"Another Brick in the Wall" - or making racism respectable.

UKIP & Nigel Farage celebrate

In the past months the continuing political debate in this country has largely centred around the fortunes and ambitions of UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party) – the right wing, Eurosceptic populist party lead by Nigel Farage. Since its founding in 1993 it has slowly but surely gained political popularity despite its leader being constantly labelled as a bit of a political joke and a no hoper. This weekend, as forecast, the party has grabbed the headlines and the votes in the European elections and in doing so has pushed the established parties into the background. It is not alone in its victory – across Europe the extreme right has made substantial gains. In the UK the major parties are in some turmoil as they survey the damage and the recriminations have begun about them being “out of touch” with ordinary voters or of them not taking UKIP seriously enough and challenging UKIP on their policies. Suddenly, politicians of all persuasions are looking to jump on the Eurosceptic, racist band wagon fearful that they will be left sidelined as UKIP celebrate their success and the populist political landscape moves on. Where only a few months ago senior Conservative politicians were describing UKIP as "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists"  today, following the very poor showing of the Conservative party, Prime Minister David Cameron described Nigel Farage as a “consummate politician” and that the message of the electorate supporting UKIP policies had been “received and understood” by the Conservative party hierarchy. Whatever the  policies, strengths and political manoeuvrings of the various parties one thing is clear – the right, and especially the far right, are on the march across Europe and in the UK we are in the thick of it.

Poor Gordon Brown was vilified for speaking the truth

But politics, national and international events and movements do not simply occur out of nowhere. Although the established parties might wring their hands it is, in reality, a result of their actions or lack of action that has allowed UKIP to grow and become credible. Although I might despise UKIP and all it stands for it does, like all political parties and initiatives, merely reflects a prevailing mood and this mood has been allowed to develop and grow by the established parties. Now, they (especially the Conservative party) want to jump on the bandwagon of its success. In the run up to the last general election the then Labour Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was savaged by the Tory opposition, his own party and the media when he was heard to describe a woman he met as part of his electioneering as a bigot because of the racist views that she expressed. He was, however, right – she was and is a bigot – but Brown was forced to apologise and many would argue that his branding of the woman as a bigot lost him the election. In that context, in taking the side of this woman we, the electorate, the media, the politicians gave tacit support to her racist views instead of challenging them and calling them what they were. No, although the majority of British society, the media and politicians are anxious about the rise of the right in this country and across Europe, it merely reflects society and, in this case, the lack of firm action by the established parties. That is how democracy works.  

Gregory Peck as lawyer Atticus Finch in "To Kill a Mocking
Bird" -  a tale of racism, poverty and deceit. Not, according
to Mr Gove's department, suitable as an exam text 

Into this situation, at the end of last week came the reports that Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education, had “banned” certain books from being studied at GCE level. The books in question are John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mocking Bird and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible – all twentieth century American novels. Apart from any literary worth these books may or may not have it must also be said that they all in different ways deal with the issues of exclusion, racism, intolerance and people who live on the edge of society – and as such they are very pertinent in today’s world. Gove has since hit back and said that he has not banned these books and argued that pupils will, in fact, be studying a broader core of works.  These must now include at least one Shakespeare play, poetry from 1789 onwards and a 19th century novel, as well as a work of fiction or drama originating from the British isles since 1914. Methinks that Gove “doth protest too much” – whatever the niceties, the overall effect or his role in the episode the reality is that the curriculum is being limited and structured on more nationalistic lines. Rather than widening the educational horizons of the young it is closing them down. It is a small step from that to indoctrination. University lecturer Anna Hartnell wrote in this morning’s Guardian:  “.....schoolchildren in the UK are now going to be given a "more traditional" syllabus made up of largely British texts penned prior to the 20th century. Such a syllabus harks back to the myth of a "pure" origin for English literature, uncontaminated by the unintended consequences of empire, and ignoring the multicultural, multilingual and multinational space that Britain is today. Gove and his colleagues at the Department for Education are fantasising about a nation unencumbered by racial or cultural difference, or calls for greater social and economic equality....”

The notorious "Wall" 

As I read this article and thought on the European election results and of the “more traditional” and nationalistic curriculum being implemented in this country I reflected that I had always believed that my task as a teacher, and an absolutely fundamental requirement of wider society, was to pull down walls, open eyes and widen understanding. Not to necessarily learn more and harder things (although that is clearly desirable) but to understand better. In other words, to make children what I might call “wiser” – if there be such a thing And as I thought about this my warped brain was suddenly filled with a song from the past - Pink Floyd’s notorious "Another Brick in the Wall":

