How ‘political correctness on steroids’ and woke-weaning betrays and brainwashes children
JUGGLING part-time work while bringing up two children on universal credit, mum Stefanie Curran must be galled to hear that her children are wallowing in “white privilege”.
The community worker from Torquay — where a third of under-16s live in poverty — told The Sun: “Some white people in the town may be privileged but many are not.
“Everyone, no matter their background, should receive a good education.”
It is parental common sense with which surely few would disagree.
Yet nearly one million white, working-class kids from disadvantaged backgrounds are being failed by the education system.
And MPs and teachers have blamed woke dogma such as “white privilege” — the idea that systemic racism gives white people an inherent advantage — for making it worse.
Head teacher and education reformer Katharine Birbalsingh summed up the problem, saying: “I don’t think we should be teaching white privilege. I think we should be teaching maths, English and geography.”
Detractors even have a name for the spread of ultra-PC dogma in schools: Woke-weaning.
Chris McGovern, 70, a retired head teacher and chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: “Children are being brainwashed into believing there’s only one way of looking at the world. They have been betrayed.”
Every area of school life is determined by wokeism. There is no dissent. It’s like religious, totalitarian fanaticism.
The puritan creed of woke, critics say, is hothoused in primary school before being finessed at secondary and university level.
The gender wars is one fierce battleground. It emerged in April that Anderton Park Primary School in Birmingham had banned phrases including “boys and girls”, “let’s go, guys”, “man up” and “grow a pair”.
Pupils also monitor their reading books for sexist stereotypes.
Headteacher Sarah Hewitt-Clarkson said: “The phrase ‘Good morning boys and girls’ is not used in this school. Instead all teachers say, ‘Good morning everyone’.
‘Laughably hypocritical’
“Girls have posters they hold up every time one of the teachers says, ‘Come on, guys’.
“The posters say, ‘Sir, I am not a guy’. Sometimes the teacher still forgets and it slips out, but our training here shows that if you are resolute you can stamp this out.”
This week came the almost laughable news that St Paul’s Girls’ School in Hammersmith, West London, was abolishing the title Head Girl and replacing it with the gender-neutral Head of School.
It was reported that seven out of 778 pupils there identify as non-binary, requesting that they are referred to as they or them.
Those to pass through the £26,000-a-year school include vaccination tsar Kate Bingham, politician Shirley Williams, actress Rachel Weisz and GMB’s Susanna Reid.
TV host Piers Morgan tweeted: “St Paul’s Girls’ School is ditching the role of Head Girl because it is too ‘binary’ despite 99% of its pupils identifying as ‘girls’.
“However, it will continue calling itself St Paul’s Girls’ School. Woke insanity at its most laughably hypocritical.” One social media poster suggested the school change its name to “St Paul’s Spectrum Of Self Identifying Beings School” while another suggested “St Wokes”.
A third tweeted that St “Paul” in the school’s title was binary too.
The humour does much to prick the pompous stupidity of the decision.
Yet some critical staff at the school believe that it sent a “damaging message that girls now have to be ashamed to be seen as girls”.
One source said: “They should be teaching young women to be proud of their sex, not ashamed of it.
“How can you be a single-sex school that exists to empower girls to do well and at the same time support girls to identify out of being a girl?”
Driving this dogma is the charity Stonewall, which was this week revealed to be behind a series of guidelines for teachers urging them to drop the terms “boy” and “girl” in favour of “learners” — and run mixed-sex PE classes.
Stonewall’s work in primary schools is reportedly funded by the Government’s Equalities Office, which handed out cash to a number of organisations “to deliver programmes tackling anti-homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying in schools across the country”.
The culture war ethical skirmishes at secondary level branch out further where race takes centre stage.
In May, the head of Pimlico Academy in West London resigned after pupils objected to the “racist” Union Flag being flown at the school.
Earlier in the year pupils had protested against a “racist” uniform code and demanded that the history curriculum be “decolonised” because it focuses on “white kings and queens”.
Head Daniel Smith is an Oxford graduate and traditionalist who had successfully run other schools.
But when he ordered the Union Flag to be flown outside the central London school pupils took it down and burned it.
A new uniform policy banned haircuts that “block the view of others” — which pupils said effectively outlawed Afro hairstyles — and stated that hijabs “should not be too colourful”.
Pupils staged a walkout in protest, backed by staff who are members of the hard-left National Education Union.
Tory MP Scott Benton said: “The British flag represents all Britons. Pupils should be taught that disrespecting the flag disrespects us all.”
The pressure intensified and Mr Smith caved in.
After the protests he ordered a replacement Union Flag to be taken down, revised the uniform code and pledged to look at updating the curriculum. But still it didn’t appease the wokeists baying for his head. He resigned, another culture war casualty.
Classrooms may soon become a breeding ground for firebrand eco warriors.
