Donal Blaney: Conservatives must oppose Labour's citizenship agenda

Donal Blaney is founder of the Young Britons Foundation and a director of 18DoughtyStreet.com.

Gordon Brown is a Scot. He represents a Scottish parliamentary seat. Devolution has not quelled Scottish separatism. It has fuelled it. In both England and Scotland there is a rising desire for the end of the Union (although I remain of the view that the Union will endure). Rather than answering the West Lothian Question, Gordon Brown exhorts us to promote “Britishness” – albeit that this ignores the fact that the Education Secretary in Westminster has no say over education policy in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

The latest attempt to redefine “Britishness” has come from a paper written by Sir Keith Ajegbo entitled “Diversity and Citizenship Curriculum Review”.

The DfES website announces – in phraseology that would do Mao proud:

“The key proposal is that the secondary curriculum for Citizenship Education should include a new element entitled 'Identity and Diversity: Living Together in the UK'. This will mean that all pupils, as part of compulsory secondary Citizenship Education, would be taught about shared values and life in the UK. This will be informed by an understanding of contemporary issues and relevant historical context which gave rise to them.

This approach should be supported by a range of measures to ensure that all curriculum subjects adequately reflect the diversity of modern Britain, and that schools are appropriately supported in delivery of this education for diversity.”

If conservatism remains an intellectually coherent creed, it must surely embrace localism rather than central planning. An overly prescriptive curriculum – particularly in such a politically sensitive area such as “diversity and citizenship” – runs contrary to the needs of education and of broader society.

In an era when even leftists such as Trevor Phillips realize that multiculturalism has encouraged ghettos and a form of social and cultural apartheid, why is it that a retired educationalist with a track-record second to many, joined by two other individuals from ethnic minorities – not much sign of diversity there -  is promoting a politically correct revision to the curriculum.

I am willing to bet that most conservative activists believed that the addition of citizenship to the curriculum in the last decade was simply that: the addition of citizenship classes that ensure that students learn about British history, our political system and truly shared values.

Instead, the DfES report makes it clear that the government’s focus is more interested in “diversity”. Rather than actively ensuring that citizenship is at the core of the curriculum, the report urges that citizenship is taught “discretely”.

Hidden away in the report are some statistics that should be highlighted, most notably:

• Ethnic minorities now number 7.9% of the population (as at 2001);
• Ethnic minority numbers in schools are closer to 1 in 8 (as at 2001);
• This proportion in schools is set to rise to 20% (1 in 5) by 2010;
• By 2017, 15% of the workforce in Britain will be muslim.

These figures are official government figures: the real figures are bound to be more shocking still.

What is of concern – and again, what has not been highlighted elsewhere – is the assertion that diversity requires, “in the first instance”, that students should explore “their own identities in relation to the local community”. So while we are told that citizenship education is to encourage an end to multiculturalism and the embrace of “Britishness” and integration, the converse is the case in this DfES report.

The report reads as the worst form of leftist self-congratulation. It is extols the virtues of the “anti-racist work in the 1980s” in what can only be seen as a snide jibe at Thatcherism. Why single out the 1980s? Was there no work against racism in the 1960s or 1970s? Did anti-racism work end in 1990?

The report included some interesting quotes. One, from a white student in Year 10, read:

“I do feel sometimes that there is no white history. There’s either Black History Month or they do Muslims and Sikhs. We learn about that but we don’t learn about white people, so we feel a bit left out as well”.

Trevor Phillips’ comment – that Britain is “sleepwalking to segregation” – was seized on by the report’s authors but one cannot help but feel that the proper prescription to avoid this catastrophe is to be ignored.

Rather than educating an increasingly illiterate and innumerate student population in reading, writing and arithmetic, the report argues that it is important to focus on including “diversity” in mainstream subjects such as English, Maths and Science and the fact that some people who made scientific or mathematical discoveries were not white.

The concept is sufficiently facile and laughable that if it wasn’t such a serious issue, one could simply ignore it as a lefti-wing, politically correct pipe dream. That would be a fatal mistake: the leftists are serious about redrawing the curriculum and they will succeed if we don’t stand up to their plans.

Yet again quotas appear. The complaint was aired that there are too few ethnic minority headteachers. Nobody even mentions, for example, that there are “too many” black footballers or basketball players for the simple reason that most people don’t pigeon-hole people by ethnic groups. Leftists do, most people do not.