   We don't need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

Today, I believe, both as a society and in the school curriculum we are increasingly putting up walls.  As a society and in our schools we  more and more know what we like and like what we know and reject what we don’t like and what we don’t know - be it ideas, laws, people or in Gove’s case books. In our “Little England” world – that region inhabited by Michael Gove and UKIP and the other populist right wing individuals and groups - there is increasingly no truck with “Johnny Foreigner”, be he the nasty eastern European who has come here to steal our jobs or the subversive American novel which might tarnish the minds of the young. We don’t wish to broaden our own horizons and those of our children – we merely want to preserve the status quo or even look backwards. Look at the front pages of the tabloids and other organs of the right wing press and it will soon be obvious that we don’t want to learn from other cultures or to involve them in our community life. We, especially, don’t want to play a full part in Europe. For as long as the European Union has been in existence, and certainly since Britain became a member, huge swathes of the Conservative party have wished only to be half members – standing on the edge of the Union sniping and complaining. Like children on the playground wailing “It’s not fair – these Johnny Foreigners are out to cheat us, change us and take what is rightfully ours....please let us have the good bits of Union membership but not the bits that we don't like.” Now, with the rise of UKIP, their chickens have come home to roost. Conservative party Euroscpetics’ constant moaning has over very many years wormed its way into the minds of the electorate and now the electorate have jumped ship and placed their electoral crosses elsewhere on the ballot slip. UKIP has taken over the Eurosceptic banner – much to the dismay of the Tories who are now reaping what they have sown!

Just the sort of headlines UKIP
love - and now becoming respectable

Gove, of course, has previous form – his interference with the teaching of history to promote the teaching of only English history, of great battles won and of great Britons studied was a hotly debated topic just a few months ago. At that point he branded the senior academics and world class historians who promoted a history curriculum which took a broader view of history as “bad academics”. Only those who thought like him were classed as “good academics”. This morning he has used Twitter to answer his critics and denounced those who criticise the new exam requirements as "culture warriors”. He went on to say "Do I think “Of Mice and Men” ... and “To Kill a Mockingbird” are bad books? Of course not. I read and loved them all as a child. And I want children in the future to be able to read them all."  But whatever Gove’s protestations the net result is to make the curriculum just a little more nationalistic and just a little more prescriptive about what people should read. In writing this I am reminded of Franklin D. Roosevelt's comment - "No group, no government can or should  prescribe what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education should be concerned.". Gove's actions have helped forge another small step on the road that ultimately allows parties like UKIP to thrive. His little foray into jingoistic flag waving has made racism just a little bit more respectable, indeed fashionable, in the eyes of the electorate – “Let’s not have our kids reading the foreign rubbish – let’s have some good old English books”. Today, it is Harper Lee and John Steinbeck being struck off the exam list - tomorrow might it be Crime and Punishment, War and Peace, Germinal, the Iliad, Les Miserables and the rest of the world's great literature. And when the curriculum has been cleansed of any foreign influences then will Gove decide that Dickens, Orwell, Huxley, Vera Brittain, Shaw, Hardy and others are unacceptable because they might introduce the young to unhealthy socialist or left wing ideas? Certainly his past record and that of the Conservative party suggests this.

Germany 1933 - if the books by Steinbeck and Lee had been written then
they would have undoubtedly been on the fire. Michael Gove
has his own version of the fire

Look at any totalitarian state and those wanting control always do the same things – they disparage the views and beliefs of minorities and those critical of the regime, they rewrite history, they get rid of unacceptable books and promote their own. Look at Germany in 1933 as the National Socialists burnt books considered to promote liberal, anarchist, socialist, pacifist, communist, Jewish beliefs plus other authors whose writings were viewed as subversive or whose ideologies undermined the National Socialist agenda.  Think of China’s cultural revolution and Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book carried everywhere by millions of Chinese. Remember how the Soviet Union of Stalin’s days rewrote history. No-one suggests that this is what is happening in this country – but small steps are being made in that direction both here and across Europe as populist views and prejudices are given some small credibility and legitimacy by politicians anxious to cash in on the mood. While Nigel Farage was proclaiming in the European Election campaign last week that he wouldn’t like to live next door to a group of “unruly Rumanians” – a comment that was doubly offensive in that it is openly prejudicial to one race and secondly that it is, by association suggesting that all Rumanians are “unruly” - Michael Gove was “nationalising” the school literature syllabus, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, was making even more stringent plans to curb immigration and limit those from other countries already in the UK and Eric Pickles was suggesting that those who refuse to learn English should lose any benefits. I do not suggest that Farage, Gove, May or Pickles are necessarily incorrect in their considerations – the issues that they are involved in are serious and need addressing. But the language used and the way that these important and delicate issues are handled can create the climate that allows extreme views to develop and grow. It’s a small step from where we are to totalitarianism. There are few things that I agree with Tony Blair on but his comments today were spot on: “.....you have got to have proper controls on immigration, you to have to deal with those parts of the immigrant community that are rejecting the idea of integrating into the mainstream, but to allow that then to trend into anti-immigrant feeling is a huge mistake for the country.........You look a little bit beneath that UKIP facade and you see something, in my view, pretty nasty and unpleasant....... politicians must “confront them, expose them and take them on”.

