Are schools indoctrinating our kids?

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2022 on Sunday 16 October at Church House, Westminster.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

Over the summer, the OCR exam board announced it has replaced literary giants Philip Larkin, Seamus Heaney and Wilfred Owen from its English syllabus in favour of ‘exciting and diverse’ ‘poets of colour’ and ‘disabled and LGBTQ+ voices’. The then education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, denounced OCR’s changes as ‘cultural vandalism’.

The decision fed widespread parental concern that schools are becoming a hotbed of political activism, their children indoctrinated by biased teachers and curricula as likely to espouse social-justice ideology as passing on ‘the best which has been thought and said’.

However, some argue this narrative of politicised teaching is a caricature, itself a political act of dragging schools into the Culture Wars. The NEU’S Dr Mary Bousted warns that politicians’ hype about impartiality could induce such uncertainty and caution in schools about ‘political issues’ that students will be ‘denied the opportunity to engage with the most challenging issues of our time’, including racism and climate change.

Can contested political ideas be dealt with in classrooms via viewpoint diversity or should schools steer clear of tackling political controversies altogether? Are pupils to be viewed as a captive audience, too young to challenge what they’re hearing, or young people who need to be engaged with contemporary social trends?

SPEAKERS
Dr Deborah Hayton
teacher; trade unionist; contributor, Spectator, Unherd and other publications

Dr Sean Lang
senior lecturer in History, Anglia Ruskin University; author, First World War for Dummies and What History Do We Need?; fellow, Historical Association

Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert
director, Don't Divide Us; author, What should schools teach? Disciplines, subjects and the pursuit of truth

Emma Webb
director, Common Sense Society, UK branch; host, Newspeak; commentator; writer; co-founder, Save Our Statues

CHAIR
Gareth Sturdy
physics advisor, Up Learn; education and science writer