Essays & Opinion
A secondary school teacher’s experience of anti-racism
The author is a secondary teacher of many years who wishes to remain anonymous. The summer term of 2020, still in lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, was spent doing online learning as schools were still closed. We had got into a fairly good routine, albeit with online lessons. It is a school in the […]
Book reviews: Minority Reports
Professor Eric Kaufman reviews a group of recent books by Rakib Ehsan, Sunder Katwala, Remi Adekoya and Tomiwa Owolade.
Against Decolonisation
Jim Butcher reviews Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously by Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò.
Book review: ‘Beyond Grievance: What the left gets wrong about ethnic minorities’
Graeme Kemp proclaims Rakib Ehsan’s book as an invaluable contribution to the debate about race and identity politics in the UK today.
Review: Imperial Heartland by David Holland, Cambridge University Press
Hardeep Singh explores a fascinating history that offers complex human realities instead of reductive moralising fables.
Once more unto the breach: arguments against decolonisation
Richard Norrie argues that decolonising universities will produce a poorer curriculum and ever-greater bureaucratic interference. Those who have really put themselves on the line to fight racism, like Nelson Mandela (aged 19, above), were inspired by the very philosophy and literature today’s radicals reject. We often find ourselves having to get to grips with new […]
Responses to Tate Britain’s rehang
On 23 May 2023, Tate Britain revealed a major reorganisation of the way its collection is displayed. The new galleries, says Tate, ‘explore art in its social context, revealing how artists responded to the cultural, political, economic and technological changes they lived through’. Here, Hana Abdulati and Rudra Simitri, two sixth-form students interested in art, […]
The Student Who Disagreed (and was brave enough to speak out)
Lest we think all young people agree with identitarian political ideas, Peter Hosangady, a 17-year-old college student, writes about what can happen in a classroom when a teacher confesses apologetically that he is the bearer of ‘white privilege’ and may not be able to teach ‘Black History’ very well. The effect is not liberatory or reassuring […]
Education policy – Let’s restore teachers’ sense of agency
The past five decades in education has seen a steady diminishing of teachers’ agency and autonomy, observes Dr Shirley Lawes. Could it be the reduction of teachers to curriculum deliverers/technicians that, in part, explains why a radically moralistic Critical Social Justice ideology appeals to some? When I started teaching in the early 1970s, there was […]
Letter from a Concerned Grandmother
In August 2021, Patricia Hutchinson, a concerned grandmother, wrote to the then Under Secretary of State for Education, Gillian Keegan, to express her concerns about what her grandchildren, who live in rural Sussex, were being taught at school. How can it be good when teachers are encouraged to use their professional authority to preach from […]
