by Joanna Williams, spiked (Photo: Unsplash)
From trans and Net Zero to BLM and Gaza, progressive politics has crept into the classroom.
Parents are growing suspicious. In WhatsApp groups and at school gates, mums and dads worry aloud that teachers are not simply educating pupils but also filling their heads with views they do not share. Some fret about daughters now convinced they are actually boys, or young children taught about sex and relationships before they are ready. Others are shocked when their children condemn Britain as a racist country or pour scorn on national heroes like Winston Churchill.
Concerns spill over on to social media, where parents share pictures of worksheets that label those troubled by high levels of immigration as ‘far right’ and promote left-wing groups like Hope Not Hate. Parents are angered by reports that schools have been telling children that Reform UK is a far-right party and that some of its supporters ‘have extremist views’. News coverage of a girl being sent home from a school in Rugby for wearing a Union Jack dress on Culture Celebration Day, Christmas cards being rebranded as ‘winter cards’ by a school in Aberdeen, and pupils in Wales making videos promoting the Welsh Refugee Council fuels suspicion that activist teachers are using the classroom as a recruiting ground for their own beliefs.
As I explain in my new book, The Breaking of the Education Contract: Why We Need to Keep Politics Out of Schools, the perception that schools are political institutions and are taking one side on a range of contested issues really matters. Parents entrust their children to teachers and, in return, expect their children to learn to read and write and gain some knowledge of the world. They assume schools are responsible for education, and that teachers will leave parents free to shape their child’s moral and political outlook. Bringing politics into the classroom breaches this contract. It pits parents and teachers against each other, potentially forcing children to take sides, and opens the door to accusations of indoctrination.