Stop Dragging Our Kids into the Culture War

How Britain's schools are increasingly embracing dangerous ideas

Matt Goodwin’s Substack goes to more than 56,600 subscribers from 167 countries around the world and thousands of paying supporters who support our work. Like our stuff? Then help us expand by becoming a paid supporter and access everything —the full archive, exclusive posts, fortnightly Live with Matt discussions, join the debate, get discounts, notice about events, and the knowledge you’re supporting independent writers who are not afraid to push back against the grain. You can also join us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter/X and Facebook.

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I don’t know about you but I’m deeply worried about the most important people on the planet —our children.

Increasingly, they’re being bombarded on all sides.

By dangerous smartphones. By damaging social media. By widespread access to hardcore pornography.

And, now, by the very institutions which are supposed to keep them safe —their schools.

This was brought home to me this morning while reading a story you might have missed.

A mother in Britain has just been told by a judge she is not allowed to see the material being used to teach her own daughter about sex and gender.

Let me say that again.

A mother has been told by the courts she cannot see the material which is being used to teach her own child about issues such as sex, gender, and identity.

Why did she want to see the material?

Because, one day, her 15-year-old daughter came home from school and said an external company had been brought in to teach the schoolchildren to be “sex positive” and that heteronormativity is “a bad thing”.

And why was the mother not allowed to see the material?

Because the external company, which works with 300 schools in Britain, refused to share it on the grounds of its own ‘commercial interest’ which, the judge ruled, outweighed any public interest in the issue.

So, put in other words, we’re now living in a society which is apparently more interested in protecting the commercial interests of private firms than allowing Mum and Dad to see what their own kids are taught about sex, race, and gender.

This is —put simply— nuts.

For a start, the idea Mum and Dad should not be allowed to scrutinise materials which are funded by the taxpayer and used to teach their kids is absurd.

Copyright law exists to stop people making money from other people’s intellectual property —not to prevent public scrutiny of taxpayer-funded work.

Furthermore, most people in Britain really do not support this.

As I pointed out to paid subscribers last year, about 72% of people think parents should have the right to see what their kids are taught about race, sex, and gender.

This would perhaps be less of an issue were Britain’s schools teaching our children about race, sex, and gender in a responsible, balanced, and moderate way.

But this is simply not happening.

As I wrote last year, the blunt reality is Britain’s schools are now rapidly following their counterparts in America by dragging our kids into the culture war.

Increasingly, they’re exposing children to highly divisive, utterly toxic, and very contentious theories which often have no serious basis in science.

The teaching of sensitive and contentious issues like race, sex, and gender is now routinely farmed out to third party providers and has become a Wild West.

Very few of these providers, which often appear to be led by radical ideologues, are regulated or monitored.

Very few make their materials publicly available. And very few appear all that interested in upholding the law by remaining politically neutral.

This is why, as I’ve pointed out, dubious and divisive theories such as Critical Race Theory and gender identity theory are now going mainstream in British schools:

There was the school in Lewisham which told children they are privileged “by virtue of being white”. There was the school in London which was downgraded by regulators after putting too much emphasis on “social justice ideology”, telling pupils there are “64 genders”, leaving some feeling unable to speak and leading parents to complain that every subject was taught through the prism of race and gender and the school ran racially segregated after-school clubs, where children only mixed with their own ethnic group.

There was the school in West Sussex which in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests in 2020 announced it would teach children about “microaggressions” and staff about “unconscious racism” (a test that has been shown time and time again to be methodologically flawed). There was the school in southeast London which told pupils they were perpetuating their privilege “just by being white”.

There was the school in leafy Richmond which replaced Winston Churchill and J.K. Rowling on its list of house names for British-Jamaican nurse Mary Seacole and Marcus Rashford, and the school in Yorkshire which after the Black Lives Matter protests replaced Sir Francis Drake, Admiral Nelson and Sir Walter Raleigh for Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai. And there was the council in Brighton which advised schools to teach children about their “inherited racial guilt.”

And while that piece caused more than a few progressives in the education system to spit feathers, since writing it the list of evidence has only become longer.

There’s the study by my friend and colleague Professor Eric Kaufmann who found nearly 60% of British schoolchildren are being taught Critical Race Theory.

And if you include references to radical gender identity theory, such as the dubious claim there are endless genders, the figure jumps to 73%.

There’s the study by campaign group Don’t Divide Us, which found that of the local councils which responded to freedom of information requests a large number were openly instructing schools to adopt Critical Race Theory.

