Schools’ lessons on race risk breaking the law

Teaching the woke vision of racism as if it were uncontested fact will do more harm than good

With many young people now returning to school, the education sector is in panic mode as it considers how to address the horrifying death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement’s subsequent explosion on to the political scene. As a school leader, I have been contacted by a number of head teachers who are increasingly under pressure from both teachers and parents to be seen to be doing something. Unfortunately, many have resorted to implementing rushed measures.

While it is crucial for schools to address current events, it’s certainly not helpful to be shoehorning a topic as hefty as “race relations” into pastoral teaching. It’s not the norm to be restructuring the curriculum without due diligence. Any changes to what we teach should be designed and debated among subject experts. Forcing through changes now, no matter how good the original intentions, could prove detrimental to our young people in the long run.

Many of the changes revolve around divisive identity politics, with phrases such as “white privilege”, “white saviour” and “white fragility” presented as unchallengeable facts. The classroom is no place for critical race theory (CRT), the field of study which gave us such terms, especially if the (intellectually flimsy) arguments behind it are above reproach and alternate ideas are impermissible.

Unfortunately, the Chartered College of Teaching fully supports this approach, providing resources to enable schools to teach about “whiteness”, including “white racism, white identity, privilege, power and intersectionality”.

Mandated reading lists include an incredibly one-sided perspective on race relations. These lists all feature the same short selection of books which present one viewpoint as unquestioned truth, while offering very little empirical evidence in support. In an educational environment, opinions should be challenged, facts should be backed up with evidence, and literature should be balanced. If we’re going to insist that young people read Robin Diangelo and Reni Eddo-lodge, perhaps we could also suggest Booker T Washington and Thomas Sowell?

There has been an overt attempt to “decolonise the curriculum” for a long time, with Birmingham City University launching a campaign last year to erase Mozart from the curriculum and replace him with Stormzy to “shake up” music teaching in schools. But education should be about passing on knowledge, teaching the best there has been, not focusing on the most popular trends of the time. There may well be much to be learnt from Stormzy’s top hit Shut Up, but I doubt it compares to the technical complexities of a Mozart symphony.

Not only is the curriculum under threat, teacher training is at risk, too. It’s not enough to taint the knowledge our young people are learning with divisive identity politics; a growing number of “diversity trainers” are making a quick buck offering “unconscious bias training” to teachers. Harvard University’s Implicit Association Test is often used to highlight apparent unconscious biases, despite having been debunked by the scientific community, including the original architects of the test.

The idea that one may be racist without knowing it is particularly pernicious. Challenge the idea and one is instantly dismissed as simply expressing white privilege. It’s a cheap intellectual trap designed to fleece the naive. Unfortunately, schools are hiring these snake-oil salesmen to provide continued professional development.

While most of these measures, from curriculum alterations to teacher training, are no doubt put in place by well-intentioned head teachers wanting to be seen doing the right thing, they are at risk of stoking up racial tensions where there were little or none to begin with and of causing potentially long-standing issues among vulnerable young people. Schools could also breach the 1996 Education Act by failing to maintain political neutrality.

Thankfully, there is some opposition to the one-sided perspective offered by CRT enthusiasts. “Don’t Divide Us” is a cross-party campaign launched by former MEP Claire Fox, which I have been involved in.

Its supporters come from a range of industries and include head teacher Katharine Birbalsingh and comedian Andrew Doyle. The organisation was set up to support schools through this minefield with fact-based investigations into the roots of social problems, without cowering to quick-fixes and simplistic explanations. It offers a far better way to help young people understand the world around them than either the trendy cod-science of CRT or the anti-capitalist, anti-western, antisemitic campaign-driven rhetoric of the Black Lives Matter movement.

It may not have such an emotive slogan, but I desperately hope it catches on.