Writing for The Critic, John Armstrong warns that teaching is in danger of degenerating into indoctrination.
Armstrong begins by outlining how “the UK’s Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) has updated their curriculum guidance in all subject areas to include themes of social justice. They have done this by requiring that all courses include elements of Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD).
“As a result, economics departments are told they should “adopt a zero-tolerance approach to everyday micro-aggressions”. Business and Management courses are instructed to take advantage of “opportunities to involve students as co-creators of the curriculum to ensure the use of inclusive language.” Mathematicians are advised that “Values of EDI (Equality Diversity and Inclusion) should permeate the curriculum and every aspect of the learning experience to ensure the diverse nature of society in all its forms is evident.”
Armstrong continues, “one might well question how to incorporate the values of EDI into a course on abstract algebra or functional analysis. We are told it should be done by teaching that “some early ideas in statistics were motivated by their proposers’ support for eugenics, some astronomical data were collected on plantations by enslaved people, and, historically, some mathematicians have recorded racist or fascist views or connections to groups such as the Nazis.” Similarly, bioscientists should acknowledge “that influential scientists might have benefited from and perpetuated misogyny, racism, homophobia, ableism and other prejudices”. Likewise, “Engineering curricula should foster global perspectives and facilitate the recognition of historic western assumptions”.
“While the encroachment of EDI across university curricula is perhaps now quite familiar, the QAA’s second theme of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is currently more obscure.
“The programme of ESD can be traced back to the UN’s “Agenda 21” in 1992 which pledged to “reorient education to address sustainable development.” It is a radical programme which according to UNESCO “requires revising education from early childhood care and up through higher education. It requires rethinking what is taught, how it is taught, and what is assessed, with sustainability as the central theme.” For example, “in music lessons one might consider asking students to compose song lyrics about water conservation.” The desired learning outcome is no longer understanding, it is social change. “Empowering and mobilizing young people of all genders, therefore, is a central part of ESD implementation”.
“The inspiration for such educational innovations comes from the Marxist educator Paulo Freire, the father of “critical pedagogy”. Freire argued that “The educator has the duty of not being neutral” because “Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.” Giroux, who popularised the term critical pedagogy explains, “It views teaching as an inherently political act, rejects the neutrality of knowledge, and insists that issues of social justice and democracy itself are not distinct from acts of teaching and learning”. As the QAA acknowledge, ESD is “grounded” in critical pedagogy and its influence can be seen throughout their recommendations.”
Armstrong concludes: “Fortunately, there is now a case-study one can consider to evaluate the effectiveness of the QAA’s recommendations. The module “Gateway to King’s” was piloted at King’s College London and was designed to introduce all first-year students at King’s to topics which map closely to the QAA’s required themes. The plan was to roll the module out as a compulsory module for all first-year students. However, the module was canned after the pilot. 1657 students were eligible to take the course, 366 enrolled and 42 completed it. I describe the contents of the course in this paper so you can decide for yourself which of the risks I have identified were realised.
“I believe the reason the course failed is that the QAA’s recommendations are fundamentally flawed. University students want to be taught high quality content by renowned experts. They do not want bland platitudes about citizenship, regurgitated myths about personality types, or indoctrination in postmodern politics. Nor do students want to pay the opportunity costs of pursuing someone else’s hobby horse. Maths students wish to study maths, music students music, and politics students want to study politics. All students want to learn how to think, not what to think.
“Academics should not allow quangos to determine what we teach. Instead, we should pursue academically led curriculum development, guided by the individual research expertise of academics. This is the route to high quality Higher Education.”
Worth reading in full.
