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You are here: Home / News Elsewhere / Open Letter to Academics’ Criticism of Government’s Pronouncements on Neutrality and CRT

November 20, 2020 By Alka Sehgal-Cuthbert

Open Letter to Academics’ Criticism of Government’s Pronouncements on Neutrality and CRT

Last Friday, The Guardian published an open letter from education academics criticising recent government pronouncements on the need for political neutrality and balanced presentation when dealing with political ideas.  Academics and teachers at DDU disagree profoundly, especially to their claims that criticisms of CRT amount to attacks on black scholars. You can read our reply here:

We are a group of academics and educators who share the belief that social progress against inequalities of any kind is best arrived at through open debate and public consent. We are concerned that academics at one of Britain’s leading education institutions have misread the direction of recent policy statements concerning Critical Race Theory (CRT), which they claim threatens not only free speech but black scholars themselves.

Against the claims their letter makes we would make the following points. Nothing is being “proscribed”: anti-capitalist material, white privilege and kindred concepts can indeed be discussed, so long as they are presented as one set of beliefs or worldviews among others. At present, we have a situation where some primary schools are endorsing the idea that ‘anti-racism’ only means focussing on ‘white privilege’ and ‘black oppression’ –  theoretical abstractions that of course can be discussed in the appropriate context, which we would argue is not primary classrooms or necessarily allsecondary classes either.

If CRT is an epistemologically validated and widely accepted theory among the academic community, then it should be open to critique from within academic circles, and also from the wider public via political representatives. Education is, after all, a public good funded by the public.

The authors assert, with no evidence, that racism is on the rise, and continue to make the egregious claim that to criticise CRT amounts to an attack on black scholars, again with no evidence. If anything, the fields it informs – such as decolonising education and black studies – have been expanding due to not inconsiderable institutional support. More broadly, CRT approaches become increasingly present in school curricula by percolating through existing courses, reading materials and pedagogic approaches.

Dissent, diversity and critique are indeed “the lifeblood of democracy” so it is strange to see education experts be so impervious to the likely effects of their accusation. No-one wants to be seen as a racist, least of all teachers. Their unsubstantiated allegations are themselves likely to have a chilling effect on the very freedom of thought, speech, and diversity of views they want to protect. There are informal ways of chilling free speech and viewpoint diversity as well as government pronouncements. Unwarranted accusations of bigotry aimed at your critics can be just as effective.

Theoretical innovation and controversies are the bread and butter of academic life. But academia is not school, where the knowledge taught should be the most reliable and most evidenced, not that considered the most politically radical by academics. If these academics really believe that schools should be teaching children that some of them carry privilege because of the skin they were born into, thereby suspecting the ethical status of the majority of population; if they really think the first duty of schools is to tackle racism by divisive and controversial theories rather than to educate, they should come out and argue for their views openly rather than attempt to delegitimise well-meaning criticism.

Signed by academics, lecturers, teachers and educational professionals at Don’t Divide Us (https://dontdivideus.com)

Philip Hammond, Professor, London South Bank University

Jim Butcher, Reader, Canterbury Christ Church University

Marie Daouda, University Lecturer, University of Oxford /  Secondary teacher, St Peter’s International College

Paula Boddington, Senior Lecturer, New College of the Humanities

Fabian Steinbeck, PhD candidate, University of Sussex

Carole Sherwood, Psychologist

Adrian Hart,  author of The Myth of Racist Kids

Tarjinder Gill, Primary Teacher

Mark McConnell, Secondary teacher

Amber Muhinyi, Independent Researcher

Howard Sherwood, Designer and Photographer

Sally Ingrey, London college lecturer

Douglas Hedley, University of Cambridge

David Butterfield, University of Cambridge

Nico Macdonald, lecturer

Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, independent scholar, writer and teacher

Ian Burns, London secondary teacher

Brian Eastty, retired secondary teacher

Nicholas Kinloch, historian and educator

Dennis Hayes, Director of Academics for Academic Freedom

Dr Ruth Mieschbuehler, senior lecturer, University of Derby

Paul King, lecturer, Birkbeck University London

Guy Turnbull, London secondary teacher

Calvin Robinson, education consultant DfE, school govenor

Matthew Edwards, London secondary teacher

I. Hagley, secondary teacher

Paul Booth, senior lecturer in History (retired), University of Liverpool

Kirsty Miller, psychologist and lecturer

Kevin Rooney, secondary teacher

 

 

Photo credit: Andrew Ebrahim, Unsplash

 

 

Filed Under: News Elsewhere Tagged With: academics, critical race theory, open letter, schools

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