Timeless books are now being sacrificed on altar of PC culture
Schools need to put politics to one side and focus on educating children.
Originally published in The Scottish Daily Mail 07/07/21.
To Kill A Mockingbird might be a classic novel beloved by generations of school children but the antics of Scout, Jem and Atticus Finch will remain unfamiliar to pupils at James Gillespie's High School in Edinburgh. It has been thrown out in the name of decolonising the curriculum. John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men looks to be on borrowed time too.
Both books have been labelled ‘problematical’ by the school’s Head of English. In other words, they are nuanced stories that do more than bang out the latest politically correct message. They portray realistic characters who have flaws as well as virtues and use language typical of their time.
Back when I was a teacher, I taught both books in my English lessons. My burly charges were not the kind likely to read at home. They may have been hefty fifteen year-olds, but I read aloud to them. Initially, some messed about and disrupted the rest of the class. Others put their heads down and pretended to sleep. But eventually the stories got to them. Just as the jury was about to announce its verdict in To Kill A Mockingbird, the bell rang for the end of class. Not one pupil moved. They were hooked.
In subsequent lessons we discussed racism, sexism, the history of slavery and segregation, and attitudes towards sex. We talked about how much society has changed and where progress still needs to be made. We noted that certain words used in the past are no longer acceptable today. Harper Lee not only told a great story, she opened the door to many issues my class would never have otherwise confronted.
Sadly, it seems today’s pupils will miss out on all of this. Their woke teachers have decided that in order to promote anti-racism, stories with a white hero or that use outdated language must be banished. To Kill A Mockingbird is under fire for using ‘a white saviour motif’. But this unfairly judges the past by the standards of today. Harper Lee portrays not just the attitudes and values of the time she was writing about, but the practical realities too. Today’s anti-racist activists might wish it were otherwise but in 1930s America, middle class white men were far more likely to become lawyers than black farmhands.
The notion that people will become white supremacists after reading To Kill A Mockingbird in their English classes is ludicrous. First published in 1960, Harper Lee’s award-winning novel was lauded for its message of tolerance and racial equality. But none of this matters to today’s ban-happy zealots.
The project to decolonise education goes far beyond one Edinburgh High School. The National Education Union, the UK’s largest teaching union, is right behind it. In a new report it claims there is an ‘urgent’ need to ‘decolonise’ every subject and every stage of the school curriculum. These woke activists are obsessed with the theory of ‘white privilege’ and they are determined to find racism everywhere. They end up teaching children to categorise each other according to skin colour and telling black children that the world is against them and white children that they are inherently bad. This helps no one.
The books children read are now firmly in the decolonisers’ sights. It’s no longer good enough for books to use language in imaginative and engaging ways or simply tell a good story. Yesteryear’s old favourites have been abandoned. Joe Biden became the first President in two decades to omit Dr. Seuss from his Read Across America Day proclamation after one State’s school system dropped the books because of “racial undertones”. Closer to home, best-selling author Enid Blyton now comes with an official English Heritage warning that her work was “criticised during her lifetime and after for its racism, xenophobia and lack of literary merit.”
Clearly, good teachers update reading lists and weed out books that are no longer relevant or interesting. We shouldn’t cling on to long dead authors just because they were once popular. But, by the same token, it is arrogant to assume we have nothing to learn from the past.
In the hands of activist teachers and union leaders, schools have become embroiled in a culture war. They have become captured by those more concerned with shaping the values of the next generation than passing on subject knowledge. In this context, rather than individual teachers simply making personal choices about which books to read with their class, rejecting certain authors becomes an opportunity for moral grandstanding.
When “racist” is defined so broadly and the bar for rejection is set so low, it is no longer clear which books will survive scrutiny. In the past, both Harper Lee and Dr. Seuss were praised for challenging racism. But this is not good enough today. Teachers on a mission assume that only work with the correct message will change the views of the next generation. This is woke indoctrination, not education.
It is a project starts with the tiniest tots. The woke nursery is home to books that teach the importance of gender equality, anti-racism and same-sex relationships. There’s Ibram X. Kendi’s Antiracist Baby; Steven Herman’s Train Your Dragon To Respect Diversity, subtitle: A cute story to teach kids about diversity and differences. Sophie Beer’s Change Starts With Us teaches children to protect the environment; or there’s Jo Hirst’s A House for Everyone: A Story to Help Children Learn about Gender Identity and Gender Expression. Older children, like the pupils at James Gillespie's High School, get to study work by the rapper Akala and novels like The Hate U Give that focus on the issue of police brutality towards black people in America.
Such books may be good at promoting a particular viewpoint in children too young to raise questions but they are unlikely to inspire a lifelong love of reading. Beautiful language is sacrificed to political correctness and worthy messages get in the way of a good story. And, despite the emphasis on promoting diversity, one group barely gets a look in. Books with white men as the heroes are definitely for the reject pile. We hear a lot about the importance of representation yet, for some reason, this does not apply to white boys. They risk growing up thinking that literature is not for them.
What’s more, almost all the books now deemed acceptable have been published in the past five years. This matters because one of the most wonderful things about children’s stories is how they forge bonds between the generations. I read to my children the same books my parents once read to me. When grandparents and grandchildren meet, there are shared jokes and opportunities for reminiscing. A “Year Zero” approach to literature leaves young people without meaningful connections to the past and with a sense of shame about their own history and identity.
Union leaders and activist teachers who are more interested in politics than education, who don’t want to teach but to preach, should not be allowed anywhere near our schools. They fail our children educationally, divide classmates who would otherwise be friends, and drive a wedge between children and their families. Schools need to put politics to one side and focus on educating children.