There’s the dossier, put together by Miriam Cates MP, which details in depth how unregulated third party providers are now routinely teaching children about highly contentious claims and concepts drawn from these dubious academic theories.

And there’s the study by think-tank Policy Exchange, which found many schools are now blatantly disregarding safeguarding principles and their legal requirement to remain politically impartial in favour of embracing these highly contested theories.

Many schools, it found, are not only embracing radical gender identity theory and affirmative practice (i.e. affirming a child’s belief they are the opposite gender to their sex) but are not even informing their parents when this happens.

Here are just a few more statistics from that remarkable study:

• Only 28% of secondary schools are reliably informing parents as soon as a child discloses feelings of gender distress

• Four in ten schools are now operating policies of gender self-identification

• More than one in four secondary schools are not maintaining single sex toilets and one in five are not maintaining single-sex changing rooms

• 60% of secondary schools allow children to join sports of the opposite sex

• 69% of secondary schools are requiring other children to affirm a gender-distressed child’s new identity

• 72% of schools are teaching that people have a gender identity that may be different from their biological sex

So, the idea, fashionable among our liberal columnists, that ‘Britain should not become America’, is nice but naive and misleading.

When it comes to our schools, like when it comes to our universities, it’s now hard to avoid the conclusion that Britain is, in fact, already America.

Critical race theory and gender identity theory, are now circulating widely and freely in schools, pushed on by third party providers which are often fully invested in promoting them.

Contrary to all those commentators, pundits and Substackers who were gaslighting us all a few years ago by proclaiming none of this is actually happening, the pile of evidence which shows it most definitely is happening is now overwhelming.

Increasingly, our children are being brainwashed to believe things like a man can become a woman and a woman can become a man, Britain is structurally racist, they can identify with hundreds of different genders, and that, ultimately, the only thing of value in this life is not the content of their character but their fixed identity.

Aside from the disastrous social effects this is and will continue to have on things like their mental health, social cohesion, and more, if you want to know where all this will take Britain politically then just look across the pond.

As new research this week reveals, Democrats and Republicans have now become highly polarised not only over issues like immigration, guns, and healthcare but what’s being taught to their children in schools.

While most left-leaning Democrats think schools are having a positive effect on American society, most Republicans now think they’re having a negative effect; while most Democrats see the Department of Education positively, most Republicans see it negatively; and while most Democrats feel comfortable with the role federal government is playing in education, most Republicans are really not.

Want to know where Britain will be in five years unless we get our arms around this? Just take a look at the Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis campaigns in America, both of which are making ‘the woke mob’ in schools a central issue.

If Britain is to avoid this polarisation, if we are to save our children from the spread of these deeply damaging and divisive ideologies, then there are some things we can do right now to take back control of our schools —just like some of us have been working overtime to take back control of our universities.

What could we do?

Well, we could start by requiring every school in Britain to publish all material relating to race, sex, and gender online and have a clear process in place for parents to raise concerns about what is being taught. We could give all parents a formal right to see all materials used to teach their kids.

We could force the government to undertake and complete a thorough, independent review of how the trinity of race, sex, and gender are being taught in schools and to insist this review does not involve the Department for Education which allowed these problems to take root in the first place. We could pressure the opposition Labour Party to publish its plan and vision for how these issues should be taught.

We could force all schools in the country to automatically tell parents when their child reveals feelings of gender distress at school.

We could rule that no school should be permitted to facilitate a child’s social transition unless their parents have been fully informed.

We could remind schools that according to law and guidance they’re supposed to provide single-sex activities and facilities and draw attention to those which do not.

We could insist that no schools are allowed to join ‘diversity membership schemes’ which are offered by external agencies that are routinely involved in political campaigning.

We could rule that all external agencies which are involved in the teaching of children must sign up to a register, submit their materials for a peer-review examination, and be independently monitored.

And we could launch a nationwide ‘whistleblower’ campaign, asking parents and others to highlight real world examples of what’s actually happening in schools.

These are just a few things we could do. Right now. Who’s with me?

Matt Goodwin’s Substack goes to more than 56,600 subscribers from 167 countries around the world and thousands of paying supporters who support our work. Like our stuff? Then help us expand by becoming a paid supporter and access everything —the full archive, exclusive posts, fortnightly Live with Matt discussions, join the debate, get discounts, notice about events, and the knowledge you’re supporting independent writers who are not afraid to push back against the grain. You can also join us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter/X and Facebook.