What I found bizarre for a piece of research which generated specific recommendations was that there was little in the way of data – instead it simply consisted of a series of un-attributed anecdotes and quotes from students and teachers followed by a series of recommendations that were probably always going to be recommended whatever was “discovered” from the “research”.

The report even includes an outline of the revised curriculum that include a series of lessons that would focus on the UK paying compensation for the slave trade (which, as usual, only focuses on African slaves and not British citizens who have, throughout the past 300 years, been taken as slaves). The report is brazen in its approach: it does not even attempt to be even-handed. Had a factional minded left-wing activist been overtly asked to write a citizenship curriculum, it would have looked remarkably similar to this DfES report.

Groups such as Migration Watch are ignored  (they were not even consulted!) while taxpayer funded political advocacy groups who pursue a left-wing agenda are promoted.

This report is thoroughly dangerous. It has been portrayed in the media as being innocuous and even a move in an integrationist or conservative direction. A cursory read of the 126 page report reveals that the opposite is the case. Conservatives who care about citizenship and who seek an end to politically correct posturing need to read this report and to campaign against its adoption.

Comments

[AlexW]

"These figures are official government figures: the real figures are bound to be more shocking still."

Shocking in what sense? The number of ethnic minority citizens is not the issue, but the way that they interact with the country and their local community is the more pressing one.

Incidentally, these statistics rather bear out the fact that the white population is increasingly aging and that immigration is keeping our demographic relatively stable.

The conundrum for policy-makers is how best to integrate ethnic minority groups into society rather than just simplistically putting up the shutters.

[Rachel Joyce]

This makes very interesting reading - as Donal correctly points out, the portrayal in the media is very different to how the report reads.
The danger with teaching "citizenship" is that it is such a subjective term, it is clearly open to abuse in terms of indoctrination.
Better to teach about history (British and world), in particular how the British and other constitutions evolved and how they are different, and also about social responsibility, but allowing people to make up their own mind. When the curriculum involves telling people what they should think, that is when we enter the realms of autocracy and fascism (however "nice" political correctness sounds, that is what it is).
Well done Donal for raising this important issue which the media has failed to do once again.

[Denis Cooper]

"these statistics rather bear out the fact that the white population is increasingly aging and that immigration is keeping our demographic relatively stable."

In other words, the white population, especially the English, are being subjected to ethnic displacement. Having responded to previous government exhortations to limit the number of children they had, stabilise the UK population and set a good example to the rest of the world, they have created an apparent vacuum which is now being filled by the children of those other people around the rest of the world who carried on breeding merrily more or less as before. And we're supposed to celebrate this? It will of course very likely end in bloodshed, unless the influx is stopped and the population is given a few generations to re-integrate.

[Sean Fear]

Glancing at the report, it is indeed pretty awful. It's filled with worst prejudices of professional anti-racists, and its proposals seem designed to embitter and alienate white pupils.

The use of statistics is very sloppy too. By no stretch of the imagination will Muslims (currently 3-4% of the population) make up 15% of the workforce by 2017.

Nor is it likely that pupils from ethnic minorities will make up 20% of school pupils in the UK by 2010 (the current figure for primary schools is c.15%) - unless pupils who are Irish and Europeans are being classed as ethnic minorities.

[Sean Fear]

"unless pupils who are Irish and Europeans are being classed as ethnic minorities. "

On checking the DFES site, I see they do precisely that. The figures are, in addition, for England, rather than the UK as a whole.

[Man in a Shed]

The Labour government proposals amount to political brain washing - paid for by the state. They already have the BBC for that !

[Simon Newman]

I think Donal's right; this looks like a move to step up the cultural Marxist indoctrination of children under the guise of teaching them 'citizenship', while deflecting criticism by saying it's about Britishness and integration.

AlexW:
"Shocking in what sense? The number of ethnic minority citizens is not the issue"

Too much immigration from different cultures can have negative effects even irrespective of the merits of those particular cultures. See eg:
http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_01_15/cover.html
On (left wing academic) Robert Putnam's findings.

A second point is that contrary to cultural Marxist dialectic, cultures do vary and some groups are more compatible than others. Our current immigration system is particularly bad because it's asylum based; it thus gives preference to the citizens of failed states, from areas of particular violence and inter-ethnic strife. These thus tend to be about the least assimilable people you can get.

