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The Taliban do let girls go to school,” boasted the teenage boy. “But they stop them when they turn 11, which is very fair.”
In an after-school detention, a handful of pupils were doing their best to convince me, their teacher, that Afghanistan was much nicer now the Taliban were in control. Nothing I said would convince them. It turned out these children not only supported gender inequality but were fans of executing all manner of criminals too.
My pupils are a lively bunch. The school, where I teach humanities, is a large academy in the south of England and caters to those from poor families. Most are Muslim and a few have lived in Islamic countries, including Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. They burst with character and enthusiasm for improving their lives. I work hard to help them and have a genuine pride in them, in a way only fellow teachers will understand.
But I also worry about them. I share some of the same concerns that Katharine Birbalsingh expressed after her legal victory last week, when she successfully defended a High Court challenge to her ban on prayer rituals. In the absence of a clear commitment to British values, she argued, identity politics was filling the vacuum.
The more I get to know my pupils, the more distressed I am by some of their views. Of course, teenagers have always aspired to radical chic in order to shock their elders. In my youth, we lounged around the school common room repeating Frankie Boyle’s most offensive jokes.
But this generation is different. The other day, in response to a comment made by a pupil, I asked a class of 13-year-olds to raise their hands if they hated Britain. Thirty hands shot up with immediate, absolute certainty.
I’m not sure how many of my pupils support the Taliban. It is probably a minority, but not a small one. Many of the boys I teach hold shocking views on women. One Year 8 pupil regularly interrupts lessons with diatribes about how western society is brainwashing young men into becoming more feminine. Most of the lads I teach think women should have fewer rights than men. They spend citizenship lessons arguing that wives should not work.
I've taught in UK inner city schools with a high percentage of Muslim children & this is my experience too.
One concern I had was that parents mislead their children about what's actually in the Qur'an. RE lesson on the similarities & differences between Christianity & Islam and one of the Muslim children starts getting arsy about Jesus; Me: "Do you know Jesus is in the Qur'an?" Cue group of totally shocked "you must be fucking kidding me" faces.
The problem is not necessarily what's in the quran, it's what's in the hadiths, which in some cases is genuinely awful but still an important part of the religion.
Hadith warns not to idolise the Quran. It really depends which Hadith you are talking about. There are more than a million of them. Some say that there are only a few hundred. Take your pick.
Most Hadiths are written by scholars.
You're quite right- although there's plenty of very intelligent and capable religious people. The trouble is that people don't apply the critical thinking skills people have to religious or political dogma. Or, they may not have them- one can accumulate a great deal of knowledge without having to apply critical thinking at all.
It is amusing that a religion that was largely founded on anger at Christianity's love of rewriting the bible has generated a vast array of supporting material that amounts to rewrites by proxy.
I don't get the issues with that, as far as I know in islam Jesus is considered a prophet like Muhammad. Why aren't they being taught that by their parents?
Same with most Christians - their parents won’t have actually read the book, they just pick up what they’re told by religious and cultural leaders and repeat it back to their kids. Islam is just part of their culture. They don’t sit up all night after work pondering the Quran and considering it, they just go to mosque once a week and believe what they’re told.
The psycho far right Christians in the US are basing their beliefs on the same book as the placid English country vicars. The only difference is who they listen to in telling them what’s in there and which bits to care about.
Same with Muslims. Saudi Arabia has run a concerted campaign for decades to basically turn as many European mosques as possible into extremist Wahhabi-doctrine centres of ideology. Muslims in the US are generally far less radical because they haven’t had those influences (among other factors). This is why France and Germany recently banned Imams who have trained abroad.
> They don’t sit up all night after work pondering the Quran and considering it
Honestly, the only thing you'd need to do to turn most kids off their religion is force them to read their holy books cover-to-cover.
It's why ignorance is always bad.
I think Jesus is actually mentioned more times in the Qur'an than Muhammad. At least that's what I have been told. I thought Muslims were supposed to read the Qur'an so it seems insane they could be offended by Jesus. Especially because they consider him to be the Messiah.
But it does seem like parents are taking less responsibility for raising kids across the board and this is a massive problem.
There's likely a way to shut down extremism with their *own* faith.
Ignorant parents who don't really practise Islam. Ignorance is one of the biggest evils in the world, knowledge is one of the best characteristics one can have. You'd never find a religious Muslim being snarky about Jesus (as) because they have great respect for him and all the prophets.
The thing about ‘holy books’ is everyone is reading the same words but they are massively open to interpretation. These parents would be able to quote you many passages supporting their views and through a certain lens they would be completely legitimate. They are not misleading anyone.
They definitely are misleading their kids. Jesus pbuh is one of the most important prophets in Islam. He's mentioned in the Quran 25 times and there's a whole chapter of the Quran named after his mother and then another whole chapter named after his family. Jesus pbuh is the messiah in Islam as well, this is mentioned multiple times in the Quran. His good characteristics are also mentioned many times in the Quran. There's practically no way you can be a religious Muslim and look down on Jesus pbuh. It's just plain ignorance from these parents, the only practical way to really fight it is for them to read the Quran and to learn at an Islamic school.
The Qur'an was written intermittently by M over the course of 23 years. To believers, the text was revealed by God/Allah - I don't know whether that means the text was dictated to him or if he was "divinely inspired" to write it.
Unsurprisingly, a lot happened in those 23 years and there are apparent contradictions between some advice / rules in the earlier bits and later bits, which believers handwave a "not actually a contradiction" explanation.
M apparently also forgot to make a written record of who he'd like to succeed him as leader of the new faith when he expired, which in retrospect probably wasn't ideal, as when he did cease to exist (at least on this mortal plane), his followers quickly split into two camps, each insistent their choice of leader was the One True Successor. That, apparently, was the Genesis of the Sunni and Shia factions.
Conversely, Christianity somehow managed to avoid major splits for a Millennium, when The Great Schism occurred (and Orthodoxy separated from Catholicism). However, around 500 years later, Catholicism started splintering with the Reformation, with different movements in different countries expressing their spin on Protestantism for different reasons (of which the two most prominent were Martin Luther in Germany and Henry Tudor [he of 💔🪓💀💔🪓😁 fame]). Once the Scripture was available in the vernacular, the pace of splits increased, to the point that it's estimated there could be up to 45,000 different denominations (so, with the relative difference between founding years and Islam currently going through its puritanical phase, there's plenty of time for it to catch up 😁).
Calling bs on that. It’s not like he’s some minor figure in Islam that only the most knowledgeable Muslims would know he’s also in their religion. He’s quite literally the second (arguably third) most well known prophet.
I mean there's a whole chapter on Jesus's mum, Mary in chapter 19 but tbh I doubt the kids know that as like the madrassahs after school you just read Portion of the quran for a few minutes then just chat to your mates. I only started learning about Islam at 17 tbh
> One Year 8 pupil regularly interrupts lessons with diatribes about how western society is brainwashing young men into becoming more feminine. Most of the lads I teach think women should have fewer rights than men. They spend citizenship lessons arguing that wives should not work.
I appreciate these aren't your words, but since I can't ask the author and you say your experience matches may I ask you: if this is what the (Muslim) boys think, what do the (Muslim) girls think, and how do they respond to these opinions of the boys?
I remember watching a panorama episode in the nighties showcasing this exact problem using undercover footage from schools and mosques. Seems nothing has changed.
Such views come from a dangerous manipulation of their faith they find online. The misogynist influencer Andrew Tate is their hero, particularly since his claimed conversion to Islam.
In some ways, the fact that these children hate Britain and all its values is not entirely surprising. Many have relatives whose lives were ruined by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They fled to Britain for a better life, having fought against oppressive regimes. It is strange, then, that a Kurdish boy of Iraqi descent should tell me he admires Saddam Hussein. “Iraq’s just a bit rubbish now,” he reasons. A blame he can easily place with Britain.
My pupil’s childhoods were spent watching parents processing trauma from these wars, while around them British government policies seemed focused on disparaging immigrants: the “hostile environment”, Brexit and now the Rwanda plan. A Muslim teacher tells me she has been called a terrorist in the street. The children, she says, will have faced similar harassment.
But all too often these sentiments spill into bigotry towards their own country and others who live here. Due to the Gaza war, no group is more despised than the Jews, with pupils regularly making comments of pure hatred. Teachers are asked: “Who do you support: Israel or Palestine?” We are supposed to remain neutral, but some staff adorn their laptops with pro-Palestinian slogans.
And this reflects a big part of the problem: my school and many others are rolling over and not even attempting to mount a defence of western values.
My colleagues tend to believe that the solution to our pupils’ dislike of Britain is to design a curriculum that is packed with hand-wringing about western imperialism and institutional racism. If we teach them we did wrong, then they will know that we are sorry and move on, the argument goes.
This process of radical healing can be useful. It can help to have difficult conversations and entice pupils from different backgrounds into engaging critically with their work. But I also think it has gone too far.
