A British university has told students to refrain from using terms such as “founding fathers”, “manmade”, “masterful”, and other words deemed to be sexist or racist.
The woke language policing has now extended to Aston University in Birmingham in the North of England, with the sociology department issuing a list of proscribed terms and words to undergraduate students.
Some of the now-banned terms include the phrases “Old Masters”, “master copy”, “one-man show”, “forefathers”, “seminal”, “manmade”, and “masterful”, according to documents leaked by a student to the Free Speech Union, which seeks to protect speech on British campuses.
Other phrases which drew the ire of the academics, who openly pronounced their support for the far-left Black Lives Matter movement, include “civilisation”, “immigrants”, “third world”, “tribe”, “non-white”, and “native” for supposedly propagating racism and colonial thinking.
The guide goes on to attack the very concept of Britishness, stating that the “idea of ‘British’ can imply a false sense of unity”.
In a letter to the school, the general secretary of the Free Speech Union, Toby Young, argued that the guidance contravenes Aston University’s own freedom of speech policy, which states: “The freedom to challenge conventional wisdom is an essential part of being a University, even if that process is uncomfortable for those who are being challenged.”
Young said that the university should withdraw the guidance and remind the students of their right to challenge the status quo, writing: “It is difficult to see how students would feel empowered to challenge conventional wisdom when the Guide takes such an unapologetically doctrinal tone.”
The Free Speech Union also asserted that the guidance is in violation of Section 43 of the 1986 Education Act, which requires universities to uphold and protect freedom of speech.
A spokeswoman for the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Aston University defended the woke guidance, however, telling The Times that sociologists are “trained to think critically about language” and therefore the practice of examining how language can perpetuate power structures is a “key part both of the subject curriculum, and of the employability skills that we develop.”
Over the past year, there have been similar language guides published in universities throughout Britain, including Manchester, which issued a lengthy language code to professors saying that they should abandon terms like “mother” and “man” in order to be more inclusive.
LGBT Charity Calls on Teachers to Say ‘Learner’ Instead of ‘Boy’ and ‘Girl’ https://t.co/GkWZII0llC
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) June 20, 2021
Not to be outdone, one of the world’s most exclusive and expensive prep schools, the Dragon School at Oxford, has announced that it will be renaming the Christmas and Easter terms in order to become more inclusive.
The Dragon School, which charges £10,931 per term for eight to 13-year-old boarding students and has hosted famed pupils including Harry Potter actress Emma Watson, will now classify the Christmas and Easter terms as the autumn and spring terms, respectively, with the summer term keeping its current name.
The recently-installed head of the school, Emma Goldsmith, said that the decision to remove references to the Christian holidays was motivated by a desire to promote “inclusivity”.
Goldsmith, who became the first female head of the school in March, said per the local Oxford Mail: “We’re a large, vibrant and busy school that is bursting with energy and are keen to remain forward-thinking and adapt to the growing needs of our busy parents.”
While Goldsmith claimed that the decision was welcomed by families, one disgruntled parent told the Daily Mail: “What is uninclusive about Christmas and Easter? Who has complained about the names of the terms?
“It has a Church of England ethos and the vast majority of pupils are Christian. What is the need to be inclusive at every touchpoint? This is wokery run riot for no reason at all.”
The spread of “wokery” throughout British education — particularly after the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement on both sides of the Atlantic — has seen ideological attacks on a range of seemingly innocuous targets, including Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, Issac Newton, sheet music, Medieval English literature, the Queen, and even lectures on tropical viruses for supposedly spreading racism and colonialism.
Three Wise Monkeys Are Racist Now, Says Woke University of York https://t.co/owGSJIoBGQ
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) January 24, 2021
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
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