[simon]

'Citizenship' programmes in schools are reprehensible. Full stop. Why now? Basically, because 40 odd years of 'multiculturalism' has not worked, and now the 'establishment' wish to 'stem the tide' of 'ghettoisation' in society amongst ethnic groups. If they think 'citizenship' classes will stop 'ghettoisation'- please deliver white-coats to those that propose them. What is a 'British' identity? Ask the Scots and Welsh who have their own national parliament/assembly. The English- as far as nouvelle labour are concerned- do not have a 'national identity'. That school of thought needs to be fought against. Which party is willing to take up the fight....

[Denis Cooper]

Oh, and of course the children in England will be taught about "Britishness", not "Englishness", which must be stamped out, while I expect children in Scotland will be taught about "Scottishness", and those in Wales will be taught about "Welshness", and those in Northern Ireland about "Irishness", all those being acceptable forms of national identity and smiled upon by BBC.

[simon]

Precisely Denis @ 19:32. This is why i despair of 'ok yah' Cameroonian Conservatism at the mo. It's as if they are terrified of offending anybody! There's no 'attack' just a 'wishy washy' approach to 'attacking' the government- and the BBC!Why arn't the party attacking 'Orwellesque' citizenship classes? And why oh why arn't the party delivering hefty - and i mean hefty- kicks to nouvelle labour over the home affairs fiasco as well as countless other disasters! The GE campaign looks like it's going to be as fierce ( on the conservative part) as Mrs Warboys!

[matt wright]

Rubbish, Labour are successfully tearing themselves apart. What we need to do is re-position ourselves to offset the negative perceptions some voters had of us. A great way to do this is for Conservatives in their localities to get inviolved in positive high profile projects. Doing instead of whingeing,

Matt

[Peter]

This such a well-argued piece, and I think it highlights a very real threat. These ill-defined classes like General Studies, PSE and now Citizenship are perfect for left-wing activists who wish to insert their political agendas into the curriculum, and they make keen efforts to do just that, no doubt believing sincerely they are doing good.

I remember revisiting my old sixth form college not long after the 2001 election and seeing how the wall displays in one corridor were full of information and flyers preaching the virtues of an open-door asylum policy, as evidence of a project students had done in General Studies. It's not so much that the view is in any way illegitimate as the way it seemed a clear matter of recent political controversy was now being taught in a one-sided way, as a sort of innoculation against voting Tory.

[Peter]

Another example would be the way we were encouraged to discuss moral issues in Religious Education. I remember my teachers being quite good and balanced about this, but the textbooks were fringe left-wing stuff: sneer quotes around the word "terrorism" when describing IRA bombers, and claiming that the presence of British troops in Ulster proved right the IRA's claim to be a national liberation movemement; a picture of football hooligans captioned with the question: "Would the world be as violent a place if women were in charge?" as if football hooligans are a typical example of male government leaders - or males in general, for that matter.

[Andrew Lilico]

Our society seems to have become obsessed with issues of race and ethnicity. We interpret aggressive comments in racial terms, we comment on how many people there are of various races in Parliament, we paint historical questions such as slavery as if they were driven by race. Once we start to see the ills of the world as racially-driven, then we seek measures that increase the divide, saying "Ah, but of course the man who invented the traffic light was black" or "The Pharoahs of the Southern Egyptian empire were black", etc.

I don't care. And I say that's a good thing. I really don't care at all how many of history's discoveries were done by people with dark skin or red hair or knobbly knees. It is precisely *because* people are taught to see the world in racial terms that these totally irrelevant matters start to seem important. So what if no great Western philosopher had had dark skin (or had been over 6'5" tall)? Does someone think that that means that a tall dark-skinned person could not be a great philosopher? Only someone with a racially-based outlook could think that.

Similarly with role models. Why should young dark-skinned boys need to have positive dark-skinned role-models? Only because someone teaches them to thing of the world in racial terms - as involving the struggle of the black man against the white oppressors.

Conservatives should reject this utterly. We do not see society as made up of such categories. There is no more a racial struggle than a class war. Each of us is himself and should be treated as himself.

Likewise, some of what certain people find "shocking" I don't care about at all. Who cares if 20% of immigrants have slightly darker or slightly lighter skin than me? Am I supposed to have more in common with people with more similar skin colour? Am I somehow "one" with a pink-skinned illiterate Catholico-Animist drug dealer from Brazil and different from a university-educated dark-skinned Christian Kenyan computer programmer?

Our aspiration should be to teach our children that race is irrelevant. We will never do that by gathering racial statistics and teaching racial awareness.