A Tale of Two Education Approaches + Calvin Robinson controversy. # 76. 24/05/2022

'Out of Many, One People'

Welcome. A double-header as ‘race’ focussed issues continue to proliferate. There has been an encouraging increase in new subscribers recently. Perhaps there are colleagues, friends, ministers you can encourage to subscribe; and especially with this issue, teachers who truly know the insides of our classrooms.

A Tale of Two Education Approaches + the Calvin Robinson Controversy.

By a neat coincidence television has just showed programmes on education on successive nights that were as different as chalk and cheese. ITV’s ‘Britain’s Strictest Headmistress’, about Katharine Birbalsingh head of Michaela Academy in Wembley, was followed the next night by Channel 4’s ‘Where’s My History’, featuring the campaign by the footballer Troy Deeney to get the histories of minority ethnic groups mandated for all schools.

What was fascinating was that virtually all the children featured, and a great many of the involved adults, were of minority ethnic background and yet the two approaches could not have been more different. We were offered two radically different approaches to the education and the futures of minority ethnic children in Britain. I have always had a haughty disdain for the phrase ‘culture wars’, but here were two opposing sides setting out their respective wares before the public. The very titles laid out the battle lines. ‘Britain’s Strictest Headmistress’ unashamedly stressed that teachers were adults whose authority was to be obeyed – the intentionally provocative phrase ‘adult centred education’ was used at one point. By contrast it was the ‘child centred’, and identitarian, demand for my history that was the focus of Troy Deeney’s campaign: a history customised to reflect where I am coming from.

Another major difference was simply how informative the programmes were. I have noticed in previous blogs (see ‘Conservative, Gifted and Black: Thomas Sowell’ # 61, 25/01/2022) the intriguing fact that conservatives are frequently richer in content than progressives. (I took a vow when I began blogging never to use the word w*k*). Sowell’s books contain a vast amount of information, whilst progressives rely more on rhetoric. So here. There was clear detail about Birbalsingh’s approach to education – the programme was structured around the Seven Rules that the school was based on, and which they also sought to inculcate into the parents. So viewers could make up their minds about it. I was highly impressed with the clarity of her vision, the rigour of its application, and the seemingly beneficent results, but I was left unsure whether I would have wanted such an education for myself. Having said that, the school is insistent that love for the children is central to their approach, adding the provocative rider that sympathetic allowance of lapses by children from poor backgrounds may make the teacher feel good and kind but is actually detrimental and therefore unloving to the child’s adult prospects.

By contrast at the end of ‘Where’s My History’ I was still not that clear exactly what Troy Deeney was looking for, apart from that the Government should mandate schools to do something. There were clearly approaches that the programme found inadequate. Focussing on slavery as the major theme of black history harmfully presented black people in a demeaning light. ‘Black History Month’ received a lukewarm reception, and was felt to be inadequate. But what was wanted? The boxer Anthony Joshua wanted more reference to African scientists and inventors, but didn’t mention any. Commendation for the proactive approach of the Welsh Government mentioned black people inventing the elevator, stethoscope and lawnmowers, but that seems to be just the sort of focussing on fragments of achievement that Black History Month often degenerates into. The Sewell Report doubted if ‘token expressions of black achievement will help to broaden young minds’ (p 8). The programme’s strongest suggestions came from subjects other than history, such as featuring culturally diverse food in lessons. Stronger coverage of minority ethnic artists, especially novelists, offers significant potential.

Troy Deeney interviewed two impressive young women who had founded ‘Impact of Omission’, arguing that the absence of minority ethnic history in education left a damaging vacumn. (The programme’s slant was ambiguous – whilst at times it was presented that the histories of all ethnic minorities were unrepresented, overwhelmingly the substance was about the omission of black history). The complaint had grounds – schools almost always cover the Tudors in history, very rarely the history of colonialism, yet the latter is clearly of more relevance to school students in Britain today. But overall the programme gathered a lot of people who were enthusiastic about teaching more black history, little about the content of such teaching.

