
Where there is a possible misstep legally speaking is in schools’ conflation of, and confusion between, content and delivery. Section 2.8 of the 2014 guidance, which advises schools what they need to do to comply with the Equality Act, says curriculum content is excluded from discrimination law but the manner in which it’s delivered is included. According to section 2.9, schools are “free to include a full range of issues, ideas and materials in their syllabus, and to expose pupils to thoughts and ideas of all kinds, however challenging or controversial”. This is important because the advocates of EDI in schools typically appeal to the Equality Act, claiming they’re obliged to roll out these initiatives to comply with that Act, when, in fact, that’s just an excuse for pushing their ideological agenda.
There is, in other words, no legal obligation or reason why a school should indulge in changing (or removing) curriculum to comply with the Equality Act. Schools may of course do this for a variety of reasons, such as capitalising on teachers’ specific knowledge or appealing to pupils’ interests to promote more engagement. But we ought to be mindful of the predilection many teachers have for engaging in social justice activism. It is in fact something which is implicitly encouraged by those who’ve written the material that finds its way onto teacher training courses. For example, Robert Jeffcoat, who describes himself “with pleasure a radical Marxist” due to his “particular view” on injustice, is cited approvingly in a PGCE textbook that’s still in use today.
However, by pitting of one social group against another, as required by various fashionable teaching resources, and teaching children about concepts like white privilege, some schools may in fact be in breach of the Equality Act, which requires publicly-funded bodies to promote good relations between groups with different protected characteristics, which includes white boys. And by developing a curriculum centred on EDI, schools could well be limiting pupils’ academic opportunities and, as such, failing to provide the broad and balanced curriculum that they’re supposed to, as set out in Section 78 of the Education Act 2002.
At a fundamental level, the whole EDI agenda within schools overlooks one simple, crucial and fundamental issue: the provision of education, not indoctrination, will do far more to help disadvantaged children make socio-economic progress in the long term. A report commissioned by Pro Bono Economics, The National Literacy Trust and KPMG earlier this year found that 30% of five-year-olds were behind their expected reading levels. The National Literacy Trust also found in 2023 that only 43.4% of children aged from 8 to 18 enjoyed reading. Obviously, multiple factors contribute to these findings but one cannot help wondering whether one solution might be for teachers to spend less time promoting ideological fads and more time focusing on actually educating children. And perhaps literature promoting woke narratives just isn’t that inspiring. Why should children enjoy reading books that are constantly scolding them for not being ‘better allies’? Those schools which have embraced woke identitarian dogma are abusing their duties and responsibilities, and failing pupils and society in the process.
The reality is that schools cannot truly be ‘inclusive’ precisely because it is a contradictory, unworkable and illogical idea; exclusionary practices and outcomes are an inherent and inevitable part of education and life in general. Not every pupil will achieve an A* at A-level or a 9 at GCSE. Not everyone who applies to work at a school will be accepted and not everyone within a school will be friends with everyone else, despite the claims made on schools’ marketing materials. And, due to practical considerations, not every school will have the capacity to accept every child. An inclusive curriculum is also itself a unicorn precisely because it must, by definition, exclude certain content that is arbitrarily deemed to be discriminatory or insensitive.
The claim that adopting an ‘inclusive’ approach will prepare pupils for life, as my school and many others do, is a fallacy. Such an approach is based on flawed assumptions, fosters unrealistic expectations and leads to troubling outcomes. It fails to instil resilience, encourages children to abdicate personal responsibility and attacks the individual’s ability to think critically. The only people who gain from such an approach are those looking to carve out easy and lucrative careers for themselves. All EDI does is provide a platform for narcissistic managers to crush dissent and signal their virtue so they can gain the requisite peer approval for career progression. The people who lose are pupils, parents and those teachers who have maintained their integrity.
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School reading assignments sexually harassed my child — despite parent protests
Bill Santiago
Here I am trying everything I can to raise my young daughters right, vigilantly monitoring the assault of content they consume.
What are they watching? What are they listening to? What are they scrolling through? Is it appropriate?
Then along comes Kipps Beyond Middle School, the Harlem charter school that I was originally thrilled our preteen would attend.
And all my protective efforts were brazenly violated.
No, my 12-year-old girl wasn’t peer-pressured into exploring sexually explicit content.
She was assigned to do so by her 7th-grade English teacher — without my consent or knowledge.
“Aristotle and Dante Explore the Secrets of the Universe” is a wonderful title for a book.
The Van Gogh-inspired cover appeared in a slideshow on curriculum night, implying our children were embarking on a philosophical, cosmological journey that would open their minds to a new level of literary and intellectual inquiry.
Sneaky, sneaky: Only after students were done reading this book did parents get wind of what was actually between the covers.
“The boys in the book masturbate to each other a lot,” my daughter’s friend blurted out as several families dined together at a restaurant.
We thought our children were being exposed to philosophy, but at last discovered that the book merely featured characters named after philosophers — who obsess about exposing themselves.
Not to mention the causal heroin use, a 15-year-old hiring a trans prostitute and a prison murder, among other similarly wholesome elements, all featured in the book assigned to my underaged daughter.
Remember how the city cleaned up Times Square to make it family-friendly? It seems everything they swept away has been regurgitated onto the pages of books my child is being assigned to read in class.
If this same sexually graphic content were shared at most jobs, a human-resources SWAT team would be scrambled and heads would roll.
Lawyers would be licking their chops over million-dollar harassment lawsuits.
Why should we look the other way when teachers assign explicit books to children?
“But the book won awards!” the school’s teachers pointed out, when we parents protested.
