How Can We Talk About Body Image In Schools Without Criticising Capitalism?
Last week, the Department for Education issued new guidance for teachers involved in creating and implementing SRE (relationship, sex and health education).
“Schools should not under any circumstances use resources produced by organisations that take an extreme political stance on matters,” it reads. “This is the case even if the material itself is not extreme, as the use of it could imply endorsement or support of the organisation.”
Fair enough, you may be thinking. For most people, the term “extreme” renders thoughts of the far right, or Islamist terrorist organisations (who are, incidentally, already prevented from entering schools since anyone who does is made to sign a declaration that they will adhere to the British values of democracy, rule of law and tolerance).
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It’s the DfE’s definition of extremism which has left me and many other educators baffled, infuriated and a little terrified. For, according to our policy-making overlords, it is now apparently classified as extreme to be critical of capitalism.
There’s some explanatory hokum about anti-capitalism being inherently anti-Semitic, which is in itself, ironically, a deeply anti-Semitic statement, since it relies on first buying into the trope that Jews are in control of and benefit most from capitalist industry.
It’s clear to me, and indeed anyone with even a nominal understanding of the influences which loom large over the words and actions of the current cabinet, that the agenda here is far from a cuddly-seeming desire to eradicate racism.
In fact, as former Shadow Chancellor John McDonell...
