#BrandNewsCorpUKTheTimesMelaniePhillips "The outspoken state school head and former social mobility tsar Katharine Birbalsingh has been making waves again, this time over independent schools. In an essay for an updated edition of a book called The State of Independence, she writes that in recent years these schools - particularly the most prestigious ones - have embraced the agenda of identity politics. Independent schools, she says, are essential in the great battle for traditionalism. Parents who send their children to such schools still believe this is precisely what they are buying. No longer. The significant change came about, Birbalsingh says, after the emergence of Black Lives Matter and the dominance of identity politics in the progressive circles where many, if not most, teachers make their ideological home. In another essay in this book Claire Fox, the one-time Marxist turned libertarian turned baroness, who is herself a former teacher, endorses this observation. Fox writes that 'woke ideology is increasingly what is being taught at the highest levels of private schooling'. This, she suggests, may explain why so many leading 'social justice warriors' in the universities were themselves privately educated. Eton, for example, has called for more gender intelligence and invited the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project to lecture pupils. Rugby School has introduced post-doctoral bursaries to explore 'the historical intersection between schools, class and colonialism'. An unidentified school founded in the 16th century and charging more than £35,000 per year, writes Fox, has trained its staff in 'unconscious bias', gives lessons in 'micro-aggressions and stereotyping' and has told department heads to ensure that 'black British history influences curricular development'. Birbalsingh says the grip that all this has exercised can't be explained without grasping the impact of 'child-centred' education. This maintains that the child is the principal driver of his or her education experience, with the teacher relegated to a back-seat role. As a result structured teaching, discipline and adult authority in school go down the drain. Birbalsingh says that this plays out far worse in independent schools because it combines with the guilt of the privileged. Not only are these pupils drawn overwhelmingly from the upper social strata, but many of the teachers were themselves privately educated. They make themselves feel better, she says, by embracing ideologies that tell them they are empowering their students to address the perceived injustices of the world. Such schools no longer inspire their pupils to repay their privileged upbringing through public service. Instead, they 'follow the children's leadership' by embracing causes fashionable among the young which will secure the teacher's position as a 'good person'. This helps explain why transgender is being pushed by so many posh girls' schools, regardless of the damage it is doing to individual girls and to women's rights. In America, the extent of this cultural self-flagellation in its most elite high schools has provoked some parents to take their children away. One such New York parent wrote that schools such as Brearley, from where he was removing his daughter, were supposed to be the training grounds for America's leaders. In a letter to all Brearley parents, he wrote: 'Our nation will not survive a generation of leadership even more poorly educated than we have now, nor will we survive a generation of students taught to hate its own country and despise its history.' In my 1996 book, All Must Have Prizes, drawing on my own perceptions of what was being taught in both state and independent schools and the evidence from teachers and educationists, I wrote about the catastrophic effects of child-centred education. The fact that I was denounced by virtually the entire education establishment proved my point that this had become an unchallengeable orthodoxy. At the same time, I received huge support from parents - and from dissident teachers who privately expressed their despair that the very understanding of education as the transmission of a culture was being destroyed, and along with it the life chances of the most vulnerable children. Birbalsingh, whose educational philosophy runs headlong against this, heads one of the most successful state schools in Britain in one of its most culturally diverse and challenging areas. Yet she is demonised as 'right-wing' - that adults brainless insult that tells you so spend much about the person reflexively hurling it at those with whom they disagree. These devastating observations about independent schools shouldn't be brushed aside as of marginal importance. Such schools may educate a small minority but they in effect set down markers for education that lead the culture. For years, they have been under increasingly vituperative attack for small doing so. Now it turns out they have abandoned that role and have chosen to be led by children instead. Birbalsingh stood down as head of the Social Mobility Commission because of the impossibility of telling home truths to a wider culture that seems to regard these as micro-aggressions. In her essay, which she wrote last summer while she was still at the commission, she likens independent schools to an iceberg that has melted so much that it topples in on itself. The uproar she provokes tells us much about the toppling icebergs of Britain and the West." https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/private-schools-woke-takeover-is-a-worry-to-all-fmntz5qkh #MetaphorWarfareCultureLiberalEducation #EDUUKSchoolMichaelaCommunityKatharineBirbalsingh #CatchcryIdentityPolitics #CauseBlackLivesMatterBLM #OrgClassifPPUKReformUKPartyLtdFKATheBrexitPartyLtdClaireFox #PoliticsLibertarianism #TauntWokeAgendaIdeologyIdeologue #MetaphorWarfareSocialJusticeWarriorSJW #EDUUKEtonCollege #EDUUKRugbySchool #EDUUSTheBrearleySchool #1996_AllMustHavePrizes #TheoryDeclinism

