Our new national curriculum? Brainwashing and propaganda 

Our education system teaches the young what to think, not how to think. And if you ever wonder why so many things don’t work properly any more, or why you can’t get any sense out of so many organisations, this is one of the main reasons.

But it’s also getting harder and harder to think or say certain things. This week I experienced this mixture of brainwashing and propaganda at two different ends of the system.

I was sent a rather sinister questionnaire given to new arrivals at a secondary school I won’t name.

And I was the target of a bizarre and rather sad counter-demonstration at one of Oxford’s most exalted colleges. They are, in a way, connected.

The questionnaire is part of what has now become PSHCE, Personal, Social, Health and Citizenship Education. It is not anonymous, but it seeks, in a slippery sideways manner, to discover what the children involved think about immigration.

The cleverest question asks 11-year-olds to say why they think there is a shortage of jobs for younger people. One answer on the multiple-choice form is ‘competition from international applicants’.

They are asked to agree or disagree with such statements as ‘I like to be around people from other countries’ and ‘meeting students from other countries is interesting’. They are also invited to say how much they agree or disagree with the statement ‘immigration is bad for the country’.

They are asked if they have close friends from different countries, and how they would speak to a person whose first language isn’t English. And they are asked if immigrants should have the same rights as everyone else, whether they should be encouraged to speak the language of this country or encouraged to continue in their own traditions.

Well, I agree very strongly with the parent who sent this to me because she thought it was sinister probing into the minds of children, and also into her own opinions, none of the business of the school or the State.

Might some little symbol be placed against the name of any pupil who answered in the wrong way? Might it affect that pupil’s future and the attitude of the school towards the parents? If not, what is the educational purpose of this?

There’s no doubt a terrible conformism has infected our system. When I went to speak at Balliol College in Oxford about the restoration of grammar schools, I was met by a smallish, silent crowd holding up placards objecting to my presence there.

Judging from the righteous looks on their faces, they knew they were right. When I asked them to explain their point of view, they said nothing (unless you count one small raspberry). But I was handed two sheets of paper in which I was thoroughly denounced and hugely misrepresented as ‘Transphobic’ and ‘homophobic’.

I was, this indictment said, ‘a figure of hostility and hatred’. It ended in a sort of farce. A young woman positioned herself in front of me, walking slowly backwards while holding up a home-made placard proclaiming ‘History will forget you’. It hasn’t even remembered me yet.

Alas, she was walking backwards towards a large and prickly bush. She was so set on scorning me that she paid no heed when I warned her of her peril, and she duly reversed into it. No shrubs were hurt in the making of this protest, but it put her off her stride.

Still, history repeats itself. And if on this occasion the first time was farce, the next time could be tragedy. Such people will very soon be fanning out into politics, the law and the media. How long before they have the power to silence and punish me and you? Not as long as you think.

Smashing film, shame about the facts 

Battle Of The Sexes, the new film about the great tennis player Billie Jean King, is a terrific watch – funny, dramatic, clever and morally satisfying. You come out of the cinema surprised by how long you’ve been there, which doesn’t happen often.

But the more I looked into the actual events portrayed, the more I felt I’d been used and bamboozled. I have to be careful here or the Guardian newspaper will make up more lies about me. So let me say that I admire Billie Jean King as a sportswoman and as a tough campaigner for women’s freedom. I am also pleased she has found happiness in her life with a female partner.

I loathed the condescension and the legal restrictions still inflicted on women in the 1970s, and was personally and politically glad to see them swept away. And if that was all the film celebrated, I’d be content. But it wasn’t that simple. Billie Jean’s husband is rightly shown as a thoughtful and generous man. Yet the girlfriend who introduced Billie Jean to same-sex love is more than slightly idealised.

Unequal match? Emma Stone as Billie Jean King and Steve Carell as Bobby Riggs in ‘Battle Of The Sexes’

And another great tennis player of the age, Margaret Court, is portrayed as a sour and crabbed person. Could this be because she disapproved of the sexual revolution and has now become a minister in a very conservative church? I think it may be so.

Also, very little is made of the awkward, unavoidable fact that women’s tennis prospered because it was sponsored by cigarette brand Virginia Slims. Was the cause so good that this sordid bargain was justified?

Slim cigarettes, as far as I know, still kill those who smoke them, and this was no secret in the 1970s. But perhaps most startling of all is the great match which is the climax of the film, when Billie Jean defeats the male-chauvinist braggart Bobby Riggs, so exploding his boasts of superiority.

But you’d never know from the movie that US media have explored, and not disproved, serious claims that Riggs, a habitual gambler with Mafia contacts, deliberately lost the game to pay off a large debt to the Godfather and his boys.

He’d easily beaten Margaret Court. So maybe it wasn’t as conclusive as all that. Why leave this out? Films about factual events, it seems to me, have a duty to stick as close to the truth as possible. Dramatic licence is fine, but not when it puts the audience in the dark about what really happened.

Sailors should stick to their ships

Her Majesty’s bluejackets are not meant to look smart. They are meant to take, burn, sink and destroy the enemy, and scare them the rest of the time.

They can sometimes be compelled into a semblance of spit and polish, but they just look silly and slightly sinister guarding Buckingham Palace.

Armed sailors on the street make me think of Petrograd in 1917 and Berlin in 1918, a sign that mutiny was in the air and order was breaking down.

And why aren’t they in their ships? In this case it is for an almost equally alarming reason – we hardly have any ships any more, at least ships that can be made to move and fight, and aren’t broken down or for sale.

As the number of spare seamen grows, what other unsuitable jobs will the Defence Ministry find for them? Tending the flowers at Kew Gardens?

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