Programmes on education rightly cause us to ask questions of outcome. ‘Britain’s Strictest Headmistress’ featured moving sequences of sixth-formers overjoyed to get acceptance letters from leading universities. I think most of them were for STEM subjects. Can the school also produce artists, historians or social scientists? But then if the school’s outcome is students who have learned to learn and learned to think, then the results will inevitably be positive. Birbalsingh sees her at present unique school as a beacon for how British education ought to re-set itself. But she is also a unique person. It will be interesting to see how her school progresses after she leaves, or how replicable her model is without a constant supply of such powerful and strongly motivated characters.

An emphasis on gratitude was central to Birbalsingh’s approach, and which became inscribed as ‘Don’t Indulge in Victim Mentality’ (Rule 4). By contrast a strain of victimhood ran through Deeney’s programme. He felt failed by his own education. ‘We are taught self-hate’ said the usually cheerful Match of the Day pundit, Micah Richards. Two references to the high level of school exclusions of black boys were made, both assuming racism in the education system as the sole cause. (Birbalsingh passionately argued that the colleagues of the past she taught alongside in failing schools were not racist). Accordingly, the solutions were largely passive: being offered ‘subjects I could engage with’, seeing more black role models, simply being listened to.

Deeney himself came across as being warm, energetic and outgoing. He has shown confidence and intelligence engaging with the issue, right up to getting an encouraging response at a meeting with the Education Minister, Nadeem Zahawi. Yet I sense a paradox. His proposals seem only to make a peripheral change to the education system that he says failed him. Yet what has enabled him to not only thrive and provide a very comfortable home for his wife and children, but also to be a more mature, stable and confident person is the impact on him of his career as a professional footballer – a career where clubs now demand the sort of self-denial, disciplined training, commitment to colleagues and submission to authority which is more akin to the atmosphere of the Michaela Academy; and which is in stark contrast to the type of schooling he received, which his proposals are unlikely to change substantially. Despite the positives in his proposals, will such schools continue to, as he experienced and as Birbalsingh alleges, ‘keep poor children poor’, and is it her approach that has the capacity to re-start this country’s capacity for greater social mobility?

It was clear that several of Deeney’s contributors had been hurt by racism.  So how to get rid of racism? Birbalsingh was characteristically forthright: school children should work hard, get jobs, give back to society, be polite and decent people; and you get everybody doing that - then racism will decline. If racism is largely the product of dysfunctional attitudes and relationships then her prescriptions will work. If it is more deeply embedded in the structure of society then they are too shallow. We shall see.

Both Birbalsingh and Deeney are dreaming dreams. May God bless them. They are not in competition. All school children need to know more of the history of Britain’s ethnic minorities. And all children need a school environment which is much more containing, controlled and conducive to sustained learning.

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The Calvin Robinson Controversy.

Again, a neat coincidence: Calvin Robinson, currently the focus of the Church of England’s newest controversy, has links with both the education programmes reviewed above. He was at one stage on the governors of the Michaela Academy and is a fervent advocate for it; and he was interviewed by Troy Deeney as the token conservative in the programme, though a debate where neither proponent impressed.

In discussing his case caution is needed. As ever, hearing only one viewpoint can be distorting. We have heard the complainant, Calvin Robinson’s story. But it is harder for the defending institutions to present their side of the story, not being able to disclose confidences or appearing to malign individuals. (Which is why I think non-disclosure agreements in church disputes are more just than is often recognised). But the Calvin Robinson dispute as reported raises serious questions for London diocese.

1. Is it the case that assenting to belief in the reality of institutional/systemic racism has become a sort of shibboleth; seemingly a test-case of orthodoxy more significant than believing in the bodily resurrection of Jesus?

‘Institutional racism’ is a useful concept, which has largely lost its usefulness through overuse and misuse; notably through mindlessly applying it to every instance of inequality of outcome, regardless of other possible causes. ‘The term is now being liberally used, and often to describe any circumstances in which differences in outcome between racial and ethnic groups exist in an institution, without evidence to support such claims’ (Sewell Report, p 34). It seems incredible that the Bishops of London and Edmonton should demand assent to such a slippery and contested concept. It bears comparison with Paul’s use of ‘principalities and powers’, where approaches can vary from dismissing them as not having any real meaning at all today, all the way over to seeing them as being behind every corner. Even more with institutional racism, diversity of opinion should be allowed.

I believe that the London bishops exceeded their brief last year in publicly condemning the Sewell Report (which in fact did recognise instances of institutional racism); largely to stay onside with those who criticised the Report, though often I fear without having read it. But they have given little energy to forensically spelling out the specific ways in which institutional racism has been manifested, yet without which the phrase becomes worthless. For what it’s worth I think the term has more traction in the Church of England than Robinson accepts, though in ways still not widely recognised – specifically, in how we have developed pastoral and evangelistic strategies and carried out ministerial training as though ethnic minorities didn’t exist in the country. That is, we never think about race except when we are thinking about race. But Calvin Robinson’s belief that such a controversial concept has no substance surely constitutes a bizarre reason for being unwilling to ordain him.

There is an interesting parallel here with another big white organisation, the Football League, which I spelled out in an earlier blog, ‘The Strange Case of Edinson Cavani’ (# 8, 07/01/2021), where likewise in their over-eagerness to do the right thing an institution ended up doing the wrong thing. In both cases concern to take an ‘anti-racist’ stance, led to a minority ethnic person being unjustly treated. ‘Race’ is such a complex and rapidly shifting issue that none of us can be sufficiently fleet-footed to always be on the side of the angels; instead we cumbersomely blunder into scoring own goals.

2. Does the Church of England have space for difficult conservatives?

Robinson’s case is not unique, rather it aligns uncomfortably with the way that Bishop (now Monsignor) Michael Nazir-Ali felt increasingly discomfited with the Church of England, or with the Cambridge University theology faculty’s shameful withdrawal of its invitation to Jordan Peterson. In each case able, articulate, though also angular thinkers have been excluded for not fitting in with the ‘progressive’ mainstream. In the cases of Nazir-Ali and Robinson it seems as though the Church of England is uncomfortably close to telling people from ethnic minorities what as members of ethnic minorities they should think and feel. Their ‘lived experience’ (a phrase that both would deride) seemingly counts for nothing – apparently, the wrong sort of experience. In the cases of Robinson and Peterson it also seems as though we are uncomfortable with them appealing to the sort of people we don’t like the Church of England to associate with too closely.

Robinson’s exclusion contrasts markedly with the diocese’s inclusion of Rev Jarel Robinson-Brown. Robinson-Brown’s offensively described the support for Captain Tom Moore as ‘a cult of white British nationalism’ (possibly the consequence of imbibing too much Critical Race Theory). Whilst the diocese publicly rebuked him for this, the outcry was sufficient to cause the diocese to change tack and rapidly mend fences, with the end result was that Robinson-Brown was offered a curacy, had a book published by SCM Press, and had the honour of being interviewed on-line by St Paul’s Cathedral. Traditionally the Church of England has prided itself on providing a home for mavericks. Is it now to be the case that it is only for the right sort of maverick?

It may be that the diocese judged Robinson to be a loose cannon that it did not want rolling around on its deck but couldn’t find acceptable words to express its reservations, and so fell back to making subscription to belief in institutional racism as the decisive criteria. Certainly Robinson’s shifts from being IT teacher to media pundit to trainee priest might suggest an unpredictability about him. Rather oddly, he is now spoken of as leaving the Church of England to join Global Anglican Futures Conference (GAFCON), as though it were a distinct and separate denomination rather than a pressure group including many parish clergy.

I hope and pray that the rift between Calvin Robinson and the Diocese of London will be healed. On the admittedly small number of times I have heard him speak I am more impressed than unimpressed. He can be dismissed as a poser who speaks too soon and too often, and a polemicist who simplifies; but, hey, that adds spice to the debate, and he is saying things that need hearing. As these blogs have often suggested, there are conservative minority ethnic voices in this country that need hearing and are talking sense. The Church of England’s rather brittle anxiety not to appear racist means that we too often ignore them. As for Calvin Robinson, I think a breakaway GAFCON congregation under him (do they exist?) would simply become eccentric, and that working within a diocesan structure would be a means of grace that would ultimately bless him.

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