Teaching PPE might have prevented Brexit

Professor Becky Francis is right to say that young people have been “excluded and disenfranchised” by Brexit and to call for an “equivalent of PPE - politics, philosophy and economics” - to be offered to all school students through the citizenship curriculum. Others would go further and argue that some form of PPE should be a core subject from primary to sixth form and beyond, laying the basis for a lifelong critical and active engagement in democratic politics. The result of the EU referendum might have been very different had such education been part of everyone’s schooling since the 1960s.

However, I would take issue with Professor Francis’ assertion that the EU and schools have failed to “market” the “benefits of the EU”.  She underestimates young people. Any attempt to market the EU or any other political system would simply feed further their mistrust of establishment elites (exactly the kind of mistrust fuelling the populism of our adult world). Students would immediately recognise this as indoctrination, feel disrespected, and switch off.

We need to trust that, given the right analytical and evaluative tools, and the space and autonomy to exercise them, young people are fully capable of making sound evidential judgements of their own.

And this is the least that we owe them, having so devastatingly sabotaged their futures.

Peter Burgess
Doctoral student, King’s College London

We need to talk about sex education in primary

We urgently need to address the issue of whether it is right to teach primary school children about sex, and homosexuality in particular. I am from a Protestant background, but I strongly agree with the Muslim parents who are trying to prevent it. My 10-year-old son was confused and disturbed by the teaching in PSHE classes in his primary school: he thought the teachers were encouraging him to consider homosexuality as an option in life. Teachers are looked up to by young children and children are very impressionable. I even think the current problem of teenagers agonising over their sexuality comes from the discussions resulting from PSHE classes in the secondary school curriculum.

There needs to be a national debate and we need to get behind the Muslim parents - they’re right.

Rona Shanahan
By email

How teachers should tackle sexting

We read the article on sexting and sexual images with interest, particularly the advice for teachers and school leaders on what to do if they have been informed of a sexual image of a student.

We would like to draw your attention to non-statutory guidance published by the UK Council for Internet Safety (UKCIS) that specifically addresses how staff in schools and colleges should respond to incidents involving sexting.

“Sexting in schools and colleges: responding to incidents and safeguarding young people” was produced by UKCIS in consultation with the National Police Chiefs’ Council and a wide range of organisations, including the Disclosure and Barring Service, NUT, NASUWT and NAHT.

The guidance covers:

• Responding to disclosures
• Handling devices and imagery
• Risk-assessing situations
• Involving other agencies, including escalation to the police and children’s social care
• Recording incidents
• Involving parents
• Providing preventative education
   

It supports settings to help young people understand the law and what they should consider before sharing a sexual image.

By sharing this guidance, we hope to encourage settings to develop a more consistent approach to dealing with incidents and providing effective education. This will avoid adults providing conflicting advice, as the author of this article suggests some may be doing.

Education Working Group
UK Council for Internet Safety

The thirst for ‘knowledge’

Though ideologically sympathetic to what Roger Scruton terms “egalitarian prejudice”, I do think he makes a number of interesting arguments that we need to take seriously (“My struggle against egalitarian prejudice”, Tes, 22 March). But he also engages in some loose thinking. Does he really believe that “child-centred education” does not involve the transmission of knowledge? Does he not realise that one way to initiate children into established ways of knowing is to relate it to their interests where possible or to create interest where this is not possible. His caricature of “child-centred education” does not stand up to scrutiny, though it does embody his particular brand of scrutony!

Scruton’s defence of Latin, Greek and ancient history is counter to his main argument and, frankly, risible. He could have argued that those subjects are worth studying for their own sake as part of our cultural heritage, but he does not. Instead, he argues that they were needed in order to govern an empire.  Educated people are, indeed, required to govern, whether it involves empires or states of medium importance such as the UK, though even here it is doubtful whether a classical education is a good preparation for Brexit governance. It is true that many of those sent out to govern in Victorian times did have a classical education but that does not imply that their particular kind of education was particularly suited or essential to the task in hand. Others might well have done better had they been given the chance.

Colin Richards
Spark Bridge, Cumbria