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Context https://www.isc.co.uk/schools/england/berkshire/windsor/eton-college/ And ^[Government]

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Addendum it's hard to know what the point of this argument is. Is it in defence of #OtheringElitesConservative #ReasoningFallacyAppealToTraditionValues, if so, why is self-declared #MetaphorConfessionOfTheReformed / #CharacterisationApostate #TheoryMarxism #OrgClassifPPUKReformUKPartyLtdFKATheBrexitPartyLtdClaireFox in support? Presumably it's simply more #TheoryPoliticsOfFearAnxietyOfVictimisation, designed to fuel #TheoryAffectiveResponseNarrative.s 

#BrandNewsCorpUKTheTimesDanielFinkelstein https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/failure-of-gb-news-is-a-warning-to-the-right-wshv3850d #LiteralSourcePrintMedia

#OrgClassifPPUKConservativePartyGavinWilliamson #NMUKITVChannel4

#BrandNewsCorpUKTheTimesMattDathan "Boris Johnson is planning to replace Gavin Williamson as education secretary with a rising Tory star who is popular in the party for attacking 'woke campaigners,' The Times has been told. Kemi Badenoch, an equalities minister who also serves in Rishi Sunak's Treasury team, is being lined up for the key cabinet post as part of the prime minister's next reshuffle, according to multiple sources. Some Tory MPs and aides are dissatisfied with Williamson's performance after a number of missteps during the pandemic. But in an attempt to avoid being axed from the cabinet entirely, sources say he has been telling colleagues that he 'knows where the bodies are' in a veiled threat to Johnson that he would be a dangerous enemy to have on the back benches ship campaign in 2019 and prior to that he served as government chief whip. One MP said he has been pitching himself as a potential leader of the..." #OrgClassifPPUKConservativePartyKemiBadenoch #OrgClassifPPUKConservativePartyBorisJohnson #OrgClassifPPUKConservativePartyRishiSunak #TauntWokery

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Supplementary #NewspaperUKBrdshtTheGuardianAndrewSparrow "There will be full coverage of Kemi Badenoch's victory in the Observer tomorrow. In a post on Bluesky, Sunder Katwala, head of British Future, a thinktank focusing on race and identity issues, says Badenoch's first published interview in a national paper may have been one in the Observer in 2006. She was one of several young Tories the paper spoke to about why the party was becoming cool again under David Cameron. In it she spoke about her support for civil liberties and said she was 'not one of those Conservatives who thinks every problem in the country is down to Blair and the Labour party'. Katwala also says this YouTube video of a speech Badenoch gave at TedX Euston in 2011 gives a good insight into what drew her into politics." https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/nov/02/tory-leadership-election-results-live-kemi-badenoch-robert-jenrick-new-conservative-leader #OrgClassifPPUKConservativePartySteveBarclay #OrgClassifPPUKConservativePartyRobertJenrick #OrgClassifPPUKConservativePartyJeremyHunt #OrgClassifPPUKConservativePartyJamesCleverly #NewspaperUKBrdshtTheGuardianPippaCrerar #AdvocacyUKBritishFutureSunderKatwala #BrandTechBluesky ^[skeet] #OrgUSTEDTalks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1ulBcFCt-E&t=19s #ToponymEuropeUKEnglandLondonEuston #1985_LiveAid #BehaviourCondescendingPatronising