Mao's Little Red Book
the "Bible" that told  millions
of Chinese what to think

Indeed – and for me that also means examining ourselves, whether we be a member of the electorate or a Conservative government minister as is Gove. We need to ask the question is what we are doing fostering an atmosphere which ultimately might allow extremist groups – be they UKIP, the National Front, the Taliban or any other - to gain a foothold? In Gove’s case his actions on the exam curriculum, for me, clearly do. In the same way, anyone who voted UKIP simply as a protest against the established parties or the whining Eurosceptics of the Conservative party who are so dismissive of the concept of European Union and suspicious of the motives of the French, the Germans, the Greeks and the rest carry a huge measure of responsibility for diminishing our democracy and our future. In the end, these people might wish to bury their heads in the sand and keep those who are not like us at arm’s length but they need to know that although the UK might physically be an island, as John Donne reminded us half a millennia ago,“No man is an island.......”

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

Looks innocent - but Gove is a
very dangerous man

At a time when the right is on the rise across Europe, when immigrants are under attack from populist extremists, when the criminal justice system increasingly locks up black people, when protest is met with police assault and “kettling” or when CCTV, phone hacking and security listening services monitor every word and action and focus in upon those judged to be dissenters, potential trouble makers or "lefties" then the DfE's and Gove’s decision plays into a poisonous atmosphere. Rather than take divisive action as does Michael Gove with such monotonous regularity we need to remember John Donne’s words  and recognise our similarities and our interdependence as we share this bit of rock hurtling through space. This attempt to wind the clock back and to make us an insular island race overlooks the myriad identities of the children now populating British schools. To remove texts that deal largely with issues of exclusion, racism and intolerance cannot be justified when, as I write this sentence, I note that the latest survey of British Social Attitudes shows that “after years of increasing tolerance, the percentage of people who describe themselves as prejudiced against those of other races has risen overall since 2001”......raising concerns that growing hostility to immigrants and widespread Islamophobia have set community relations back 20 years.”  In making racism respectable by building it into the established educational system Michael Gove is playing a very dangerous game.

Is this the future?

But the action doesn’t only adversely effect levels of tolerance, it has, too, potentially profound effects upon our very democracy. American President, Franklin D. Roosevelt once said “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.”  He was right. Two other distinguished American journalists of the same era took it a stage further: “A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”  (Ed Murrow) and H.L. Mencken famously observed “The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable...”. Looking back to some little England where all we know is what we see and what we see is all we like, a world which is clearly much loved by Michael Gove will not make us or our children “learn better” or be “wiser”.  Tony Blair’s mantra was “Education, Education, Education” but Michael Gove’s view is much more simplistic; his mantra (and that of his department) is “Attainment, Attainment, Attainment. Its hidden message is “Let us ensure that our children learn harder and harder things, calculate harder and harder algorithms, read harder and harder books, spell harder and harder words”. In other words,“Never mind the quality feel the width”. Mr Gove and his party don’t want children reading material that will enlighten them about the world and its people, they don’t want them exposed to material that might prompt them to look critically and ask questions, they don’t want them developing empathy and sympathy for the oppressed, the disadvantaged or those excluded on the edge of society. They don’t want educated or wise children they want blinkered patriots who are etymological experts, grammarian grandees, comprehension commissars and who think that being learned is the same as being wise! Were George Bernard Shaw alive today and writing a blog he would, I am sure, again remind Michael Gove to look forward because "We are made wise not the recollection of our past but be responsibility for the future" and another modern American novelist, the late William S. Burroughs might chime in with "Education is not knowledge of facts but an understanding of values".

That's it Dave - stuff these foreign Johnnies

We only become wise by listening to others, by learning from them, by being able to empathise with them and by seeing the bigger picture. Yes, we need to know things but we can only consider ourselves educated or perhaps wise when we are able to apply these things that we know into the many different situations that we find ourselves in and understand how the whole jigsaw of life fits together – and that requires depth and breadth of experience and understanding not more of the same. A syllabus that looks backwards and inwards and which concentrates upon the "scores on the doors", "top of the class" notion of learning does not enrich or give breadth and depth. It does not allow the young to meet, understand and empathise with the mindset of those different from themselves and will, in turn, make them less tolerant, less able to question, less able to learn from others and less able, in Roosevelt’s words, to “choose wisely”. American economist Jeffrey Sachs commented in his recent best selling book The Price of Civilisation  that “......when [a] country must grapple with complex choices about taxes, spending, military involvement and outlays and all the rest, the lack of basic knowledge becomes dangerous. A poorly informed public is much more easily swayed by propaganda and much less able to resist the dark manoeuvrings of special interest groups that pull the strings........” . Quite. 

It's on the rise again - both openly and in the nation's exam syllabus
in quieter more subtle ways

UKIP’s success and the rise of the right across Europe - and, indeed, the latest, hot off the press British

Social Attitudes Survey - illustrates well the truth of Sachs’ comment. People are indeed being easily swayed by populist propaganda and unable to "resist the dark manoeuvrings of special interest groups". That is why Gove’s actions are, especially in the present political and social climate, so very wrong. They are quietly but insidiously taking us another small step towards making racism respectable and ensuring that our young people are just a little less well informed and able to "choose wisely" . We are entering a very dark period.