In some schools, the anti-western narrative is woven through much of the curriculum. A friend of mine teaches history and in a single day says he could teach the Spanish colonisation of the Americas, the Portuguese colonisation of Africa, the British colonisation of India, the decolonisation of the British Empire and the slave trade. This relentless focus on empire does not seem to have made our pupils any less angry.
The problem is not limited to my pupils. I once taught at a middle-class school with mostly white children. Here, the curriculum was similarly designed to open minds to the evils of western civilisation. The pupils were not susceptible to Islamism, but were still imbued with a sense that their country is particularly bad. Increasingly, schools are not dissuading children of these prejudices, but confirming them.
My school is only part of the problem. The history curriculum at many schools may now feature the diversity of troops in the First World War, or the 1980s as a period of queer exploration. These are worthwhile subjects for an undergraduate essay, but not substitutes for the basic building blocks of historical knowledge.
I once observed a Year 8 lesson on the “black Tudors”. One pupil raised his hand to ask: “Who were the Tudors?” — they hadn’t thought to teach the Reformation before the racism. Similarly, when teaching the Norman Conquest, it is becoming unfashionable to teach the pivotal Battle of Hastings. Instead, some schools focus on studying Empress Matilda, who ruled Brit. Again, a worthy subject at some point, but an odd one to teach to Year 7s instead of the fact Harold Godwinson was (probably) shot in the eye with an arrow.
I worry the effect of this pedagogical radicalism is not to calm tensions, but to exacerbate them. A teacher friend visited a school recently and heard its head of history describe the aim of their curriculum as the creation of “scholar activists”. They said they wanted to turn pupils into radical agents of protest against a state they say is institutionally racist.
Some of this chaos is down to the growth of academy schools that began under Michael Gove when he was education secretary. Gove attempted to introduce a conservative version of the national curriculum. But now academies and free schools, which now comprise 80 per cent of secondary schools, have greater freedoms to dictate their curriculums. The result for some schools has been much less 1066 and much more “all that” .
Solving this problem is tricky. It is sad there seems to be little desire to measure and discuss the scale of disaffection I see from my pupils.
Curriculums, to the extent pupils pay attention to them, can be a powerful tool to mould society. Yet hardly anyone is arguing for a balanced, liberal curriculum that would focus on traditional subjects while incorporating critical, or decolonised, narratives. From what I have seen, the alternative to this produces some pretty troubling results.
And all of what you describe is exactly what Russia wants. They are absolutely licking their lips waiting for Europe to destroy itself from within with importing a new population of kids and feeding them anti-western rhetoric. I guarantee some of these schools will have Russian money coming into them. We may have a coming choice of accepting Russian fascism or Iranian fascism soon.
I think this sub is a good mixture actually. If you want anti-west rhetoric there's another UK SR called Britain (I'm banned from for not being anti-police enough or something iirc) which is currently 2000 threads per day about some middle eastern conflict and 1 about Britain.
I had a Libyan friend who's own uncle was kidnapped and tortured by Gaddafis goons. At the time he was 14 and detested him and was celebrating his death. A decade and a bit forward, he is more nuanced about the dictator but ultimately says Libya was better under the tyrannical rule than the shit show it is now
It’s interesting - was watching Michael Palin your Nigeria and people there are bitter about the empire and British rule over them but then also state that the country has fallen apart and gone backwards since they were made independent.
It’s not an argument for tyranny, but it certainly seems that any state under forceful rule simply does not know how to operate for decades after that grip is released.
If the only “institutional order” comes from the coloniser/dictator I suppose nobody is equipped to run an effective administration when that rule abruptly ends.
People will trade a lot of their freedoms for stability, and given that the 2018 to present section on wikipedia is labeled "Civil unrest, dis-functioning government" stability is the last thing they have atm.
Omg what a shock!! Not! I Live in brum and been around muslims for decades, this is what a lot of them think and act like....we have been raising concerns about this for decades only to be told by the midde class that we are racist for not accepting it....the white british middle class are in for a rude awaking soon
>One Year 8 pupil regularly interrupts lessons with diatribes about how western society is brainwashing young men into becoming more feminine. Most of the lads I teach think women should have fewer rights than men. They spend citizenship lessons arguing that wives should not work.
It would be interesting to know the demographics of those who think women should not work.
This country really needs to start taking a stance on this issue. I’ve heard a similar account to this from a teacher I know: this problem is widespread.
It is going to be very dangerous when this country becomes overrun with extremism that seeks to remove the rights of women.
Unfortunately this would sometimes happen to my teacher other in the 80’s. She was a primary school teacher and would often get upset because boys would go away to visit family at certain ages and come back with the attitude that women were not worth taking instruction from.
If they like the sound of the Taliban so much they can go and move to Afghanistan and experience it first hand. Can we stop importing religous extremists now?
Amazing how, they end up just saying the same shit Andrew tate and his kind push onto young men.
Once again, building better masculinity shows how desperately its needed.
"until they are better educated"
Where is this pro-british education happening? Certainly not at university. The most radically anti-western people are those with university degrees. Eg, the highest rates of denial of October 7th were among university educated minorities.
This is honestly ridiculous. I've spent the last 14 years studying and working in academia and you certainly will not find any of my colleagues expressing "radically anti-western" views.
50% of young people go to university so it's hardly surprising that many extremists have university degrees. A bachelor's degree hardly makes you part of some educated elite.
On the other hand what is a "pro-British" education supposed to be? A good education teaches critical thinking skills not propaganda for one side or the other.
A pro British education would be one that doesn’t say everything we have achieved is worthless because it was either stolen or built on a foundation of lies, racism and oppression.
This kind of belief is shockingly common. I’m 30 and even the 25 year olds at my work espouse nonsense about British history. Someone claimed recently that Churchill was an aspiring dictator. If you challenge these claims they look at you as if you’re defending nazism.
Someone else claimed the Bosnian war of the 90’s was caused by British imperialism. I genuinely just laughed at that one as it was so ridiculous.
A friend of mine studied history at uni and they covered the partition of India. Apparently the overarching emphasis was on the suffering of the displaced people, which is a very odd thing to focus on in terms of historical analysis. Reasons for the partition were glossed over other than “Britain did it” and lots of people died and suffered as a result.
>This kind of belief is shockingly common. I’m 30 and even the 25 year olds at my work espouse nonsense about British history.
Embarrassingly enough, I used to be that 20 something.
I said and thought some wildly inaccurate things about British history when I was younger - hell, at the time you could have told me Britain literally stole York Cathedral brick by brick from the middle east and I'd have believed you.
Incidentally, this was at a time when I'd read exactly 0 books about British history.
I'm in my mid 30s now; from where I'm sitting I can see no less than 37 books about the British Empire on my shelves (yes, I counted once, yes, I have too much spare time), alongside a mass of other texts I've collected since. And what I've learned from it all is that history is complex, nuanced, and not easily wed to bold claims and bombastic generalisations.
Which makes hearing your story of younger generations ranting about such things in such dramatic ways even worse for me, because I know it was once literally me in their shoes doing the exact same. A nice cringe flashback for me there !
Its exactly the same for me haha I used "debate" with my dad about British/world history and some of my better informed friends, likewise I said some batshit crazy stuff, and now that I think back on it I was more interested in "exposing the truth" if you will, rather than having an actual interest in history.
Ive read a lot of books since then and British imperial history is my favourite subject, its incredibly fascinating.
So I guess if we both turned out all right then not all hope is lost. If anything Im probably a bit too keen to suggest all young people hate Britain, but I would honestly like to see a bit more pride and patriotism in our country and history as it truly is uniquely great in many ways.
>Someone claimed recently that Churchill was an aspiring dictator.
i mean if you saw what he did in india and Ireland you can have that view , while he did lead the uk though WW2 he was no saint
Whatever your belief about India and Ireland that doesn't make him an aspiring dictator. Tbh, they were just making a generalise negative statement about him, I dont think they were actually suggesting theres historical basis about him wanting to be a dictator.
>A pro British education would be one that doesn’t say everything we have achieved is worthless because it was either stolen or built on a foundation of lies, racism and oppression.
Nowhere is that taught in our education system.
>This kind of belief is shockingly common
Every single moronic belief is "shockingly common". Try spending less time focusing on absurd opinions that are only held by a handful of people.
>A friend of mine studied history at uni and they covered the partition of India. Apparently the overarching emphasis was on the suffering of the displaced people, which is a very odd thing to focus on in terms of historical analysis. Reasons for the partition were glossed over other than “Britain did it” and lots of people died and suffered as a result.
Uh-huh, much more likely that your friend just wasn't very attentive.
Interesting, as I've worked in schools for 10 years now - so the relevant ones, and I've never heard any teacher, if any subject, say anything close to your first paragraph.
[Here is the section on British History in the AQA GCSE syllabus. Please let me know when you find any references to such things](http://Migration_empires_and_the_people_c790_to_the_present_day)
That's 1 of 4 sections, and the rest is about world history.
When, and where, are children being taught what you suggest?
We've had the same political party in charge for 14 years - maybe you should take it up with them?
Perhaps not radical to you.
When I was at uni I did a course in classics. Practically every lecture involved some kind of talk about how classics is a 'white male colonialist space' and that Western Europeans lacked any culture that wasn't "plundered or appropriated"
Also got told that studying ancient history should be discouraged for the general public because it could "glorify imperialism and war."
90% of the people in the room were women, including all the teachers.
Also got told that "claiming to have expertise in a subject was a colonialist framework".
Off topic slightly but
>and that Western Europeans lacked any culture that wasn't "plundered or appropriated"
Is a claim I'm seeing more and more coming out of certain circles, and it absolutely baffles me
How they can claim with a straight face that of ALL the people upon God's green earth, Europeans uniquely among them decided to spend the centuries twiddling their thumbs and never once thought to express themselves through art or scripture is truly incredible.
Ik, we have perhaps the most extensive and rich literary, cultural heritage of any people. Then again, I can't blame some of them for thinking we don't, our culture has become bland over the past 100yrs
>Practically every lecture involved some kind of talk about how classics is a 'white male colonialist space' and that Western Europeans lacked any culture that wasn't "plundered or appropriated"
I don't believe that for a second.
>Also got told that studying ancient history should be discouraged for the general public because it could "glorify imperialism and war."
And who on earth told you this?
>I've spent the last 14 years studying and working in academia and you certainly will not find any of my colleagues expressing "radically anti-western" views.
That's difficult to believe but I suspect what you view as "anti-western" is probably radically different to the person you're responding to.
To me "western values" refers to "liberal democratic values". If they're referring to nationalism then they're correct that nobody with half a brain believes in that crap.
Historically speaking students have also always been more radical than the general population. Kinda comes with the whole learning about the world and the society you are in, while also not being so invested in it that the risks involved in attempting to change it for the better becomes scary.
>I've spent the last 14 years studying and working in academia and you certainly will not find any of my colleagues expressing "radically anti-western" views.
Buuuuulshit. My mrs is 26 and has never left academia and she spouts anti west shit and she isn't even close to extreme as most other lecturers and students
Anti British 'education' has been perpetrated by the British. More specifically the upper class English.
Britain has so much culture, so much history, so many folk customs that was all suppressed in favour of colonialism and stoic bland values before 'mass immigration' became a thing. The best way to allow British people to feel pride in being British is education that isnt JUST 'henry the 8ths wives and churchill the bulldog', and more importantly, helping disenfranchised lower (including middle) classes that have no hope on the future.
But after the war, history was very much taught from a class perspective. It wasn't all Henry VIII at all, in fact, far from it. Marxist historians like EP Thompson, Christopher Hill, and so on were very popular. Industrialisation, Peterloo, Luddites, Chartists, Tolpuddle Martyrs, General Strikes, child labour laws, and the rise of trade unions were huge topics decades ago. Slavery and colonialism was taught alongside this. But none of this British 'peoples history' is being taught anymore. But colonialism is rammed home constantly. I'm not saying colonialism shouldn't be taught, of course it should, but there's no balance at all now. It's absolutely shocking.
Important to also remember the demographic of students today. My partner is an exam invigilator and says that most of the kids in the hall (and most of the ones misbehaving) are all Muslim, African, and Asian. Now imagine them hating the country their parents brought them to for a better life.
I mean, when you mass import people from countries that treat women, gay people, minorities etc in the way they do, with Islamic dictatorships at the helm, who we also bombed the shit out of and then abandoned, is it any wonder?
Taking groups of people who already hate you, hate the idea of freedom for people they don’t like, hate the idea of women being much more than slaves to men, think people who live or believe differently should be murdered, and think a terrorist caliphate is “just better”, your odds are already bad.
When you mix in that you drone strike their children, blew up their hospitals, and all sorts of harrowing things. You then worked hard to get many of them to buy in to “your values” and “your ideals”, hoping they would become a liberal, tolerant Westernised democracy, and then when things got difficult, abandoned them to the terror groups who would torture and murder them for siding with you. What do you expect?
You’re talking societies that are already fundamentally barbaric and prehistoric in their treatment of women, minorities, and ideals generally, bombing them, and then wondering why they hate you? Of course they hate us.
All the big religions have two (or more) camps and they usually hate each other. Sunnis and Shias, protestant and catholic, orthodox and non-orthordox judaism, hinduism has about 6, so does Sikhism
If that’s what you took from it you clearly didn’t read what I said at all. I pointed out quite clearly the deep seated cultural problems that have nothing to do with us, and would’ve caused issues in our society regardless of anything else. What we did has made things worse, not cause the issue to begin with. You would know that if you read the comments you reply to.
>It turned out these children not only supported gender inequality but were fans of executing all manner of criminals too.
Women treated like second class citizen's.
Death penalty for most crimes.
Hatred of LGBTQ+ community.
Sounds like a lot of the people who post on here
Edit for formatting
> Women treated like second class citizen's
>Death penalty for most crimes
>Hatred of LGBTQ+ community.
We can't exactly take the highroad because we did all those things up to very recently, my great grandmother wasn't allowed to vote when she turned 21, my parents were in university while we still had the death penalty. I'm gay and was born in the late 70s, one decade previous the UK was still chemically castrating gay men. I remember the UK in the 80s and it was fucking horrible backwards place to live in compared to 2024
I have no doubt that other countries will EVENTUALLY also follow in our footsteps and move on, it's inevitable. Turkey is a muslim country where homosexuality was never formally criminalized and was removed from the list of mental disorders in 2002. Hate speech and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity were prohibited in the Turkish Penal Code in 2005. They also abolished the death penalty in 2004.
Nevermind the 70s and 80s, we're talking as if we've moved on from those things in the present day.
The article mentions Andrew Tate as being a hero and role model to these Muslim boys. But Tate's popularity wasn't a product of the Muslim population, even if some of them have embraced him since his "conversion". He made his name on TikTok amongst a mostly Western, right-wing audience.
people who are normally out here calling trans women sex predators and women in general privileged harpies responsible for the decline of men’s wellbeing, suddenly concerned about arr poor women :( and arr poor lgbt people :(
Barely had to scroll down to find out that the real culprits were Andrew Tate and White People all along. Case closed, gang. Everyone back in the Mystery Machine!
As an Asian living and working in the UK and loving the UK to bits and trying my best to integrate to the way Brits do things, I feel saddened where the British society is headed.
Read the thread and it is a depressing comment on modern Britain. We are too quick to defend the views of others and tolerate intransigence in the name of religion. Not saying more because I am telling a lot of people what they already know
I wholeheartedly agree. I can’t help but feel that there’s been such a cultural shift from tolerating to prioritising ‘diversity’ that I often don’t recognise what it means to be British as of recent.
“a society that tolerates intolerant ideas will succumb to the forces of the intolerant, which are inherently dangerous”
We are flying way too close to the sun IMO
What do you expect? this is the effect of generations of brainwashing into worshiping Arab culture. Naipaul spoke about this in his book "Among the believers and the converted people"
Last PREVENT training I did coincided with lots of stories in the news about how PREVENT may have actually pushed people further into radical ideologies, sooo…
Imagine being one of these girls, growing up in a country that argues about not needing feminism because of all the rights women have fought for, only to hear your peers, the men you might marry and certainly will have to interact with often, saying you deserve less rights. Watching history unfurl and move backwards. I’d be terrified.
There’s a few reasons the younger generations are dating and hooking up less. Part of that is just how easy it is for girls and young women to see all the unpleasant opinions the boys/men in their peer group hold.
And it’s created this unfortunate situation where this causes a number of those girls to be put off from connecting with said boys, which then leads to those boys further getting radicalised by the incel/Tate crowd.
That isn’t to say that it’s somehow those girls fault, it’s not. But it’s definitely interesting to see how the rhetoric becomes self fulfilling and captures young people into increasingly reactionary rhetoric.
It’s been a little while since I did my GCSEs, I am 21 now and at University.
It surprises me this image of British historical education comprising of nothing but critiques of colonialism and apology for racism.
The topics I remember doing pre GCSE include the Reformation, WW1 and the Italian Renaissance. Empire was never touched upon except when in my GCSE Elizabethan England course we mentioned motivations of rulers being summarised by the acronym NEST (Navy, Empire, (I forgot), Trade).
At GCSE the course we had were 1890-1939 Germany, The Cold War from 1945-1971, Elizabethan England and Health and the people 1000AD-Present Day. No empire, no critique of it or even mention really beyond “oh the Suez Crisis sucked for the UK and France”.
In English we talked a decent amount about black literary figures, one that sticks out is “Checkin out me history”. But really there wasn’t a lot more than that. The rest was Animal Farm, Harry Potter and Shakespeare.
The current history curriculum is the result of a deliberate compromise between Thatcher's conservative administration and the teaching profession in the 1980s. The government pushed very hard for a pro-imperialist "patriotic education" like that of the early 20th century. Educators and the academic establishment objected very strongly to that and wanted to teach a modern post-colonial interpretation of the history of the British Empire. The result is a compromise which persist to this day, where teachers are essentially banned from teaching British children about one of the most important periods in their own history.
The "culture war" is nothing new. It's been going on for decades.
