UK Schools Told to Teach ‘Cancel Culture’ Is Harmful, Not to Promote ‘Victim Narratives’

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Virginia Hale

British schools must “explain the harm caused by ‘cancel culture'” and avoid promoting “victim narratives”, new government guidance has said.

Mandatory relationships and sex education (RSE) comes into force in British schools this month. Teacher training materials published by the Department of Education for teaching “respectful relationships” asserts that educators should teach pupils the “importance of freedom of speech” and “freedom of association to a tolerant and free society”.

“Teach that censorship and ‘no-platforming’ are harmful and damaging,” the guidance says. It adds that teachers should “explain that seeking to get people’ cancelled’ (e.g. having them removed from their position of authority or job) simply because you disagree with them, is a form of bullying and is not acceptable”.

The new legal teaching requirements also mandate that lessons are ‘LGBT-inclusive’, requiring schools to embed “LGBT content”, including “LGBT-relevant knowledge and examples”, throughout the curriculum, rather than confining it to a one-off lesson.

“Primary schools are enabled and encouraged to cover LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) content if they consider it age appropriate to do so,” the presentation also notes. Primary school children are aged between four and 11 years old.

However, following controversy over NGO-produced SRE teaching materials, which reportedly promoted anal sex and encouraged classroom discussion of explicit sexual acts, the latest guidance cautions teachers against exposing children to “over-sexualised content” or research on topics that could lead to the discovery of pornographic material.

Transgender activists were angered by the Department for Education advice acknowledging that “topics involving gender and biological sex can be complex and sensitive matters to navigate”.

The guidance states that schools “should not reinforce harmful stereotypes, for instance, by suggesting that children might be a different gender based on their personality and interests or the clothes they prefer to wear”. It adds that “teachers should not suggest to a child that their non-compliance with gender stereotypes means that either their personality or their body is wrong and in need of changing”.

According to the child sex change campaign group, Mermaids, which purports to have “grave concerns” about the government’s teacher training materials, the new guidance could make it “more difficult for transgender children and young people to identify confidently as themselves”.

Further instructions produced by the Department of Education this week also centred around helping teachers “plan your relationships, sex and health curriculum” and instructed that schools “should not under any circumstances” work with agencies or materials that “promote extreme positions”.

Examples given include positions which forward “divisive or victim narratives that are harmful to British society”. Schools were also urged against “selecting and presenting information to make unsubstantiated accusations against state institutions”.

In months of media saturation with the Black Lives Matter movement, organisations such as the BBC have constantly amplified voices alleging that “systemic racism” is rife in British institutions including the police, and is responsible for all inequality of outcome between ethnic groups in Britain.

This includes in content and programming the public broadcaster has produced for children, such articles for Newsround — aimed at children under 12. One article promoted the view that “white privilege” is “people with white skin having advantages in society that other people do not have” and white people cannot be victims of racism.

Breitbart London recently covered a report from the veteran journalist Charles Moore which revealed that the UK Civil Service, which is supposed to be a politically neutral body, has become infested with “explicitly anti-white” ideologies.

Civil Service staff now receive training on “‘unconscious bias’, ‘white supremacy’ and ‘micro-aggressions’, etc”, Moore said. He commented that these doctrines “identify all the problems of black people as deriving from white people… and all the evils from which black people suffer as inherent in white people simply because they are white.”

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