The Demonisation of White Working Class Boys is the Real “National Disgrace”
White working-class boys are being overlooked and demonised in schools, says Toby in the Telegraph, and radical progressive policies are only making matters worse. Here’s an excerpt:
I was a little surprised to read Bridget Phillipson’s description of the underperformance of white working class children at A-level as a “national disgrace”.
Is this the same Education Secretary who pulled the plug on a joint project by Eton and Star Academies to open a chain of free school sixth forms in some of our most deprived Northern cities to address precisely this issue?
I’m afraid it is. To be fair to Phillipson, this is a problem she inherited, even if she has frustrated efforts to solve it. The Institute of Fiscal Studies drew attention to it 10 years ago, pointing out that white British pupils in the lowest socio-economic quintile were less likely to go to university than any other ethnic group. …
Perhaps the reason poor white students are struggling is because schools don’t celebrate their identity, unlike almost every other ethnic group. Schools plaster the walls with pictures of high-achieving black Britons during Black History Month and bend over backwards to recognise the religious festivals of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. But most schools don’t do anything to mark St George’s Day. …
Insofar as schools do acknowledge the ethnicity of white British children, it’s to lecture them about “privilege” and the shameful role their ancestors played in the transatlantic slave trade.
The stark figures about the under-achievement of white children in the bottom socio-economic quintile obscure an even bleaker story about the gap between male and female students in this demographic.
In England, 40% of white British girls eligible for free school meals got grade 4 or above in maths and English last year, compared to 38% of boys. When it comes to university, just 14.5% of poor white boys started higher education in 2021-22, compared to 24.4% of poor white girls. …
Perhaps the answer is to de-wokify our schools and – to paraphrase Martin Luther King – judge all children by the content of their character rather than the colour of their skin or the nature of their genitalia. Looking at the data, it’s hard not to conclude that white working class boys are victims of the racial and sexual politics that have infected our entire education sector. Its capture by radical progressive ideology is the real “national disgrace”, but don’t expect this Government to do anything about that.
Worth reading in full.
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I’m all for de-wokification but perhaps the poor white boys have realised that tertiary education is part of the machine to keep a poor white boy down. So why go into debt to support a social experiment that is stacked against you?
Some of them are bright enough to avoid it, if they can find an apprenticeship which does not create a massive debt. The last one I had working under my management was like that. He joined the firm I was in at 17 years old, and I considered that he could have made it into university education if he wanted to.
It was a Conservative government that disbanded the exemplary building trades scheme, a long time ago.
Cultural vandalism.
I wonder what the truancy rates are in boys versus girls, also, because if more boys are knocking off school than their female counterparts then doesn’t that then follow that girls will inevitably out-perform boys? I disagree with Toby in that there’s obviously way more at play here than just blaming this situation on all things ‘woke’ and it would seem that the reason we keep reading figures like those above are multi-factorial. Connor Tomlinson goes into more detail and looks at other reasons in this 7min segment; ”White working-class boys are being failed by state education, but are still considered public enemy number one by the British state. They don’t enjoy the “sit down, shut up” teaching style of modern schools. They are bored, frustrated, and sedated with growth-stunting ritalin rather than have their needs and interests catered to. The result? A 15 percent school readiness gap between boys and girls. Girls achieve half a grade more at GCSE and almost two grades higher at A Level than boys, on average. Women outnumber men three to two at UK universities. The Gender Pay Gap has inverted among men and women aged 16-24. More men are unemployed than women. A… Read more »
The curriculum of the 50s, 60s, 70s boys SecMods, taught by no-nonsense male teachers, suited white working class boys far more than the tedious, feminised, “woke” curriculum, taught by mainly lower middle class women, which they are subjected to today
But Bridget Phillipson and the “Education Blob” aren’t interested in that. They just want to get more white working class boys into £50,000 of debt with a Noddy Degree which will never provide a decent job …. in order to keep their pals in “universities” in jobs.
Apart froma couple of years in a mixed state primary school, I went to boys schools and remain firmly in favour of segregated education until sixth form. A few months back the Mail had an excellent article by a female teacher who had learnt by experience that this was a better way and would benefit boys who struggle in the feminised system.
Though I went to university myself I would seriously think whether to go today . Pay enormous debt in order to be insulted? no thank you. No work afterwards? No thank you.
A young person born today has nothing to do with the actions of anybody in the country years ago They have no responsibility for it and nobody should lay it upon them.