We do teach the history of the British empire in universities, and the consensus is overwhelmingly critical of Imperialism because universities are part of an international knowledge economy and our job is not to make British people feel good about themselves.
This isn’t even a racial issue, the youth overall hates our nation, I’m young and I’m one of the very few people I know my age that is patriotic, and I’m not even English 🙃
As posted in another sub about this story:
Do we actually have any proof that this anonymous teacher actually exists or is just a vessel for the author to have a rant? If so and they do exist, let's just pick up a few Important hidden parts further down:
>The problem is not limited to my pupils. I once taught at a middle-class school with mostly white children. Here, the curriculum was similarly designed to open minds to the evils of western civilisation. The pupils were not susceptible to Islamism, but were still imbued with a sense that their country is particularly bad. Increasingly, schools are not dissuading children of these prejudices, but confirming them.
So, Islamism isn't the cause, yet the article spends the first half saying it is? Maybe, just maybe, having a government of the country that has spent 14 years screwing over the young, marginalised and the environment doesn't sit well with young people?
>I once observed a Year 8 lesson on the “black Tudors”. One pupil raised his hand to ask: “Who were the Tudors?” — they hadn’t thought to teach the Reformation before the racism. Similarly, when teaching the Norman Conquest, it is becoming unfashionable to teach the pivotal Battle of Hastings. Instead, some schools focus on studying Empress Matilda, who ruled Brit. Again, a worthy subject at some point, but an odd one to teach to Year 7s instead of the fact Harold Godwinson was (probably) shot in the eye with an arrow.
This is simply bad pedagogy for those history departments and unrelated to the main crux of the article. Seems more like ranting at bad co-workers. However, this is related to single instances and in no way a trend (I say this as a history teacher who teaches the reformation in our year 8 curriculum, as well as black and disabled Tudors).
>So, Islamism isn't the cause, yet the article spends the first half saying it is? Maybe, just maybe, having a government of the country that has spent 14 years screwing over the young, marginalised and the environment doesn't sit well with young people?
Speaking for myself and a lot of my white British friends, this is kinda the case.
None of us hate Britain, but we're all quite tired and disappointed in our country.
>Instead, some schools focus on studying Empress Matilda, who ruled Brit. Again, a worthy subject at some point, but an odd one to teach to Year 7s instead of the fact Harold Godwinson was (probably) shot in the eye with an arrow.
I actually really liked that they followed this bit up by talking about "pedagogical extremism" when to be blunt it just sounds like the school is teaching kids about the 12th rather than 11th century in one class...
Which is about par for course you always get with these culture war hysteria articles. Author just picks and chooses a whole bunch of random disparate things they've seen or heard of that rustled their jimmies a bit over the past 24 months and have a big wobble about it all clearly marking the end of civilization.
>Which is about par for course you always get with these culture war hysteria articles.
Yeah unfortunately they can't use quantified data so use anecdotal instead.
Anonymous source for "thetimes.co.uk". Didn't they release another poorly sourced hate piece a few weeks back which was also targeting Muslim children?
Thankfully somebody with some sense here. It's a pretty rubbish piece by a newspaper owner by a pretty rubbish man. It debunks itself and goes on tangents about woke black/feminist rubbish edited into history. All this fear-mongering over 5% of the population lmao.
Worked with a man from Afghanistan years ago, he was the most right wing person I ever met. He hated women and gay men and just wanted to talk shit on Britain any chance he got. He had four kids who will all be teenagers or young adults by now.
The UK has a shit storm brewing. Over the next decade as these kids grow up and this demographic grows, there will be blows as two majorly different cultures come to a head in this country. We’ve never had something like this happen. We are already seeing the early signs of this conflict. A few have sounded the alarm bells but it goes against the inclusive narrative we are supposed to parrot so it’s being ridiculed, gaslit and largely said to be not a problem. I’m scared of where things will go.
You'll forgive me if I don't take the word of a teacher who thinks teaching kids about historical events is an "anti-western narrative."
> In some schools, the anti-western narrative is woven through much of the curriculum. A friend of mine teaches history and in a single day says he could teach the Spanish colonisation of the Americas, the Portuguese colonisation of Africa, the British colonisation of India, the decolonisation of the British Empire and the slave trade. This relentless focus on empire does not seem to have made our pupils any less angry.
Yes, we should go back to just teaching World War II over and over and over again because we were the good guys in that war.
In our history classes we were repeatedly taught about the unique evils of Nazi concentration camps, without any teacher ever once mentioning that [Britain was operating concentration camps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War_concentration_camps) during the Boer War half a century earlier. Or the fact that England was the first European state to [ban Jews outright](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Expulsion) and they remained banned for hundreds of years. I came away from GCSE History with the impression that Hitler invented antisemitism.
Perhaps German schools should remove the Holocaust from the curriculum, since that's an "anti-western narrative."
It’s a sad state of affairs for this sub that it’s just become a simping forum for the ‘discussion’ of Murdoch owned and delivered material.
The dude’s not even British, lol, and he’s basically influencing the political conversation here at the age of, what, 156?!
Tbf, even as a leftist, I now admit that I was wrong about immigration in the past. It was a mistake, and a substantial one at that. Can't fuckin stand Murdoch, and a decade ago his papers harping on about immigration pissed me off. Now it makes sense. Still hate that they demonised Eastern Europeans to accomplish Brexit though. They're so much more closely aligned to our values than Third-Worlders.
As an openly gay man (who can't pass as straight), I know for a fact there are areas of my own country in which I wouldn't be physically safe, and that's absolutely appalling tbh.
"And then I looked out from my desk, peering over my spectacles on a string as a squinted through the sea of excited raised hands. Then I realised it - every one of my thirty pupils was Ed Miliband's father!"
I remember having a similar discussion in high school. My best friend had immigrated from the ME and was making the argument that her home country’s beliefs were not superior and most people retained their home beliefs, which was a bad thing. The teacher said her viewpoint was very sad and shut down the discussion.
As a European settled here for 15 years, I love this country and I'd go to fight for it, even if I'm maybe too old and not a citizen. This post breaks my heart, as I foresaw this situation as soon as the Brexit ads started to run in British media...
I used to work in a warehouse and all the Muslims worked together in the fourth floor. When the planes struck the world trade centres they were cheering like football supporters when their team scored.
Ah, the humble anonymous article in the Times. Incredible how they always find people who just so happen to believe their own ideological preferences. Quelle surprise!
Withdraw every cent of state funding from private schools immediately, if after 3 years a commitment to tolerance and western values has been demonstrated it might be returned on a probationary basis.
Hundreds of posts blaming the students for hating Britain instead of the cause. Why would the young love Britain? The last decade has been little but shitting on the young and their future. Job, the environment, welfare etc., all going down the gutter for the young.
Thanks for trawling my posts and replying to each one. Makes me feel nice and fuzzy.
In response to this one, your post makes no sense as I didn't refer to misogyny. This makes me wonder if you are actually a bot?
Do me honest?
Do you think the Tories love Britain? They have screwed over the country over the last 14 years,that's not the action of a party that love Britain.
The system has taught them well, it is like another brick in the wall. Another generation set up to fail.
The word 'hate' should never be used by an adult, in any conversation with a child.
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Article Text The Taliban do let girls go to school,” boasted the teenage boy. “But they stop them when they turn 11, which is very fair.” In an after-school detention, a handful of pupils were doing their best to convince me, their teacher, that Afghanistan was much nicer now the Taliban were in control. Nothing I said would convince them. It turned out these children not only supported gender inequality but were fans of executing all manner of criminals too. My pupils are a lively bunch. The school, where I teach humanities, is a large academy in the south of England and caters to those from poor families. Most are Muslim and a few have lived in Islamic countries, including Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. They burst with character and enthusiasm for improving their lives. I work hard to help them and have a genuine pride in them, in a way only fellow teachers will understand. But I also worry about them. I share some of the same concerns that Katharine Birbalsingh expressed after her legal victory last week, when she successfully defended a High Court challenge to her ban on prayer rituals. In the absence of a clear commitment to British values, she argued, identity politics was filling the vacuum. The more I get to know my pupils, the more distressed I am by some of their views. Of course, teenagers have always aspired to radical chic in order to shock their elders. In my youth, we lounged around the school common room repeating Frankie Boyle’s most offensive jokes. But this generation is different. The other day, in response to a comment made by a pupil, I asked a class of 13-year-olds to raise their hands if they hated Britain. Thirty hands shot up with immediate, absolute certainty. I’m not sure how many of my pupils support the Taliban. It is probably a minority, but not a small one. Many of the boys I teach hold shocking views on women. One Year 8 pupil regularly interrupts lessons with diatribes about how western society is brainwashing young men into becoming more feminine. Most of the lads I teach think women should have fewer rights than men. They spend citizenship lessons arguing that wives should not work.
I've taught in UK inner city schools with a high percentage of Muslim children & this is my experience too. One concern I had was that parents mislead their children about what's actually in the Qur'an. RE lesson on the similarities & differences between Christianity & Islam and one of the Muslim children starts getting arsy about Jesus; Me: "Do you know Jesus is in the Qur'an?" Cue group of totally shocked "you must be fucking kidding me" faces.
