Anti-woke headteacher urges peers not to ‘crumble’ before student activists

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Apologies for the lack of a share token.

I don't think this has already been posted (I couldn't see it anywhere)

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/23/anti-woke-headteacher-urges-peers-not-crumble-student-activists/

Why don’t you start a thread about it if you’re interested in discussing it. Surely a conversation about something so serious shouldn’t be inserted into another thread on other issues. Or is it only important for you to bring up in some kind of attempt to deny the voices of Black women?

Does the existence of violence and oppression and horror elsewhere excuse us from discussing the issues in our own back yard? What are you doing to help African women - or do they exist as an issue for you only when a Black woman is speaking about race and racism and you want to silence her? What does this topic have to do with the issue of implementing curricula that address Black UK histories?

Again, why is it so important to you in this moment to enter a thread about what feminist curricula look like to try to attack me based entirely on your own constructions of what you think I care or think about? Why are you so bothered at the idea of discussing Black people in the UK and the specific histories relevant to Black British women that you have to raise an entirely different continent? Why do you think this proves anything against me? Why do you seem think this is some kind of mic drop - can women not discuss a feminist issue without listing every single other issue as well?

Your posts actually illustrate very well why women need to read diverse feminist work from around the world so that you can become familiar with basic concepts (Trans national feminism examines labour exploitation and sexual violence across borders, for example.) Thank you for showing why so comprehensively.

The only person being attacking in this thread is you. Everyone else may be disagreeing but we are capable of staying on topic and discussing the issue with each other, even if we differ. I don’t agree with some of the ideas in this thread but I believe people are engaging seriously and in good faith. We may never agree but we can do so without trying to be nasty and dismissive to each other.

I mean, why aren’t you discussing the involvement of White women, say, in neo-fascist movements in Poland and the Ukraine?

See, we can all play these games.

Good grief @334bu , I was at school in Scotland in the 70s and 80s, my kids in the 90s and 00s, the Curriculum for Excellence has got sweet nothing to do with it. We always had plenty of Scottish history.
I don't know where you went to school in Scotland, but the Highlands, Glasgow and Edinburgh all had it covered for decades!!

@HazelCarbyFan thank you for all the information and links - I'm always trying to read and learn more about black feminism and intersectionality but I've been unsure of where to start/to know what sources to trust.

How many of our Welsh, Irish or Scottish students learn anything about their nations' histories?

You are joking right? You honestly think the Scottish Nationalist Party, which has been in control of Scottish education for more than a decade, wouldn't have made sure that history in Scotland is taught from a Scottish Nationalist perspective?

Why just focus on black women though? What about the Indian subcontinent? There are huge numbers of women in the UK with this ethnic background and the impact of the UK on that region was huge with fault lines across the region that run through the whole of the middle east.

Why are you so happy to turn a blind eye to modern slavery and the countries at the forefront of modern slavery?

I always wonder this too, Kimiko. Real, literal slavery still exists in some countries: human beings owned as possessions by other people.

It’s insulting and dishonest to compare this to lesser wrongs such as exploitative working conditions in the UK, or to trafficking, which is illegal. Exploitation and trafficking should of course be combated. But pretending they are equivalent to slavery weakens people’s outrage against real slavery.

HT sounds great!

@Alonelonelylonersbadidea

Good grief *@334bu* , I was at school in Scotland in the 70s and 80s, my kids in the 90s and 00s, the Curriculum for Excellence has got sweet nothing to do with it. We always had plenty of Scottish history. I don't know where you went to school in Scotland, but the Highlands, Glasgow and Edinburgh all had it covered for decades!!

North East did not. History was 2nd world war, start and end. Nothing else. Zero. Such a shame. I bloody love history, now.

@HazelCarbyFan

What is feminist about refusing to teach global history, the impact of the slave trade, or the contributions of Black women to history?

Welcome to white feminism. Consistently refusing to acknowledge any struggles that do not center cis white women.

Welcome to MN SpookySeason

Who do you centre in your feminism?

Of course we should study Indian feminists, as well as feminism from around the world. Dr. Vandana Shiva’s work on the war on the earth and the war on women is crucial for thinking about environmentalism, for example. But the head teacher in this article was specifically responding to demands emerging from BLM and the movement from George Floyd, which is what I’m responding to.

So many people in this thread seem to think that their assumptions generated in their own minds are my reality - what about what I have said in this thread would lead you to think I am ignorant of and don’t read global feminist work? Unlike anyone else, I have consistently provided resources, reading, names, and links. I suggested reading Trans national feminists, an area filled with many theorists from India and Asia. Please stop assuming that just because you think of feminism in limited ways and are threatened by reading works by women of other backgrounds and experiences, I must also be.

And the white women derailing this thread and demanding I respond to slavery in Africa - again, a topic inserted into the thread in order to try to stop discussion - are not fooling me. Again, start a thread on the topic and I am happy to provide resources by African feminists who I also have read and engaged with on the topic. But stop trying to use it so you can avoid discussions of race in the UK.

