Teachers Will Be Trained to Challenge “Whiteness” in Schools

The Telegraph reveals that teachers will now be trained to challenge “whiteness” in lessons, with new guidance ensuring future educators are fully equipped to be “anti-racist” in the classroom. Here’s an excerpt:

Teachers will be instructed in how to “disrupt the centrality of whiteness” in schools, according to a best-practice document.

The term “whiteness” in critical race theory refers to social attitudes considered normal by white people, and guidance suggests that concepts including “meritocracy”, “objectivity” and “individualism” should be questioned.

Documents state that student teachers – if they happen to be white – should also be helped to develop and project a “positive white racial identity”.

Separate guidance has been developed in Scotland and England, and both documents have been endorsed by universities offering teacher training, including Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newcastle, along with the National Education Union.

Documents claim that encouraging “anti-racist” teacher training will help to maintain a diverse teaching workforce, and will help to close the attainment gap between white and non-white pupils.

The Scottish “anti-racism framework”, drawn up by the Scottish Council of Deans of Education and endorsed by 10 universities, states that changes to the way in which teachers are taught will “disrupt the centrality of whiteness and enable different ways of seeing, thinking and doing”.

This process may involve more references to colonialism and racism in lessons, and instilling an understanding of the “impact of whiteness”.

This, it says, will help teachers project a “white racial identity grounded in reality and allyship” in the classroom, free from “false notions of superiority”.

Worth reading in full.

Teaching people about ‘white privilege’ doesn’t always have its intended effect. See this clip from Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe.