Audio: Should the Classroom be Politically Neutral?
An Academy of Ideas Education Forum, Monday 27th September 2021
Below is the audio of the opening remarks in a debate I chaired a few years ago.
It strikes me that the problem of political indoctrination has not gone away.
Today activists, parents, and some teachers, left and right, are still using the education of children as a platform for the pursuit of their personal moral and political projects.
And government makes a bad situation worse when it instructs teachers to campaign on its behalf.
All of this needs to stop.
There should be one rule and it should apply to all: no indoctrination within education.
If there is an argument to be had about politics or morals, then this argument should be had out between the citizen adults.
Education, and especially that of children, really is not the place for indoctrination.
Indoctrination, in my view, is an abuse of the trust that society places in teachers and it is at the very least miseducation.
You can read more about my views on indoctrination within English education here.
Session blurb
If classrooms were once considered a safe haven from adult political disputes, schools today seem to have become battlegrounds in the culture wars. Pupils, teachers and parents have been in the crossfire of controversy. Legislation that aims to insulate schools from political controversy seems impotent amid bitter clashes over how and if teachers should engage pupils over biological sex, sexuality, gender identity, and religious and citizenship education. Alongside pupil climate-change activism and the ethics of cultural awareness days and unconscious bias training, few areas of school life now seem immune from broader toxic disputes.
Issues of race and religion have become particularly fraught. The suspension of three teachers from Batley Grammar School for showing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a religious-studies lesson, with one teacher still in hiding for fear of violent retribution, may be an extreme example of cultural conflict. But demands by students and activists to remove offensive material from school curricula and threats of discipline for teachers who won’t conform seem to be increasingly frequent occurrences.
Meanwhile, in response to the murder of George Floyd in America, many pupils and teachers were keen to use the moment to assess curricula for bias and to pursue unconscious-bias strategies. However, assessing education content and practice through the prism of race has also created new tensions. For example, there was a furore at Pimlico Academy in London last term: a new uniform policy which prohibited hairstyles that ‘block the views of others’ and hijabs that were ‘too colourful’ was cited by pupils as evidence of the school management’s racism. The backlash led to the headteacher’s resignation.
Attempts at diffusing such controversies can also be counter-productive. For example, when ministers demand neutrality in the classroom, some have argued that the government is making matters worse, using education to conduct a culture war against a range of targets, whether radical environmentalist teachers, anti-racist educationalists or traditional religious parents. Yet given that spending on English state schools now tops more than £51 billion, few would argue that the elected government of the day should not set broad priorities for schools.
Is it reasonable to be concerned that NGOs and politicised teacher activists are – as alleged – using state-funded education to ‘indoctrinate’ the young? Or is this a straw-man argument, used by a Conservative government to demonise left-leaning educators? What should political teachers do to confront what they believe to be bigoted views among pupils or their parents? Must teachers really be balanced on every issue? Is it a problem that matters of educational policy are rarely debated on their own terms, and are instead viewed through a culture-war prism? Should education be focused on the transfer of knowledge and the development of critical thinking? Or has an interest in cultural awareness and the political socialisation of young people become as important as academic standards?
Speakers
Ian Burns, religious studies and ethics teacher
Bryony Hoskins, Professor of comparative social science, University of Roehampton; author, Education, Democracy and Inequality: political engagement and citizenship education in Europe
Ian Mitchell, English literature and psychology teacher; writer, Teachwire; member, AoI Education Forum
Liz Moorse, chief executive, Association for Citizenship Teaching
Zara Qureshi, project manager, The Equiano Project; co-founding member, Free Speech Champions
Audio here.