It doesn’t matter that parents don’t approve, as long as somebody who doesn’t know or care about our kids has slapped their golden seal of approval on the book.
Meanwhile, the English Language Arts director at Kipps Beyond has openly questioned whether Shakespeare is still relevant or should even be taught.
Poor guy never won a diversity award! So naturally classrooms should deprioritize the Bard in favor of lesser authors who check the right social-justice boxes.
A word about the word “diversity”: It is not synonymous with sexually graphic material, nor does it grant immunity to teachers who sexually harass minor children by assigning such content.
After six months of protests, meetings, emails, texts, phone calls and Zoom calls with the principal, teachers, staff and regional directors, what was the response?
The founding principal, spitting in the face of parental values and objections, announced 7th graders would next be assigned “The Poet X,” a book that’s even more explicit and sexually charged.
My daughter’s teachers were repeatedly assigning outright erotica to 12-year-olds.
After one of my endless emails to officials throughout the NYC Department of Education finally got somebody’s attention, the school finally relented and agreed to assign “Lord of the Flies” instead — at least this year.
But the chief schools officer at Kipps NYC subsequently emailed me to affirm that her charter school system is still fully committed to teaching the books we objected to — as well as other sexually explicit books — in the future, because they align with its “core values.”
It amazes me that in the wake of #Metoo, so many educators still don’t understand that no means no.
Nor do parents deserve the educators’ repeated insinuations that our objections must be based on bigotry.
My own family abounds in diversity of every kind, from pronouns to pizza toppings. So spare me the tactical gaslighting.
Am I just one of those parents — a book banner? Hardly.
As a journalist, author and entertainer, none of my professional pursuits are possible without the full employment and defense of the First Amendment.
But I identify first as a father.
That’s why when it comes to accepting that any adult or institution, teacher or school system can violate the boundaries of my young girls and my values as a parent, sorry, this papi don’t play dat.
School systems engaging in these predatory practices will never cop to it.
But if a teacher is providing explicit sexual erotica to a child, somebody should call the cops.
https://nypost.com/2024/07/01/opinion/school-reading-assignments-are-sexually-harassing-my-child/
*****************************************************Young Australians Even More Unenthusiastic About Going to School: Research
As anxiety and psychological distress levels are increasing among young people, which was accelerated by COVID-19 lockdown measures, a phenomenon of school refusal has also become more prevalent.
Data collected by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority shows the national attendance rate for students in Years 1 to 10 had dropped from 91.4 percent in 2019 to 86.5 percent in 2022.
The figures for attendance level—percentage of students whose attendance rate was 90 percent or higher—saw an even more dramatic drop from 71.2 percent in 2021 to 50 percent in 2022.
However, rather than going to class less often, Australia is seeing an increasing number of children and teenagers distressed at the mere thought of attending school—called school refusal.
Shannon Clark, senior researcher at the Department of Parliamentary Services, explained that school refusal was difference to truancy and exclusion.
“It differs from other forms of school attendance problems in terms of the distress experienced, and in that parents and carers typically know about their child’s absence from school and have tried to get them to attend,” she wrote in a 2023 parliamentary paper on the issue.
“Young people with school refusal are often diagnosed with anxiety disorders.”
Students who experience school refusal are at higher risk of dropping out of school early, and it can also negatively impact their social and emotional development into adulthood.
A spokesperson from the Department of Education told The Epoch Times in an email that every day of school missed, is a day of learning lost.
“Regular school attendance is critical to successful student outcomes and engagement,” the spokesperson said.
Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic
Professor Marie Yap from Monash University’s Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health said student mental health and coping skills, parent-child relationship, supportive teaching staff, and bullying all have an effect on school attendance.
“The COVID pandemic impacted many of these factors for children across the world, with some being disproportionately affected,” she told The Epoch Times in an email.
In particular, neurodivergent children are more sensitive to routine disruption, so switching between online and face-to-face schooling may have tarnished their school experience.
Ms. Yap said the switch may have overwhelmed the coping capacity of neurodivergent children, increasing their distress about attending school.
Additionally, parents whose jobs and financial security were impacted by the pandemic may have struggled to also support their child’s mental health and learning.
The ongoing teacher shortage and high turnover rates are also causing disruptions to the supportive teaching environment students thrive in.
Advice for Parents
Ms. Yap said parents should look for early signs of their child not wanting to attend school and respond as promptly and supportively as possible. She recommends that parents validate their child’s distress about attending school, even if they don’t understand it.
Ms. Yap said parents should try creative ways to help their children express themselves such as drawing or writing.
“Parents need a good understanding of the reasons behind their child’s distress about school—this is important for identifying what types of support and responses would be most helpful for their child.”
Parents should also assure their child that they will help them overcome issues about school.
Meanwhile, Matthew Bach, teacher and former Victorian shadow education minister, believes school refusers need more “tough love” from parents.
“It may ruffle some feathers to say so, but it is the responsibility of parents, not governments, to fix [school refusal],” Mr. Bach wrote in an opinion piece in 2023.
He noted that he saw an increasing number of parents who wanted to be their child’s friend, rather than their guide and corrector.
“School refusal stems from anxiety, which—as we know—is a serious mental health condition. And because of this, parents naturally empathise deeply with their children,” he said.
“Yet what the growing number of children who refuse to attend school need most is tough love. Going to school must simply be non-negotiable.”
Getting Support
Meanwhile, Ms. Yap said parents should record concerns and absences, and communicate these with the school to understand non-attendance patterns, for example, a common day or time of absence.
She said that once they better understand the underlying causes of their child’s distress, parents can work with their child, the school, and other involved professionals to develop a supportive plan.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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