Williamson takes classroom fight to woke teachers
GAVIN Williamson is facing a fresh headache in his efforts to restore order and discipline to schools following months of disruption for pupils during the Covid lockdowns. The Education Secretary has been put on notice that union militants want to turn classrooms into the latest battlefield in the hard-Left’s culture war.
Delegates at the annual conferences of the National Education Union and the NASUWT, the country’s two biggest teaching unions, this week backed demands for a sweeping overhaul of the national curriculum. They called for the “de-colonisation” of lessons to root out any trace of alleged celebration of Britain’s imperial past.
Their demands mark an escalation in the campaign to purge society of anything linked to the slave trade that has seen statues toppled, streets and buildings renamed and once-revered historical figures decried.
At their conference during schools’ Easter holiday, NASUWT delegates mandated their leaders to “work with campaigners to press for inclusive curriculum frameworks and entitlements”.
A day later, a motion passed at the NEU conference accused Tory ministers of the “deliberate stoking of racism and hysteria”.
It committed the union’s leadership to “develop anti-racist curriculum resources” and urged teachers to take inspiration from the Leftwing Black Lives Matter movement which has called for the “defunding” of the police.
MR Williamson already faces a major challenge supporting headteachers in the effort to ensure children catch up with the months of lost learning during the pandemic, which threatens to scar their education permanently and limit their future opportunities.
He could do without a struggle with ideologically driven activists intent on bringing political propaganda into classrooms. Yet Tory
MPs insist he gives no ground to the fanatics in the educational establishment.
“We need to go on the offensive against the hard-Left in the education system,” one backbencher told me.
“We have been on the defensive for far too long on these cultural issues.”
Senior Tories believe Leftwingers misrepresent what is happening in classrooms.
“They would have people believe pupils are forced to sing the national anthem and salute the Union flag before every lesson. It’s just not like that,” said one source.
History lessons already include topics such as the slave trade, immigration, Indian independence and the contributions to British society of many different communities down the ages.
Tory sources point to a social media post by the Left-wing MP Claudia Webbe highlighting a map showing British and European colonies in Africa in the late 19th century. “This map has been hidden from you all your life. This is how they carved up Africa,” wrote the Leicester East MP, who is currently suspended from the Labour Party pending a court case.
TWITTER users swiftly pointed out that the map is used in secondary schools at Key Stage Three to illustrate the colonial scramble for Africa.
Perhaps Left-wingers decrying the state of history lessons in schools have simply failed to do their homework by investigating the material that is taught.
It is more likely that the campaign, like the rest of the Left’s offensive against statues and other symbols of Britain’s past, aims to enforce a one-sided view of history rather than teaching youngsters to weigh up facts and examine a range of perspectives on the past.
Left-wingers have become fixated by cultural battles because their hopes of seizing power through the ballot box were so decisively thwarted when voters overwhelmingly rejected Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour at the 2019 general election.
Tory MPs want the Education Secretary to stand up to the activists seeking to further their cause by other means such as brainwashing youngsters into accepting a woke version of history rather than learning to think for themselves.