A poll yesterday revealed more than half of teachers want to hold lessons explaining to children how to stage angry protests against climate change.
And universities — the very institutions that should be the bastion of free expression — are in danger of becoming the polar opposite.
An American student at Magdalen College, Oxford, recently led a successful campaign to remove a picture of the Queen from the Middle Common Room.
The students’ reasoning was that our Head of State “represents colonialism”.
No matter that the monarch had joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service aged 19 to join the fight against the Nazis and is the head of the multiracial Commonwealth.
Then there was Cambridge University, which launched a “reporting tool” website to allow students to accuse members of the teaching staff of “racism, discrimination and micro- aggressions”.
‘Religious fanaticism’
The micro-aggressions included raising an eyebrow when students or staff from a minority spoke, giving out backhanded compliments, mis-gendering individuals or referring to a woman as a girl.
One history professor likened it to the Spanish Inquisition.
Worried dons feared an unproven allegation from a student could torpedo their career. Some were left fearful of conducting one-to-one tuition.
This from one of the world’s greatest seats of learning that has greatly contributed to the advance of civilisation.
After a furious backlash from dons, Cambridge removed the site.
Last year Cambridge — which has produced literary giants including Lord Byron, Alfred Lord Tennyson and William Wordsworth — encouraged English students to study the works of rapper Kanye West.
Professors said they were aiming to decolonise the course after claims of structural racism.
In 2018 Kingston University in South West London overhauled a degree course on rural Britain because it “normalised white experiences”. Instead it announced undergraduates would study rural areas globally, with an emphasis on Africa and Asia.
Meanwhile, a tsunami of woke continues to swamp higher education, trampling on debate in new places.
One recent example was plans by Oxford Student Union to employ “sensitivity readers” to remove “problematic” articles from university newspaper Cherwell before publication.
Nothing, not even a free press it appears, is sacred from the woke reformists.
As McGovern puts it: “Every area of school life is now determined by wokeism.
Most read in Opinion
“But woke is like a religious fanaticism that’s taken hold. There is no dissent.
“This is what happens in totalitarian regimes.
“I’m with Pink Floyd — leave them kids alone.”
Take the ‘woke’ challenge
By Douglas Murray
HERE is a challenge. Name one institution in our public life that hasn’t gone woke. Try it.
I bet you can’t. Our universities and schools are riddled with it. Our government departments are packed with it. Our spies at MI5 boast about being named “employer of the year” by Stonewall.
And our Armed Forces try to recruit by claiming that a typical candidate is a daughter of two mums who “marched for equality”.
Over the next two days The Sun will lay bare just how insidious this has all become.
Today we show you how wokeism has infected the education system.
Our universities have become so in thrall to the woke mob you have to wonder if they would even let you in nowadays if they found out you do not hold the “correct” views.
“Oh yes, you may have the right grades and aptitude, but was it you commenting on Twitter about how you enjoyed GB News?
“It was? Sorry, access denied.”
It is the same everywhere you look. The guardians of our nation’s heritage, from our museums to the British Library and the National Trust, seem to be most interested in trashing our history.
They claim that everything we have inherited is tainted by slavery and colonialism.
And all the time you see the same woke politicising of everything.
Look at sport. In the past month we’ve seen cricketers being mauled for nine-year-old banter. England bowler Ollie Robinson, 27, was suspended after “racist and sexist” tweets emerged that he sent when he was 18.
Online mobbings of anyone in authority
His apology, nor telling how he had worked hard in the years since to mature and turn his life around, counted for anything.
Woke has run through our nation’s life in an amazingly short time. Partly it is because of the internet making us run faster than our feet can carry us. But mainly it is the result of online mobbings of bosses and anyone else in authority.
These mobbings work because they are so extreme. They claim that JK Rowling, our country´s most successful author, is a vicious transphobe. They pretend that women such as her, who express even the mildest concerns about gender ideology, are worse than criminals. The woke mob literally burn her books . . . while accusing her of being a Nazi.
But that is why it works. Because most people don’t have the courage, or grace in the face of assault, that Rowling has shown. Most people worry about what their bosses will think. Or their employees. Or their shareholders. So everybody gets herded into line in the same way that sheepdogs control a herd.
They nip — sometimes viciously — at anyone not running with the pack. With the difference that the woke mob doesn’t just try to get people into line. It tries to end their careers and stop their livelihoods if they don’t obey.
It is an insidious movement, political correctness on steroids. And it must be stopped. The best way of doing this is for more and more adults in our country to just say “no”. Say NO when they are told what to say. Say NO when they are told what to think. And to call time on the people who make false and hostile claims about our history.
Our reports will surprise and anger you. So make your voice heard when it happens to you.
The woke have had a good run. It’s time to run back at them.
* Read the full story...This article was originally published h
Who will be Next to leave the EU? Check out who is leading in our exclusive poll Poll
Comments
Post a Comment