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Cultural suicide

Friday, 1st February 2008

The government-commissioned report that says teachers should avoid instilling patriotic feelings in their pupils because British history is ‘morally ambiguous’ has caused people to choke on their cornflakes this morning. The Times reports:

Three quarters of teachers felt obliged to tell students about the danger of patriotism. The survey suggested neither pupils nor teachers wanted patriotism endorsed by schools…It said: ‘To love what is corrupt is itself corrupting, not least because it inclines us to ignore, forget, forgive or excuse the corruption. And there’s the rub for patriotism. Countries are morally ambiguous entities: they are what they are by virtue of their histories.’

The authors added: ‘It is hard to think of a national history free from the blights of warmongering, imperialism, tyranny, injustice, slavery and subjugation, or a national identity forged without recourse to exclusionary and xenophobic stereotypes…Dr Hand, the co-author of the report, said: ‘Gordon Brown and David Cameron have both called for a history curriculum that fosters attachment and loyalty to Britain, but the case for promoting patriotism in schools is weak. Are countries really appropriate objects of love? Loving things can be bad for us, for example when the things we love are morally corrupt. Since all national histories are at best morally ambiguous, it’s an open question whether citizens should love their countries.’

This is not just pernicious but perverse. No-one has called for patriotism to be ‘promoted’, merely for pupils to be taught about their country’s history and institutions so that they can feel as a result a sense of belonging, attachment and loyalty. If pupils are ignorant about the country in which they live they will have no such feelings — which is precisely what has happened, and why Brown and Cameron are so concerned (despite Brown's intention to remove Britannia from the 50p coin -- some confusion here, surely). Ignorance of a country’s past, of the values that have shaped it and the story of its achievements, means that people rattle around inside it without any feeling of shared commitment or obligation. That is the way a society ceases to be a society. Proper history teaching does not mean that shameful aspects of its past should be omitted; it means teaching the history in an objective fashion so that pupils can make up their own minds about individual events. But since this country was the crucible of western democracy and liberal values, for which countless thousands of its citizens fought and died, its story — warts and all — can hardly fail to instil a sense of the value and worth of the country which its citizens will therefore wish to defend. Indeed, the very act of teaching a narrative of national identity in and of itself instils a sense of belonging to a collective enterprise.

But of course, the authors of this report do not acknowledge any such criteria of objectivity, let alone the duty to transmit a culture down through the generations which is the very essence of education. No, the explicit basis for their conclusion is that Britain is intrinsically ‘corrupt’ and its history characterised solely by ‘warmongering, imperialism, tyranny, injustice, slavery and subjugation'. No-one should be the least bit surprised that ‘academics’ from the prestigious Institute of Education, no less, should come out with such sub-Marxist counter-cultural claptrap. For this has been the orthodoxy in the education establishment for the past three decades. It is the reason why the teaching of British political history and the story of the nation has been all but excised from the curriculum, replaced instead by bursts of disconnected propaganda gobbets about ‘slavery’, ‘empire’ (which of course was all bad) and the oppression of the poor, women and minorities (with Hitler thrown in for good measure because of the crowd-pulling appeal in the classroom of extreme violence). In the 1980s, when the then head of the curriculum body — himself a historian who was aghast at this negation of education in British schools — tried to turn the tide of cultural nihilism, he lost hands down to a teaching body which declared in terms that the teaching of British national identity was intrinsically racist, colonialist and xenophobic.

The education establishment has been intent for decades on destroying Britain's national identity in an attempt to turn it into Planet Gramsci. It has succeeded.

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Thom

February 1st, 2008 1:32pm

Colonialism, racism and xenophobia ARE all aspects of our culture; but so is abolition of these exact same issues, along with allowing womens suffrage, gay rights & the founding concepts of liberty that all western democracy enjoys today (not with standing the attempts to destroy it in some place; especially Brown's government). History belongs to the victors; it is expressed in what ever way they wish it, but ignorance to will only cause it to be repeated; the teachers of history should remember just that and pursue teaching the history of Britain as honestly as possible - one of mistakes and great successes that still live on today.

John East

February 1st, 2008 1:56pm

Surely, the history of every country, and every race is littered with wrongs and evil doing. Maybe the left will arrive at the logical conclusion soon, that this is a human problem common to all races and creeds. When they finally acknowledge this truth, perhaps we can rely on them to be humbled into silence under the huge burden of self loathing and guilt, thus leaving the rest of us to get on with our lives. But I doubt it.

Ian Goodson

February 1st, 2008 1:57pm

To paraphrase the Apostle John; If you cannot love that which you can see, you'll never love that which you cannot see. Those who have no love for their own countries will have no respect for the countries of others. Love of country does not mean idolising it at the expense of reason. Love is decision to seek the best for the beloved. It is not a decision to indulge the Beloved's every whim. Patroitism is the last refuge of scoundrels not because it is the behaviour of scoundrels but because it is often the last shred of credibility a scoundrel can lay claim to. To lose the love of the country that gave you birth is to lose any care for your neighbours.

michael savell

February 1st, 2008 2:11pm

In a few years it will be illegal to talk of male achievements in any field but it will be ok to mention shortcomings.The Gynocracy rolls on.

vgregory

February 1st, 2008 3:15pm

Thom has it exactly right - teach the bad aspects of our history and how they were abolished or changed, to show that there are peaceful methods available. Otherwise the only examples of methods to change unjust or unfair rule available to students are terrorism and bloody revolt!

Louise

February 2nd, 2008 12:38pm

There's nothing like knowledge of the national story to bind the different elements in a society together. In the United States, where many different ethnicities mingle, it is striking that children (even those of recent immigrant backgrounds, whose forebears were therefore not part of what might be termed "a shared historical experience")nevertheless have a basic knowledge of the historical narrative that binds the nation together, and a pride in their nation's heritage. It used to be that way in Britain - every child left school with at least a basic knowledge of the milestones in this country's history. Alas, no longer. How the BBC and its left-liberal cohorts must be laughing. The fissures in this fragmented society are about to crack. Drake's Drum is sounding, but who if anyone will heed the drumroll?

Robert W. (Vancouver, Canada)

February 2nd, 2008 5:25pm

Listening to BBC London Radio most every day, it's clear that there are a great number of people in the UK who have absolutely no connection with your country other than to obtain whatever social services they can from it. One can criticize America for many things but citizens there are clearly Americans first and foremost. This helps to grow a cohesive nation. Why is it that so many teachers the world over detest their own nations so much?

Herbert Thornton

February 3rd, 2008 1:33am

There is at least one Muslim sect that is very keen on self-flagellation.

This teaching of British children that British history consists mostly of crimes against humanity is a very similarly bizarre tendency. It is of course mental rather than physical - but it seems to have infiltrated educators in Britain.

I believe it is very dangerous. It will not be a big step for teachers to condemn not just British peoples' behaviour in history, but their behaviour in the present.

Will teachers progress to encouraging schoolchildren to report their own parents to the authorities for infractions of the dictates of Political Correctness?

Probably the answer is 'yes' - so when they do we should not be surprised.

Grace

February 19th, 2008 2:05am

What good are the teachers if they can not stand up for truth. Band together - demand change-demand truth. Stop catering to the new EU philosophy. It is what it is-reverse discrimination and control.

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Melanie Phillips is a Daily Mail columnist. She also writes for the Jewish Chronicle and is a panellist on BBC Radio Four's Moral Maze. Her most recent book is 'Londonistan', published by Encounter and Gibson Square.

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