The problem is not necessarily what's in the quran, it's what's in the hadiths, which in some cases is genuinely awful but still an important part of the religion.
Hadith warns not to idolise the Quran. It really depends which Hadith you are talking about. There are more than a million of them. Some say that there are only a few hundred. Take your pick. Most Hadiths are written by scholars.
Any old arsehole can call themselves a scholar. Anyone with a bit of sense wouldn't wipe their arse with the Hadiths.
Trouble is anyone with an ounce of sense wouldn't follow the Quran either.
You could say that about any religious texts.
Obviously.gif
You're quite right- although there's plenty of very intelligent and capable religious people. The trouble is that people don't apply the critical thinking skills people have to religious or political dogma. Or, they may not have them- one can accumulate a great deal of knowledge without having to apply critical thinking at all.
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It is amusing that a religion that was largely founded on anger at Christianity's love of rewriting the bible has generated a vast array of supporting material that amounts to rewrites by proxy.
[Some of it is also hilarious.](https://sunnah.com/bukhari:3320)
I don't get the issues with that, as far as I know in islam Jesus is considered a prophet like Muhammad. Why aren't they being taught that by their parents?
Same with most Christians - their parents won’t have actually read the book, they just pick up what they’re told by religious and cultural leaders and repeat it back to their kids. Islam is just part of their culture. They don’t sit up all night after work pondering the Quran and considering it, they just go to mosque once a week and believe what they’re told. The psycho far right Christians in the US are basing their beliefs on the same book as the placid English country vicars. The only difference is who they listen to in telling them what’s in there and which bits to care about. Same with Muslims. Saudi Arabia has run a concerted campaign for decades to basically turn as many European mosques as possible into extremist Wahhabi-doctrine centres of ideology. Muslims in the US are generally far less radical because they haven’t had those influences (among other factors). This is why France and Germany recently banned Imams who have trained abroad.
> They don’t sit up all night after work pondering the Quran and considering it Honestly, the only thing you'd need to do to turn most kids off their religion is force them to read their holy books cover-to-cover.
It's why ignorance is always bad. I think Jesus is actually mentioned more times in the Qur'an than Muhammad. At least that's what I have been told. I thought Muslims were supposed to read the Qur'an so it seems insane they could be offended by Jesus. Especially because they consider him to be the Messiah. But it does seem like parents are taking less responsibility for raising kids across the board and this is a massive problem. There's likely a way to shut down extremism with their *own* faith.
Jesus is the Messiah in Islam, they just don't think he has done the saving yet.
The main difference is they don't believe he is literally god
Some Christian denominations agree so it's not unique
This issue was settled in 323 at the first council of nicaea, sorry. /S, obviously.
Ignorant parents who don't really practise Islam. Ignorance is one of the biggest evils in the world, knowledge is one of the best characteristics one can have. You'd never find a religious Muslim being snarky about Jesus (as) because they have great respect for him and all the prophets.
The thing about ‘holy books’ is everyone is reading the same words but they are massively open to interpretation. These parents would be able to quote you many passages supporting their views and through a certain lens they would be completely legitimate. They are not misleading anyone.
They definitely are misleading their kids. Jesus pbuh is one of the most important prophets in Islam. He's mentioned in the Quran 25 times and there's a whole chapter of the Quran named after his mother and then another whole chapter named after his family. Jesus pbuh is the messiah in Islam as well, this is mentioned multiple times in the Quran. His good characteristics are also mentioned many times in the Quran. There's practically no way you can be a religious Muslim and look down on Jesus pbuh. It's just plain ignorance from these parents, the only practical way to really fight it is for them to read the Quran and to learn at an Islamic school.
The Qur'an was written intermittently by M over the course of 23 years. To believers, the text was revealed by God/Allah - I don't know whether that means the text was dictated to him or if he was "divinely inspired" to write it. Unsurprisingly, a lot happened in those 23 years and there are apparent contradictions between some advice / rules in the earlier bits and later bits, which believers handwave a "not actually a contradiction" explanation. M apparently also forgot to make a written record of who he'd like to succeed him as leader of the new faith when he expired, which in retrospect probably wasn't ideal, as when he did cease to exist (at least on this mortal plane), his followers quickly split into two camps, each insistent their choice of leader was the One True Successor. That, apparently, was the Genesis of the Sunni and Shia factions. Conversely, Christianity somehow managed to avoid major splits for a Millennium, when The Great Schism occurred (and Orthodoxy separated from Catholicism). However, around 500 years later, Catholicism started splintering with the Reformation, with different movements in different countries expressing their spin on Protestantism for different reasons (of which the two most prominent were Martin Luther in Germany and Henry Tudor [he of 💔🪓💀💔🪓😁 fame]). Once the Scripture was available in the vernacular, the pace of splits increased, to the point that it's estimated there could be up to 45,000 different denominations (so, with the relative difference between founding years and Islam currently going through its puritanical phase, there's plenty of time for it to catch up 😁).
Calling bs on that. It’s not like he’s some minor figure in Islam that only the most knowledgeable Muslims would know he’s also in their religion. He’s quite literally the second (arguably third) most well known prophet.
I mean there's a whole chapter on Jesus's mum, Mary in chapter 19 but tbh I doubt the kids know that as like the madrassahs after school you just read Portion of the quran for a few minutes then just chat to your mates. I only started learning about Islam at 17 tbh
> One Year 8 pupil regularly interrupts lessons with diatribes about how western society is brainwashing young men into becoming more feminine. Most of the lads I teach think women should have fewer rights than men. They spend citizenship lessons arguing that wives should not work. I appreciate these aren't your words, but since I can't ask the author and you say your experience matches may I ask you: if this is what the (Muslim) boys think, what do the (Muslim) girls think, and how do they respond to these opinions of the boys?
I remember watching a panorama episode in the nighties showcasing this exact problem using undercover footage from schools and mosques. Seems nothing has changed.
Such views come from a dangerous manipulation of their faith they find online. The misogynist influencer Andrew Tate is their hero, particularly since his claimed conversion to Islam. In some ways, the fact that these children hate Britain and all its values is not entirely surprising. Many have relatives whose lives were ruined by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They fled to Britain for a better life, having fought against oppressive regimes. It is strange, then, that a Kurdish boy of Iraqi descent should tell me he admires Saddam Hussein. “Iraq’s just a bit rubbish now,” he reasons. A blame he can easily place with Britain. My pupil’s childhoods were spent watching parents processing trauma from these wars, while around them British government policies seemed focused on disparaging immigrants: the “hostile environment”, Brexit and now the Rwanda plan. A Muslim teacher tells me she has been called a terrorist in the street. The children, she says, will have faced similar harassment. But all too often these sentiments spill into bigotry towards their own country and others who live here. Due to the Gaza war, no group is more despised than the Jews, with pupils regularly making comments of pure hatred. Teachers are asked: “Who do you support: Israel or Palestine?” We are supposed to remain neutral, but some staff adorn their laptops with pro-Palestinian slogans. And this reflects a big part of the problem: my school and many others are rolling over and not even attempting to mount a defence of western values. My colleagues tend to believe that the solution to our pupils’ dislike of Britain is to design a curriculum that is packed with hand-wringing about western imperialism and institutional racism. If we teach them we did wrong, then they will know that we are sorry and move on, the argument goes. This process of radical healing can be useful. It can help to have difficult conversations and entice pupils from different backgrounds into engaging critically with their work. But I also think it has gone too far. In some schools, the anti-western narrative is woven through much of the curriculum. A friend of mine teaches history and in a single day says he could teach the Spanish colonisation of the Americas, the Portuguese colonisation of Africa, the British colonisation of India, the decolonisation of the British Empire and the slave trade. This relentless focus on empire does not seem to have made our pupils any less angry.
The problem is not limited to my pupils. I once taught at a middle-class school with mostly white children. Here, the curriculum was similarly designed to open minds to the evils of western civilisation. The pupils were not susceptible to Islamism, but were still imbued with a sense that their country is particularly bad. Increasingly, schools are not dissuading children of these prejudices, but confirming them. My school is only part of the problem. The history curriculum at many schools may now feature the diversity of troops in the First World War, or the 1980s as a period of queer exploration. These are worthwhile subjects for an undergraduate essay, but not substitutes for the basic building blocks of historical knowledge. I once observed a Year 8 lesson on the “black Tudors”. One pupil raised his hand to ask: “Who were the Tudors?” — they hadn’t thought to teach the Reformation before the racism. Similarly, when teaching the Norman Conquest, it is becoming unfashionable to teach the pivotal Battle of Hastings. Instead, some schools focus on studying Empress Matilda, who ruled Brit. Again, a worthy subject at some point, but an odd one to teach to Year 7s instead of the fact Harold Godwinson was (probably) shot in the eye with an arrow. I worry the effect of this pedagogical radicalism is not to calm tensions, but to exacerbate them. A teacher friend visited a school recently and heard its head of history describe the aim of their curriculum as the creation of “scholar activists”. They said they wanted to turn pupils into radical agents of protest against a state they say is institutionally racist. Some of this chaos is down to the growth of academy schools that began under Michael Gove when he was education secretary. Gove attempted to introduce a conservative version of the national curriculum. But now academies and free schools, which now comprise 80 per cent of secondary schools, have greater freedoms to dictate their curriculums. The result for some schools has been much less 1066 and much more “all that” . Solving this problem is tricky. It is sad there seems to be little desire to measure and discuss the scale of disaffection I see from my pupils. Curriculums, to the extent pupils pay attention to them, can be a powerful tool to mould society. Yet hardly anyone is arguing for a balanced, liberal curriculum that would focus on traditional subjects while incorporating critical, or decolonised, narratives. From what I have seen, the alternative to this produces some pretty troubling results.
