Why, as a teacher, I’m horrified at how the Left are brainwashing our schoolchildren

The morning after the eU referendum last summer, I was in a buoyant mood as I set off for work. I welcomed the decision by the British people to embrace genuine independence for our country. But the moment I arrived at the West London school where I worked as a computer science teacher, my cheerfulness was punctured.

At once I was taken aside by the headteacher, who knew where my sympathies lay, and warned not to mention Brexit in front of the staff or students. ‘You can’t talk about it. They are very upset and angry about the result. Besides, many of our kids are from europe,’ he told me in reproving tones.

Though I had to obey him, I found his injunction appalling on two levels. First, there was the unjust implication that the vote for Brexit was a triumph for bigotry, something I found personally offensive as a supporter of immigration.

Heresy

Second, there was the impulse towards censorship of views that did not fit the progressive orthodoxy. No one would be chastised in the school for expressing distress about the outcome. Only Brexiteers were to be silenced.

That reality illustrates just how the education system has become increasingly gripped by a culture of Orwellian groupthink, where only fashionable, Left-wing opinions are deemed acceptable. Any wish to deviate from this outlook — such as by backing Brexit or the Conservatives — is treated as a kind of heresy, an offensive challenge to the ruling creed.

I experienced this thinking at first hand during the 2015 General election, when a colleague asked me how I planned to vote. ‘Conservative,’ I replied. A deathly hush immediately descended on the staff room. The atmosphere became hostile. It was as if I had advocated the reintroduction of child labour or bear-baiting.

‘how any teacher could vote Tory is beyond me,’ said my colleague sanctimoniously to general approval. The pressure towards Left-wing conformity is chilling. Schools are meant to be places of learning and intellectual exploration, but there is now a real danger that they are turning into arenas of political indoctrination.

In place of open discussion, there is aggressive propaganda. Instead of balance in teaching methods and subject matter, there is crude partisanship.

A classic example of this pattern was a teaching aid for pupils at a Kent school, asking them the difference between the Left and the Right.

Like something issued by the Politburo at the height of the Soviet empire, this document told students that Left-wing meant ‘ the NhS’, ‘ helping people’ and the theory that ‘everyone should be equal’.

Right-wing meant ‘hitler’, ‘less help for people’ and a rejection of equality — a patent nonsense given that Britain’s only two female Prime Ministers have been Tories.

But this kind of bias is now just part of the fabric of modern British schooling.

Last year, I witnessed a teacher telling a pupil that the lead in the opinion polls for Leave was ‘scary’, while the executive headteacher of the West London schools where I used to work sent an email to staff soon after the Brexit vote, with a link to a petition calling for a second eU referendum.

Not all teachers subscribe to this conventional Left-wing thinking, however — as I learnt last year when I wrote an article on a Conservative website. In it I argued that ‘pretty much throughout their entire educational career, young people are being trained into a Lefty way of thinking’.

I added that: ‘We should be encouraging our students to engage in important political issues. We certainly shouldn’t be censoring one side of the argument.’

In response, I received a large number of messages from other teachers who expressed their relief that someone had spoken out against the stifling climate of Left-wing dominance. Disturbingly, however, many felt that they could not be open about their political beliefs in the present, quasi-McCarthyite, culture, where Conservatism is regarded as a form of treachery against the progressive establishment.

So they are forced to remain silent, while the brainwashing continues on an epic scale. It is no wonder that young people overwhelmingly support the Left, given the barrage of one-sided political education to which they are subjected.

I recall, during the London mayoral elections last year, travelling with pupils on an official school trip to a set of hustings entitled the ‘Citizens’ Accountability Assembly’ in the east of the capital.

On the way up on the bus, one teacher began handing out leaflets for the Liberal Democrats — a move that, to his surprise, I stopped by telling him it was inappropriate. But the Assembly turned out to be even more anti-Conservative.

Bullying

essentially, it was little more than a gigantic rally for the Labour candidate Sadiq Khan, particularly because the organisers, a movement called Citizens UK, promulgated a raft of Left-wing policies that included more social housing, a living wage for Londoners, and an amnesty for undocumented migrants.

Why should school pupils be made to endure this Leftist love- in masquerading as a candidates’ debate?

The same misrepresentation can be seen in the Left-wing bullying about so-called ‘Tory cuts’ in education. Over recent months, senior figures in British schooling have abandoned all pretence of impartiality in their relentless campaign against the Government.

In one particularly outrageous move during the General election, a letter from headteachers to parents at no fewer than 3,000 schools in 14 different local authority areas wailed about ‘ the dreadful state of school finances’. The propaganda has continued since the election. At one school at Gospel Oak in North London a fortnight ago, the headteacher held a rally to protest against the Tories.

Grabbing the microphone in front of 150 demonstrators, including parents and pupils, John hayes declared: ‘Protest and campaigning actually work. We know education was a decisive factor in reducing Tory votes . . . The speculation is that another election is on its way. Let’s make sure the biggest winners are our kids’.

Among the banners at this rally was one which trumpeted: ‘education for all. Shame on you, Theresa May.’

Malignant

John hayes is typical of the modern breed of headteachers who see themselves as the vanguard of anti-Toryism.

Tellingly, during the General election, the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was given a rapturous reception when he addressed the conference of the National Association of headteachers, the event resembling more a congress of the hard-Left group Momentum than a gathering of responsible education leaders.

Other teaching unions have been just as malignant. In the run-up to the General election, the militant National Union of Teachers put out a video about ‘Tory cuts’ which was viewed on Facebook by 4 million people. ‘ We want to put pressure on every candidate to pledge to oppose school cuts . . . We can reach parents with this and we can make a difference,’ said NUT General Secretary Kevin Courtney.

The NUT, like the other unions and the rest of the education establishment, certainly made a difference. The tragedy is it is such an undemocratic one, further cementing the stranglehold of Left- wing thought on British education.

Left-wing campaigners love to blather about tolerance, but in truth, when it comes to schooling, they are deeply intolerant of any viewpoints other than their own.