Should we be banning Critical Theory and ‘dangerous ideas’?

England and Wales School Guidance on Lesson Materials

Banning things, silencing people. There’s a lot of that going around these days.

Barely a day goes by without the shambling, animated corpse of the left being puppeteered into calling for someone or something to be cancelled or excised. Usually for spurious reasons. The older amongst you will remember the censors tending not to come from the left, but the right.

Conservatism has never had a particularly strong relationship with freedom of expression or freedom of speech, save when its own use of these rights is threatened. The left, traditionally did have. After all, it was through the strenuous use of these rights that art, culture, politics and so on were pushed forward. It is through these rights that the battles around liberation and civil rights were won, especially those around LGBT issues.

It is painful, and perverse, to see the ‘left’ being behind so much of the censorship push these days then, people who seem to have forgotten the value of the rights that helped win all their victories, and now only seem to understand that they hold the whip. A similar problem can be seen in today’s feminism and ‘anti-racism’, both of which seem more about revenge than justice – at least in the WEIRD countries.

There has begun to be a bit of a fightback, sadly coming from the right, dressing itself up in the clothing of free speech and free expression, but not really meaning it any more than the pseudo-left does. This just means we’re going to be caught between two sets of arseholes and called either problematic or degenerate, depending which one it is having a go at you at the time.

Two things have happened now, that exemplify this problem.

On the one hand Trump has banned a loosely defined ‘Critical Race Theory’ from being promulgated in federal departments and contractors. Doubtless his motivations are sketchy, or stem from senility, but this may be one of the few decent things he’s ever done.

Why?

Because it’s bollocks.

Implicit bias training doesn’t work, racial and other sensitivity training tends to worsen work relations, not make them better, and it’s a steaming morass of terrible scholarship, fake peer review and ‘laundered ideas’.

Still, banning it rather than demonstrating it to be worthless (or even worse) doesn’t seem like the way to do it, and it’s hypocritical to be claiming to be defending free speech, free expression and the marketplace of ideas while banning discussion of something, even though it’s bollocks.

Not to mention, this is coming from a political party tied to even worse unscientific bollocks – religion.

Then we come to the UK guidance, which has been lauded, but which is even worse. Education IS the place to explore these ideas, and to expose them as being terrible, misguided bollocks (Sokal Squared being a prime example).

They’ve amended the text a couple of times now, but even so, much as with the attempted ‘Porn Ban’, which would also have banned ‘esoteric’ and ‘politically extreme’ material, this is vast overreach and rather comedically contradicts itself by simultaneously saying you shouldn’t teach XYZ while also claiming to be protecting free speech.

“If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for those we despise, we don’t believe in it at all”.

– Chomsky

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Edumacational

“I would like to present to you…” said the worthy-looking man, all grey hair, patched elbows and the threadbare spirit of the educator “…the St John’s Boy for Schools!”

The Minister blinked, wetly and gave the old professor a smirk. “I think you mean School for Boys Mr Wick.”

“Oh no,” the professor smiled and swept aside the sheet, revealing a small boy in short trousers and a school blazer, skinned knees, snotty nose an entirely unremarkable child.

“Your son?” The Minister sighed and leaned forward, resting his three chin upon his interwoven sausage-fingers.

“No Sir. This is a Mark Two Molesworth. A genetically engineered, near-human replicant, designed to fix a major problem in education.”

This was all far beyond the Minister whose mind was already dwelling on whether to have the pigeon-breast salad or the pork loin for lunch. He was only half listening. “Some sort of robot? What’s it for?”

“Um, not really. If that helps you understand though yes, it’s a sort of robot.” The professor scratched his head and stroked his beard as he thought how to get his point across.

“The problem, you see, is that learning simply isn’t cool. Girls get all sorts of encouragement from each other and from society at large to learn in order to overcome the perceived ‘bimbo’ factor. Boys, however, get no such aid despite being far outstripped by girls in many academic fields.”

“Yes, yes,” said the Minister, picking waxy dirt from under his thumbnail. “Terrible business, white paper, special committee, more funding to subsidise private schools…” it was a mantra he’d learned soon after he took on the job. The same thing he trotted out to reporters.

“Yes, well, none of that does any good. We can’t change the culture that holds them back by such methods. We can’t make learning ‘cool’. We can’t make boys want to learn and any young lad that does take up the opportunities we present to them is in for a drubbing.”

“Quite.”

“The Molesworth can fix that!”

The Minister’s attention was diverted from thoughts of lunch by the passion in the professor’s voice and the implications began to penetrate his thick skull, millimetre by millimetre.

“…how?”

The professor took his seat opposite the Minister and gestured wildly as he excitedly laid out his plan. “We produce large numbers of Molesworths and insert them into classes in large enough numbers to form the beginning of a clique or group. One that values education and good behaviour and applies a positive degree of peer pressure to counteract and overcome that of being an illiterate thug!”

The Minister paled and scowled, his jowly face crinkling like a boiled tomato. “Won’t that, ah, skew the classes to being predominantly male?”

“We also recognise the value of… ah… positive reinforcement for men coming from young ladies. We hope to have the Jessica and Elizabeth versions completed soon. They, of course, will be pretty and charming and will only have eyes for well-behaved and academically adept boys.”

“It all seems a little unethical.” The Minister hemmed and hawed, rocking back in his seat. The professor just looked at him.

“No worse than making up Father Christmas in order to get children to behave all year and we have to do something. Tests have demonstrated a marked improvement in the academic development of boys in such an environment. It wouldn’t be too expensive to implement and the potential rewards of a better educated and better behaved populace are…”

“…not as great as you might think.” The Minister interrupted and his frown deepened even further.

“What?” Cut off mid-flow the professor didn’t quite know what to make of this statement.

“Put, plainly Mister Wick, we need plebs. We need foolish, uneducated and dim-witted men to clean toilets, sweep streets, die in the army and keep the prisons nice and full – and profitable. Your plan would not serve that end and with immigration being so damn unpopular there’s no other choice.”

“But…”

The Minister waved his hand dismissively. “Good day Sir. Your funding is cut.”

“But the future! Technology, science!”

“Good. Day.” The Minister pressed a buzzer and his aide came in, leading the professor and his young – artificial – charge back outside. Pausing at the door.

“Everything alright sir?”

“Fine Jenkins, fine. Honestly, some people. They seem to think the current state of affairs is unintentional.”

“I blame the education system sir.”

“Quite.”

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