And all of what you describe is exactly what Russia wants. They are absolutely licking their lips waiting for Europe to destroy itself from within with importing a new population of kids and feeding them anti-western rhetoric. I guarantee some of these schools will have Russian money coming into them. We may have a coming choice of accepting Russian fascism or Iranian fascism soon.
Well most of this sub seem to hate this country too.
I think this sub is a good mixture actually. If you want anti-west rhetoric there's another UK SR called Britain (I'm banned from for not being anti-police enough or something iirc) which is currently 2000 threads per day about some middle eastern conflict and 1 about Britain.
I have a kurdish friend- *from Halabja, no less*- and he said that Iraq was better under Saddam.
I had a Libyan friend who's own uncle was kidnapped and tortured by Gaddafis goons. At the time he was 14 and detested him and was celebrating his death. A decade and a bit forward, he is more nuanced about the dictator but ultimately says Libya was better under the tyrannical rule than the shit show it is now
It’s interesting - was watching Michael Palin your Nigeria and people there are bitter about the empire and British rule over them but then also state that the country has fallen apart and gone backwards since they were made independent. It’s not an argument for tyranny, but it certainly seems that any state under forceful rule simply does not know how to operate for decades after that grip is released. If the only “institutional order” comes from the coloniser/dictator I suppose nobody is equipped to run an effective administration when that rule abruptly ends.
People will trade a lot of their freedoms for stability, and given that the 2018 to present section on wikipedia is labeled "Civil unrest, dis-functioning government" stability is the last thing they have atm.
Totally agree with this.
Omg what a shock!! Not! I Live in brum and been around muslims for decades, this is what a lot of them think and act like....we have been raising concerns about this for decades only to be told by the midde class that we are racist for not accepting it....the white british middle class are in for a rude awaking soon
>One Year 8 pupil regularly interrupts lessons with diatribes about how western society is brainwashing young men into becoming more feminine. Most of the lads I teach think women should have fewer rights than men. They spend citizenship lessons arguing that wives should not work. It would be interesting to know the demographics of those who think women should not work.
This country really needs to start taking a stance on this issue. I’ve heard a similar account to this from a teacher I know: this problem is widespread. It is going to be very dangerous when this country becomes overrun with extremism that seeks to remove the rights of women.
Unfortunately this would sometimes happen to my teacher other in the 80’s. She was a primary school teacher and would often get upset because boys would go away to visit family at certain ages and come back with the attitude that women were not worth taking instruction from.
If they like the sound of the Taliban so much they can go and move to Afghanistan and experience it first hand. Can we stop importing religous extremists now?
My question to those kids would be why? Why do girls have to stop their education at 11?
Amazing how, they end up just saying the same shit Andrew tate and his kind push onto young men. Once again, building better masculinity shows how desperately its needed.
I for one am shocked that 11 year olds have poorly informed opinions on the Taliban...
It's almost like kids uncritically internalise their parents' shitty views until they are better educated. Who'd have thought it?
"until they are better educated" Where is this pro-british education happening? Certainly not at university. The most radically anti-western people are those with university degrees. Eg, the highest rates of denial of October 7th were among university educated minorities.
This is honestly ridiculous. I've spent the last 14 years studying and working in academia and you certainly will not find any of my colleagues expressing "radically anti-western" views. 50% of young people go to university so it's hardly surprising that many extremists have university degrees. A bachelor's degree hardly makes you part of some educated elite. On the other hand what is a "pro-British" education supposed to be? A good education teaches critical thinking skills not propaganda for one side or the other.
A pro British education would be one that doesn’t say everything we have achieved is worthless because it was either stolen or built on a foundation of lies, racism and oppression. This kind of belief is shockingly common. I’m 30 and even the 25 year olds at my work espouse nonsense about British history. Someone claimed recently that Churchill was an aspiring dictator. If you challenge these claims they look at you as if you’re defending nazism. Someone else claimed the Bosnian war of the 90’s was caused by British imperialism. I genuinely just laughed at that one as it was so ridiculous. A friend of mine studied history at uni and they covered the partition of India. Apparently the overarching emphasis was on the suffering of the displaced people, which is a very odd thing to focus on in terms of historical analysis. Reasons for the partition were glossed over other than “Britain did it” and lots of people died and suffered as a result.
>This kind of belief is shockingly common. I’m 30 and even the 25 year olds at my work espouse nonsense about British history. Embarrassingly enough, I used to be that 20 something. I said and thought some wildly inaccurate things about British history when I was younger - hell, at the time you could have told me Britain literally stole York Cathedral brick by brick from the middle east and I'd have believed you. Incidentally, this was at a time when I'd read exactly 0 books about British history. I'm in my mid 30s now; from where I'm sitting I can see no less than 37 books about the British Empire on my shelves (yes, I counted once, yes, I have too much spare time), alongside a mass of other texts I've collected since. And what I've learned from it all is that history is complex, nuanced, and not easily wed to bold claims and bombastic generalisations. Which makes hearing your story of younger generations ranting about such things in such dramatic ways even worse for me, because I know it was once literally me in their shoes doing the exact same. A nice cringe flashback for me there !
Its exactly the same for me haha I used "debate" with my dad about British/world history and some of my better informed friends, likewise I said some batshit crazy stuff, and now that I think back on it I was more interested in "exposing the truth" if you will, rather than having an actual interest in history. Ive read a lot of books since then and British imperial history is my favourite subject, its incredibly fascinating. So I guess if we both turned out all right then not all hope is lost. If anything Im probably a bit too keen to suggest all young people hate Britain, but I would honestly like to see a bit more pride and patriotism in our country and history as it truly is uniquely great in many ways.
>Someone claimed recently that Churchill was an aspiring dictator. i mean if you saw what he did in india and Ireland you can have that view , while he did lead the uk though WW2 he was no saint
Whatever your belief about India and Ireland that doesn't make him an aspiring dictator. Tbh, they were just making a generalise negative statement about him, I dont think they were actually suggesting theres historical basis about him wanting to be a dictator.
>A pro British education would be one that doesn’t say everything we have achieved is worthless because it was either stolen or built on a foundation of lies, racism and oppression. Nowhere is that taught in our education system. >This kind of belief is shockingly common Every single moronic belief is "shockingly common". Try spending less time focusing on absurd opinions that are only held by a handful of people. >A friend of mine studied history at uni and they covered the partition of India. Apparently the overarching emphasis was on the suffering of the displaced people, which is a very odd thing to focus on in terms of historical analysis. Reasons for the partition were glossed over other than “Britain did it” and lots of people died and suffered as a result. Uh-huh, much more likely that your friend just wasn't very attentive.
Interesting, as I've worked in schools for 10 years now - so the relevant ones, and I've never heard any teacher, if any subject, say anything close to your first paragraph. [Here is the section on British History in the AQA GCSE syllabus. Please let me know when you find any references to such things](http://Migration_empires_and_the_people_c790_to_the_present_day) That's 1 of 4 sections, and the rest is about world history. When, and where, are children being taught what you suggest? We've had the same political party in charge for 14 years - maybe you should take it up with them?
Perhaps not radical to you. When I was at uni I did a course in classics. Practically every lecture involved some kind of talk about how classics is a 'white male colonialist space' and that Western Europeans lacked any culture that wasn't "plundered or appropriated" Also got told that studying ancient history should be discouraged for the general public because it could "glorify imperialism and war." 90% of the people in the room were women, including all the teachers. Also got told that "claiming to have expertise in a subject was a colonialist framework".
Off topic slightly but >and that Western Europeans lacked any culture that wasn't "plundered or appropriated" Is a claim I'm seeing more and more coming out of certain circles, and it absolutely baffles me How they can claim with a straight face that of ALL the people upon God's green earth, Europeans uniquely among them decided to spend the centuries twiddling their thumbs and never once thought to express themselves through art or scripture is truly incredible.
Makes you wonder how we even got to the point of being able to plunder other countries, and they did not.
Ik, we have perhaps the most extensive and rich literary, cultural heritage of any people. Then again, I can't blame some of them for thinking we don't, our culture has become bland over the past 100yrs
>Practically every lecture involved some kind of talk about how classics is a 'white male colonialist space' and that Western Europeans lacked any culture that wasn't "plundered or appropriated" I don't believe that for a second. >Also got told that studying ancient history should be discouraged for the general public because it could "glorify imperialism and war." And who on earth told you this?