Bravo Hazel

The article about the headteacher and her views sound perfectly sensible to me. I don't see what the issue is about?

There's far too many well meaning but knee jerk reactions by all kinds of institutions and organisations in response to current events.

@334bu

However, why should the school curriculum not embrace the whole of society? How many English Literature students know of the existence of Aphra Benn? How many people managed to get a pass in History exams without learning about the right for female suffrage? How many people know nothing about the Irish immigrants who built the canals and railways all across the UK? How many students learn about the Windrush generation and their contribution to post War Britain? How many female artists,writers, poets etc have been ignored by our educators?How many of our Welsh, Irish or Scottish students learn anything about their nations' histories?

As the parent of a child in a Scottish secondary school, I can assure you that a large percentage of the history curriculum is Scottish history. At the upper levels, they have to do 1 Scottish topic, 1 UK-wide topic, 1 international topic.

I did history to A'level, and did nothing later than the industrial revolution and nothing outside of Europe.
DC did history in a Scottish school to a lower level, and covered slavery, the American civil rights movement, the UK suffragette movement, immigration to Scotland. American civil rights also featured in English literature.

Great to know that about the Scottish curriculum.

Nitpicking moment:

"The fight for women's suffrage" =/= "The suffragette movement."

The fight for women's suffrage goes back primarily to the mid 19th century in the UK (though there are bits that go even further back) and was centered around the suffragISTS for almost all of those time. It was the suffragists who did the hard work, over decades, of gradually, painfully winning support for women's right to vote. They comprised a huge cross-section of society, including rural and working class women as well as wealthier ones. They did boring but useful things---putting out printed materials, starting conversations, talking to people, helping girls to get educated and start speaking out. They also did direct action stuff like protests and marches, but were scrupulous about not inflicting acts of violence on others.

The suffragETTES were a group of women, mostly upper class, who did a lot of eye catching things (that thing with the race horse being one example, and some other stuff that frankly could be described as terrorism) towards the end, after most of the actual work had been done by the suffragISTS. Many historians believe that the impact of the suffragETTES was largely negative--that is to say, it's likely that women would have won the right to vote earlier if it had not been for the suffragETTES and the various stuff they did.

I started learning about the gISTS and gETTES back in the 1990s, when my history teacher talked us through it. I can even remember some of the precise details and examples she gave. Great history teacher!

@RoastChicory

My DD is at this school and they are currently doing Black History Month. Rosa Parks, Hidden Figures all covered multiple times.

They know all about the suffragettes. The school musical was ‘Made in Dagenham’, so yes, they know about working-class women and Barbara Castle. The school has a significant Jewish population, so Nazi Germany is very well covered.

And so is racism.

Maya Forstater is a past pupil - they encourage independent thought and standing up for principles.

Ms Bingham is not saying that there shouldn’t be changes, but that they should be thought about, starting from the first principles of what the aim is, and how best to achieve it. She has spoken out in support of Jo Phoenix, when do few other educators did and is making a point that just because student groups agitate - as they have done at many universities - the teachers should think and reflect, rather than instantly give into demands.

She is a fantastic role model.

This is interesting and probably gives some insight into what is going on at these schools.

Many schools now cover many of these kinds of topics, the suffragettes, racial justice, different historical people. In a school already teaching these things, what do the students mean when they talk about decolonizing?

At the same time, in a place like the UK, the broad strokes of political history for a good portion of it has tended to be about white people, often men, and often rich or powerful. In the same way that if you went to China you'd find much of their political history dominated by rich, powerful Asian men.

And there is never enough time to learn it all. Students can really only expect a skeleton, if they want more, they will almost certainly have to look for it outside of school. Which would be lovely.

For everything that gets added, something else is taken out. So any decisions about adding something new will have to keep that in mind.

So what's the basic pedagogy of history teaching at that level? Is it about giving students representations of different groups? Is it about giving them a basic grasp of the linear flow of history so they have scaffolding for further history studies? Something else?

This idea of global perspectives is a good example. Courses that claim to teach global history are often pretty poor. There is too much material, most of it unconnected, to see the shape of history. One day you learn about suffrage in your own country. The next week it's about something else happening around the world. It's difficult to see the historical processes at work. So maybe the students know a few things about other countries, that someone else has selected for them, and told them their historical meaning. The students will never have enough information to begin even asking good questions about the topic.

Also - this article is talking about school history.

The idea that it would mainly concentrate on feminist history, of any kind, seems pretty ludicrous.

I get the impression sometimes that people want schools to teach a Whig history, as if history is all about movement towards some kind of freedom, political or economic or something.

Which it isn't. It isn't if freedom equals empire, and it isn't if freedom equals modern political civil rights movements, and it isn't if freedom equals identity politics.

Thought some of you might like to listen to this.
I dont agree with all her views, but a lot of what she said had us laughing that she is brave enough to say it.