The ‘War on Woke’ currently being waged by Conservative politicians and sections of the media has a long history. It has appeared under different banners and in varied forms over the past 200 years, all rooted in an Anglo-Saxon culture deeply suspicious of ideas and the intellectual. ‘Too clever by half’ is an expression unknown in other cultures, and the glorification of ‘common sense’ and the ‘down to earth’ is a peculiarly English trait. Many posters on social media boast that they have been ‘educated in the school of life’ as if that were a badge of honour.
It wasn’t always so. Learning, wit and intellect were highly valued in the England of Shakespeare, of Milton, of the Putney debates. Even in the mid-18th Century, the French satirist and writer Voltaire wrote of England as a place where “learning is held in greater honour … than in our country – the English generally think”. But the industrial revolution saw the growth of a brutalised and ill-educated underclass and, at the other end of the social scale, public school culture increasingly glorified sport and physical prowess over intellectual achievement.
Valuing and devaluing learning and intellect
Result? The average red-blooded Englishman’s instinct to despise learning and of intellectuals as somehow ‘effete’ and a danger to the state. Add to that a deeply ambiguous attitude to education on the part of the ruling class.
In England in particular, we are not a nation of intellectuals, and we are not interested in politics.As Auberon Waugh said in 2019: “[Television’s] Question Time shows Britain at its most unattractive for the simple reason that the English don’t really want to discuss politics. We will vote when elections come round but that is about it. Force an Englishman to express a political opinion, and he will make a fool of himself.”
Education as a political football
The ambiguity has allowed education to become a political football in recent years, subject to constantly changing fashions and ideologies. While schools, in reality, reflect the ills of society – growing inequality, crumbling infrastructure, a fragmented and part-privatised system – they are often expected by public and politicians alike to be the agents of positive change.
Panic storms about falling standards and accusations of ‘liberal-lefty teachers’ corrupting young minds, whipped up by the right-wing media, are used to justify sweeping changes to the curriculum. The most drastic example being the reforms introduced by Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education from 2010 to 2014. He undid much of Labour’s investment in early years education and school infrastructure, and concentrated on what he saw as a more traditional curriculum, with its focus on teaching grammatical structures to six- and seven-year- olds, along with rigorous testing. In response, a hundred education academics wrote at the time:
‘The new curriculum promotes rote learning without understanding and demands too much too young.’
Education, education, education?
The pressure on schools to achieve good SATS results and on teachers to ‘teach to exams’ has created a system focused on output by the child rather than their individual development. Budget cuts over 12 years of Conservative rule have resulted in increased class sizes and a narrowing range of subjects taught at both primary and secondary level.
It’s a far cry from Blair’s vision of 2001: “Our top priority was, is and always will be education, education, education. To overcome decades of neglect and make Britain a learning society, developing the talents and raising the ambitions of all our young people. At a good school children gain the basic tools for life and work. But they ought also to learn the joy of life: the exhilaration of music, the excitement of sport, the beauty of art, the magic of science.”
A new vision for education?
However, there is a hint of change in the air. The disruption to children’s schooling from lockdown and Covid had its positives. For some, it created a ‘firebreak’ from the seemingly inevitable path through primary and secondary education. Children enjoyed spending more time with parents, being away from a pressurised school environment, having space to follow interests and learn at their own pace. It’s no coincidence that the number of children registered as home educated grew by 34 per cent between 2019 and 2021.
In 2022, education is in desperate need of a new vision. Politicians should stop pretending that schools can redress the ills caused by growing inequality and social division, while peddling the idea that education can be done on the cheap. Changing a ‘one size fits all’ approach to one that focuses on the individual child, their particular level of development and learning preferences, would transform our education system. And above all, let’s banish that mindless slogan ‘War on Woke’.
What do you think about the current education system? Do you have any views on home schooling or anything else featured here? If so, please email us at: letters@sussexbylines.co.uk
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