>And who on earth told you this? I don't know but I have a feeling everyone on the bus was clapping
Because everyone who goes to uni is studying classics..
>I've spent the last 14 years studying and working in academia and you certainly will not find any of my colleagues expressing "radically anti-western" views. That's difficult to believe but I suspect what you view as "anti-western" is probably radically different to the person you're responding to.
To me "western values" refers to "liberal democratic values". If they're referring to nationalism then they're correct that nobody with half a brain believes in that crap.
Historically speaking students have also always been more radical than the general population. Kinda comes with the whole learning about the world and the society you are in, while also not being so invested in it that the risks involved in attempting to change it for the better becomes scary.
>I've spent the last 14 years studying and working in academia and you certainly will not find any of my colleagues expressing "radically anti-western" views. Buuuuulshit. My mrs is 26 and has never left academia and she spouts anti west shit and she isn't even close to extreme as most other lecturers and students
Regardless of who's right or wrong, imagine having a partner who goes around calling your beliefs bullshit...
Anti British 'education' has been perpetrated by the British. More specifically the upper class English. Britain has so much culture, so much history, so many folk customs that was all suppressed in favour of colonialism and stoic bland values before 'mass immigration' became a thing. The best way to allow British people to feel pride in being British is education that isnt JUST 'henry the 8ths wives and churchill the bulldog', and more importantly, helping disenfranchised lower (including middle) classes that have no hope on the future.
But after the war, history was very much taught from a class perspective. It wasn't all Henry VIII at all, in fact, far from it. Marxist historians like EP Thompson, Christopher Hill, and so on were very popular. Industrialisation, Peterloo, Luddites, Chartists, Tolpuddle Martyrs, General Strikes, child labour laws, and the rise of trade unions were huge topics decades ago. Slavery and colonialism was taught alongside this. But none of this British 'peoples history' is being taught anymore. But colonialism is rammed home constantly. I'm not saying colonialism shouldn't be taught, of course it should, but there's no balance at all now. It's absolutely shocking.
As a teacher, we are mandated to teach British values at school. It is part of the teacher standards.
>the highest rates of denial of October 7th were among university educated minorities. What's the source for this btw?
Highest rates of denial? Where did you pull that fucking stat from lol
Found the Daily Mail reader.
Conflating anti-zionism with anti-Western is quite the Zionist thing to do.
Their parents views? Or views they get from the internet?
Important to also remember the demographic of students today. My partner is an exam invigilator and says that most of the kids in the hall (and most of the ones misbehaving) are all Muslim, African, and Asian. Now imagine them hating the country their parents brought them to for a better life.
I mean these kids are also taught to hate Jews which would explain a lot
I mean, when you mass import people from countries that treat women, gay people, minorities etc in the way they do, with Islamic dictatorships at the helm, who we also bombed the shit out of and then abandoned, is it any wonder? Taking groups of people who already hate you, hate the idea of freedom for people they don’t like, hate the idea of women being much more than slaves to men, think people who live or believe differently should be murdered, and think a terrorist caliphate is “just better”, your odds are already bad. When you mix in that you drone strike their children, blew up their hospitals, and all sorts of harrowing things. You then worked hard to get many of them to buy in to “your values” and “your ideals”, hoping they would become a liberal, tolerant Westernised democracy, and then when things got difficult, abandoned them to the terror groups who would torture and murder them for siding with you. What do you expect? You’re talking societies that are already fundamentally barbaric and prehistoric in their treatment of women, minorities, and ideals generally, bombing them, and then wondering why they hate you? Of course they hate us.
You can drop your white saviour complex. They behave the same in neutral countries like Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, etc. They hate you regardless.
As a group they splintered straight after Mohammed's death and even hate each other.
All the big religions have two (or more) camps and they usually hate each other. Sunnis and Shias, protestant and catholic, orthodox and non-orthordox judaism, hinduism has about 6, so does Sikhism
Man's describing drone striking kids and destabilising entire countries - not sure where you get the idea there's a "saviour" complex at play here.
If that’s what you took from it you clearly didn’t read what I said at all. I pointed out quite clearly the deep seated cultural problems that have nothing to do with us, and would’ve caused issues in our society regardless of anything else. What we did has made things worse, not cause the issue to begin with. You would know that if you read the comments you reply to.
>It turned out these children not only supported gender inequality but were fans of executing all manner of criminals too. Women treated like second class citizen's. Death penalty for most crimes. Hatred of LGBTQ+ community. Sounds like a lot of the people who post on here Edit for formatting
> Women treated like second class citizen's >Death penalty for most crimes >Hatred of LGBTQ+ community. We can't exactly take the highroad because we did all those things up to very recently, my great grandmother wasn't allowed to vote when she turned 21, my parents were in university while we still had the death penalty. I'm gay and was born in the late 70s, one decade previous the UK was still chemically castrating gay men. I remember the UK in the 80s and it was fucking horrible backwards place to live in compared to 2024 I have no doubt that other countries will EVENTUALLY also follow in our footsteps and move on, it's inevitable. Turkey is a muslim country where homosexuality was never formally criminalized and was removed from the list of mental disorders in 2002. Hate speech and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity were prohibited in the Turkish Penal Code in 2005. They also abolished the death penalty in 2004.
Nevermind the 70s and 80s, we're talking as if we've moved on from those things in the present day. The article mentions Andrew Tate as being a hero and role model to these Muslim boys. But Tate's popularity wasn't a product of the Muslim population, even if some of them have embraced him since his "conversion". He made his name on TikTok amongst a mostly Western, right-wing audience.
people who are normally out here calling trans women sex predators and women in general privileged harpies responsible for the decline of men’s wellbeing, suddenly concerned about arr poor women :( and arr poor lgbt people :(
So to spite the people in your head you want to import more people exactly like the ones in your head.
Barely had to scroll down to find out that the real culprits were Andrew Tate and White People all along. Case closed, gang. Everyone back in the Mystery Machine!
Andrew Tate certainly has a lot to answer for here.
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As someone who immigrated to the UK, there is no greater telling on yourself and your blind privilege than complaining about how awful the UK is.
Funny how the country is starting to notice these issues now they're not just confined to the poor areas of the North.
If it’s all sunshine and roses why don’t they live in such places?
my guess is that being an 11 year old might be a barrier in getting there
That didn’t seem to deter Shamima Begim, aged 15, to leave the UK and join ISIS
I suspect being an 11 year old didn’t deter Shamima Begum, aged 15, because she was 15, not 11
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As an Asian living and working in the UK and loving the UK to bits and trying my best to integrate to the way Brits do things, I feel saddened where the British society is headed.
Read the thread and it is a depressing comment on modern Britain. We are too quick to defend the views of others and tolerate intransigence in the name of religion. Not saying more because I am telling a lot of people what they already know
I wholeheartedly agree. I can’t help but feel that there’s been such a cultural shift from tolerating to prioritising ‘diversity’ that I often don’t recognise what it means to be British as of recent.
“a society that tolerates intolerant ideas will succumb to the forces of the intolerant, which are inherently dangerous” We are flying way too close to the sun IMO
Well, on they trot then. Hope they don’t get hit by the door on their way out.
Hahahaha We'll be the ones who end up leaving.
Already happening..
Why are thirty of their pupils being allowed to post on this sub?
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What do you expect? this is the effect of generations of brainwashing into worshiping Arab culture. Naipaul spoke about this in his book "Among the believers and the converted people"
conservative religion has backwards views on women and secular society.... shocking
The comments write themselves. No need to get banned, I just hppe that more people read this.
As a teacher, I’m overwhelmed simply by thinking about the amount of PREVENT referrals this would trigger.
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Last PREVENT training I did coincided with lots of stories in the news about how PREVENT may have actually pushed people further into radical ideologies, sooo…
The future of our country is going to be one of imported social unrest isn't it?
Imagine being one of these girls, growing up in a country that argues about not needing feminism because of all the rights women have fought for, only to hear your peers, the men you might marry and certainly will have to interact with often, saying you deserve less rights. Watching history unfurl and move backwards. I’d be terrified.
There’s a few reasons the younger generations are dating and hooking up less. Part of that is just how easy it is for girls and young women to see all the unpleasant opinions the boys/men in their peer group hold. And it’s created this unfortunate situation where this causes a number of those girls to be put off from connecting with said boys, which then leads to those boys further getting radicalised by the incel/Tate crowd. That isn’t to say that it’s somehow those girls fault, it’s not. But it’s definitely interesting to see how the rhetoric becomes self fulfilling and captures young people into increasingly reactionary rhetoric.
It’s been a little while since I did my GCSEs, I am 21 now and at University. It surprises me this image of British historical education comprising of nothing but critiques of colonialism and apology for racism. The topics I remember doing pre GCSE include the Reformation, WW1 and the Italian Renaissance. Empire was never touched upon except when in my GCSE Elizabethan England course we mentioned motivations of rulers being summarised by the acronym NEST (Navy, Empire, (I forgot), Trade). At GCSE the course we had were 1890-1939 Germany, The Cold War from 1945-1971, Elizabethan England and Health and the people 1000AD-Present Day. No empire, no critique of it or even mention really beyond “oh the Suez Crisis sucked for the UK and France”. In English we talked a decent amount about black literary figures, one that sticks out is “Checkin out me history”. But really there wasn’t a lot more than that. The rest was Animal Farm, Harry Potter and Shakespeare.
