Children are already being brainwashed in many of Britain’s schools. They are taught to despise their country and hold it responsible for every global injustice and societal ill in existence. Labour’s changes to the national curriculum will simply add rocket fuel to this already widespread development.
Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, plans to overhaul the school curriculum to better reflect the “diversities of society”. As part of the review preceding the changes, scientific institutions such as The Royal Society of Biology have proposed the teaching of “non-Western” discoveries, a “decolonised” curriculum and an approach that jettisons an emphasis on Western scientific heroes. They are also proposing that an explanation be given for the West’s disproportionate contribution to scientific discoveries and the disadvantages suffered by the Orient. One can only imagine the reasons teachers will be expected to give. Colonialism, perhaps?
According to The Association of School and College Leaders, these proposals and the project that inspired them are a rejection of the current curriculum that “prioritises a somewhat monocultural worldview”. They are indeed specifically designed to deny the achievements of the nation and weave a narrative of the shameful expropriation of once flourishing civilisations.
This is nothing new, despite the erroneous claim that the current curriculum is “monocultural”. But it is an extension and formalisation of an existing anti-British agenda.
Some years ago, I had an indicative experience in a predominantly Muslim school. I overheard three colleagues discussing the evils of the British Empire. “I despise it,” one snarled. “Me too! Look at Amritsar, what we did to the Native American Indians and our involvement in the Middle East,” another opined, shaking his head in disapproval. “I really can’t think of anything positive to say about it,” the third lamented.
I worked in an academy at the time, as I said, with a large Muslim population. To be more precise, over 80% of the school’s children were Islamic, some, of course, more devout than others, all from varying traditions.
Now, one might be forgiven for thinking that this very demographic is the one most susceptible to radicalisation. That doesn’t mean they’re all potential terrorists. Of course not. But let’s be honest: they are more at risk of being radicalised than pupils in, say, a Church of England school.
So surely, as teachers, we should be aware of this fact and act accordingly through the promotion of British values and the delivery of a positive narrative that encourages integration?
But in my school at the time, as demonstrated, many of my colleagues – particularly in the history department – were actively encouraging children most susceptible to radicalisation to hate their own country.
They were discussing a unit provocatively titled, ‘Should we be proud of the British empire?’ And as you can probably gauge from their rather one-sided conversation – and the simplistic, reductive scheme of work that supported it – it was a loaded question with only one answer in mind: No! We should be ashamed of it.
They irresponsibly and outrageously sacrificed neutrality, historical accuracy and objectivity on the high altar of unthinking subjectivism and banal sentimentalism driven by feelings of post-colonial guilt.
How on earth can these dangerous individuals, so willing to do ISIL’s work for them, be allowed to teach our children?
That is not to say that we shouldn’t make our pupils aware of the misdeeds committed by ‘Perfidious Albion’ in its colonial endeavours. But we should also be encouraging the children to explore the benign gifts bestowed upon the world by Britain’s two-hundred-year hegemony.
The spread of capitalism, the world’s first and only lingua franca, parliamentary democracy and the rule of law; the propagation of ideas, literature, technological and medical advances; the abolition of the slave trade and its global enforcement by British naval power during the period known as Pax Britannica; and finally, its assault upon the forces of fascism and militarism during the Second World War.
Now, how can my colleagues not think of any positive consequences of Britain’s imperial domination? They are either grossly ignorant, blinded by their own bias or being deliberately deceitful.
Even the concept of empire – a concept that we rightly reject today – should be contextualised. From the Umayyad dynasty to the Ottomans, the Romans to the great seaborne empires of France and Britain, until recently, imperialism and colonialism were staple features of global geopolitics, as was slavery. You cannot therefore properly analyse and evaluate the British empire without placing it within this contextual framework.
In fact, bearing this in mind, the question of whether it was a force for good is far too simplistic. But that’s another story.
I am not calling for a sanitised account of Britain’s imperial past, just a balanced one, firmly rooted in reality.
However, I witnessed predominantly Muslim children being force-fed a diet of anti-British propaganda – a diet both inaccurate and, more importantly, one which plays into the hands of those who wish to do us harm.
It’s important to recognise, as well, that this is no exception. The school I teach at now is very similar. We urge our children to demand that museums hand back “plundered” artefacts, even though said museums may have acquired them legally and in complex circumstances that, in the case of the Benin bronzes for example, make repatriation inordinately difficult, if not impossible.
Labour’s decision to “diversify” the curriculum, which, ironically, will tolerate no dissent, will simply make an already widespread practice ubiquitous in Britain’s schools. Given the threat posed to Britain by Islamist terrorists, this should give us pause for thought.
Joe Baron is the pseudonym of a history teacher at a London secondary school.
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