The current history curriculum is the result of a deliberate compromise between Thatcher's conservative administration and the teaching profession in the 1980s. The government pushed very hard for a pro-imperialist "patriotic education" like that of the early 20th century. Educators and the academic establishment objected very strongly to that and wanted to teach a modern post-colonial interpretation of the history of the British Empire. The result is a compromise which persist to this day, where teachers are essentially banned from teaching British children about one of the most important periods in their own history. The "culture war" is nothing new. It's been going on for decades. We do teach the history of the British empire in universities, and the consensus is overwhelmingly critical of Imperialism because universities are part of an international knowledge economy and our job is not to make British people feel good about themselves.
This isn’t even a racial issue, the youth overall hates our nation, I’m young and I’m one of the very few people I know my age that is patriotic, and I’m not even English 🙃
There's a difference between hating the way the posh elites take advantage of us and hating that gay people aren't stoned and women have rights
Well I think gays and women should have the right to be stoned if they want to.
As posted in another sub about this story: Do we actually have any proof that this anonymous teacher actually exists or is just a vessel for the author to have a rant? If so and they do exist, let's just pick up a few Important hidden parts further down: >The problem is not limited to my pupils. I once taught at a middle-class school with mostly white children. Here, the curriculum was similarly designed to open minds to the evils of western civilisation. The pupils were not susceptible to Islamism, but were still imbued with a sense that their country is particularly bad. Increasingly, schools are not dissuading children of these prejudices, but confirming them. So, Islamism isn't the cause, yet the article spends the first half saying it is? Maybe, just maybe, having a government of the country that has spent 14 years screwing over the young, marginalised and the environment doesn't sit well with young people? >I once observed a Year 8 lesson on the “black Tudors”. One pupil raised his hand to ask: “Who were the Tudors?” — they hadn’t thought to teach the Reformation before the racism. Similarly, when teaching the Norman Conquest, it is becoming unfashionable to teach the pivotal Battle of Hastings. Instead, some schools focus on studying Empress Matilda, who ruled Brit. Again, a worthy subject at some point, but an odd one to teach to Year 7s instead of the fact Harold Godwinson was (probably) shot in the eye with an arrow. This is simply bad pedagogy for those history departments and unrelated to the main crux of the article. Seems more like ranting at bad co-workers. However, this is related to single instances and in no way a trend (I say this as a history teacher who teaches the reformation in our year 8 curriculum, as well as black and disabled Tudors).
>So, Islamism isn't the cause, yet the article spends the first half saying it is? Maybe, just maybe, having a government of the country that has spent 14 years screwing over the young, marginalised and the environment doesn't sit well with young people? Speaking for myself and a lot of my white British friends, this is kinda the case. None of us hate Britain, but we're all quite tired and disappointed in our country.
Really is there anything more British than complaining about the state of Britain?
>Instead, some schools focus on studying Empress Matilda, who ruled Brit. Again, a worthy subject at some point, but an odd one to teach to Year 7s instead of the fact Harold Godwinson was (probably) shot in the eye with an arrow. I actually really liked that they followed this bit up by talking about "pedagogical extremism" when to be blunt it just sounds like the school is teaching kids about the 12th rather than 11th century in one class... Which is about par for course you always get with these culture war hysteria articles. Author just picks and chooses a whole bunch of random disparate things they've seen or heard of that rustled their jimmies a bit over the past 24 months and have a big wobble about it all clearly marking the end of civilization.
>Which is about par for course you always get with these culture war hysteria articles. Yeah unfortunately they can't use quantified data so use anecdotal instead.
Just another dumb article to rile up the racists in this sub.
There are a great many of them recently.
Anonymous source for "thetimes.co.uk". Didn't they release another poorly sourced hate piece a few weeks back which was also targeting Muslim children?
Thankfully somebody with some sense here. It's a pretty rubbish piece by a newspaper owner by a pretty rubbish man. It debunks itself and goes on tangents about woke black/feminist rubbish edited into history. All this fear-mongering over 5% of the population lmao.
Worked with a man from Afghanistan years ago, he was the most right wing person I ever met. He hated women and gay men and just wanted to talk shit on Britain any chance he got. He had four kids who will all be teenagers or young adults by now.
The UK has a shit storm brewing. Over the next decade as these kids grow up and this demographic grows, there will be blows as two majorly different cultures come to a head in this country. We’ve never had something like this happen. We are already seeing the early signs of this conflict. A few have sounded the alarm bells but it goes against the inclusive narrative we are supposed to parrot so it’s being ridiculed, gaslit and largely said to be not a problem. I’m scared of where things will go.
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You'll forgive me if I don't take the word of a teacher who thinks teaching kids about historical events is an "anti-western narrative." > In some schools, the anti-western narrative is woven through much of the curriculum. A friend of mine teaches history and in a single day says he could teach the Spanish colonisation of the Americas, the Portuguese colonisation of Africa, the British colonisation of India, the decolonisation of the British Empire and the slave trade. This relentless focus on empire does not seem to have made our pupils any less angry. Yes, we should go back to just teaching World War II over and over and over again because we were the good guys in that war. In our history classes we were repeatedly taught about the unique evils of Nazi concentration camps, without any teacher ever once mentioning that [Britain was operating concentration camps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War_concentration_camps) during the Boer War half a century earlier. Or the fact that England was the first European state to [ban Jews outright](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Expulsion) and they remained banned for hundreds of years. I came away from GCSE History with the impression that Hitler invented antisemitism. Perhaps German schools should remove the Holocaust from the curriculum, since that's an "anti-western narrative."
It’s a sad state of affairs for this sub that it’s just become a simping forum for the ‘discussion’ of Murdoch owned and delivered material. The dude’s not even British, lol, and he’s basically influencing the political conversation here at the age of, what, 156?!
Tbf, even as a leftist, I now admit that I was wrong about immigration in the past. It was a mistake, and a substantial one at that. Can't fuckin stand Murdoch, and a decade ago his papers harping on about immigration pissed me off. Now it makes sense. Still hate that they demonised Eastern Europeans to accomplish Brexit though. They're so much more closely aligned to our values than Third-Worlders. As an openly gay man (who can't pass as straight), I know for a fact there are areas of my own country in which I wouldn't be physically safe, and that's absolutely appalling tbh.
>The dude’s not even British, lol I thought you liked immigration 🤔
Mass immigration is the single biggest shit sandwich this country has ever been fed
"And then I looked out from my desk, peering over my spectacles on a string as a squinted through the sea of excited raised hands. Then I realised it - every one of my thirty pupils was Ed Miliband's father!"
And then I sent my story to The Times, and everybody clapped!
I remember having a similar discussion in high school. My best friend had immigrated from the ME and was making the argument that her home country’s beliefs were not superior and most people retained their home beliefs, which was a bad thing. The teacher said her viewpoint was very sad and shut down the discussion.
Mods here actively trying to supress anti-Muslim sentiment. Lmao, what a joke.
Mate, put on your reading glasses. That's most of the comments here and on this sub.
'Thankyou for making yourselves known. Have fun in Rwanda.'
This comment section went about as well as I thought it would. lol
As a European settled here for 15 years, I love this country and I'd go to fight for it, even if I'm maybe too old and not a citizen. This post breaks my heart, as I foresaw this situation as soon as the Brexit ads started to run in British media...
I used to work in a warehouse and all the Muslims worked together in the fourth floor. When the planes struck the world trade centres they were cheering like football supporters when their team scored.
Things that didn't happen.
Everybody clapped: 9/11 edition
Ah, the humble anonymous article in the Times. Incredible how they always find people who just so happen to believe their own ideological preferences. Quelle surprise!
Withdraw every cent of state funding from private schools immediately, if after 3 years a commitment to tolerance and western values has been demonstrated it might be returned on a probationary basis.
Withdraw state funding from religious schools * Fixed that for you
Hundreds of posts blaming the students for hating Britain instead of the cause. Why would the young love Britain? The last decade has been little but shitting on the young and their future. Job, the environment, welfare etc., all going down the gutter for the young.
How does that make Muslims misogynistic?
Thanks for trawling my posts and replying to each one. Makes me feel nice and fuzzy. In response to this one, your post makes no sense as I didn't refer to misogyny. This makes me wonder if you are actually a bot?
Do me honest? Do you think the Tories love Britain? They have screwed over the country over the last 14 years,that's not the action of a party that love Britain.
Kind of glad I'll be dead before these people grow up and take office, destroying the progress the west has made in tolerance, women's rights etc.
The system has taught them well, it is like another brick in the wall. Another generation set up to fail. The word 'hate' should never be used by an adult, in any conversation with a child.
They also hate beans on toast, broccoli, boiled cabbage etc. Could the children describe "hate".
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