Education

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares179 Views

      in UK Politics

      Universities failing to tackle sexual misconduct ‘should risk losing status’, MPs say

      by

      Universities failing to take tough action on sexual misconduct should risk losing their official status, ministers have said. Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi and Universities minister Michelle Donelan have told the higher education regulator it should become a sanctionable offence to not follow its recommendations on tackling sexual violence, The Independent can reveal.This could involve a range of penalties, with the worst or repeated breaches potentially resulting in a loss of university status. Last April the regulator, the Office for Students (OfS), set out a list of recommendations aimed at helping universities to prevent and respond to sexual harassment and misconduct on campus. These include introducing sound processes for reporting incidents, support for those involved in investigations and governing bodies making sure approaches to tackling sexual misconduct are “adequate and effective”. At the time, the regulator said it would consider giving these more weight by making them a “condition of registration”.This would give it powers to issue sanctions for breaches but a year later that has yet to be introduced.The OfS recommendations were made in the wake of the Everyone’s Invited campaign, which saw current and former students share thousands of testimonies of abuse. The website, as well as the murder of Sarah Everard, had also sparked campus protests calling for tougher action on sexual violence. Students have told The Independent they felt let down by universities after experiencing sexual assault, saying there had been a lack of support or they were put off reporting in the first place.Jo Grady, the head of the University and College Union, told The Independent there needed to be a “strong stance” from the university regulator to tackle “endemic” sexual violence on campuses.“Although the sector is waking up to the issue, the pace of change remains slow and far too variable in places,” she said.Education ministers say they made clear in a letter published online late March they wanted regulatory powers to cover sexual misconduct policies as soon as possible. “The Office for Students – which regulates universities – has published a statement of expectations on how universities should handle cases sexual harassment and misconduct,” a Department for Education spokesperson told The Independent. “In March the education secretary and Minister Donelan wrote to the OfS making clear his view that this should be made a condition of registration, meaning the regulator would have very real powers to penalise universities which are failing victims of sexual harassment and assault. “In our view, the OfS should include this in a condition of registration as soon as possible.”John Blake, the OfS director for fair access and participation, told The Independent last week: “We are now examining how universities and colleges have responded to the statement of expectations, and this work includes listening to the views of students and students’ unions.“Once this work is complete, we will consider what steps to take next including whether to connect the statement directly to our conditions of registration.”The regulator says universities would likely be given an opportunity to “improve performance” before anything else in the case of breaches.If they fail to do so, they could face further escalating intervention. Among the lighter sanctions are fines, while tougher ones include revoking the use of “university” in its name.“The consequence of this approach is that the OfS would be willing to use its power to deregister a provider that continues to breach conditions, or where an initial breach was judged to be sufficiently serious,” the OfS says online.“Such providers would therefore no longer be able to operate within the regulated higher education sector.”The Independent has approached OfS for comment about the education ministers’ letter. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in UK Politics

      Poor pupils ‘left behind’ by new schools plan, ministers warned

      by

      Poorer pupils will be left behind by the government’s new plan for schools because of the failure to offer adequate funding and ambitious ideas, experts and teachers have warned.Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi announced on Monday that all pupils will be offered targeted support as part of the long-awaited white paper on schools. But the plan was criticised by educational leaders for being too “vague”.The vision for England’s schools over the next decade includes a “parent pledge” that guarantees extra support for pupils falling behind in English and maths, such as small-group tutoring sessions. But the Education Policy Institute (EPI) think tank described the white paper as “disappointing”. It said the plan was “not well-funded enough” to help disadvantaged pupils catch up after the pandemic and close the inequality gap.Adding to the criticism was the National Association of Head Teachers union (NAHT), which said the proposals “fall short” of the ambition required. “Commitment to adequate funding, access to support services or detail on how these bold ambitions will be achieved is sadly missing,” said general secretary Paul Whiteman.The white paper said the government would aim for the national average GCSE grade achieved in English and maths to rise from 4.5 in 2019 to 5 by 2030. Schools will also have to offer a 32.5-hour school week by 2023 as part of a push to increase teaching hours, and Ofsted will be asked to inspect every school by 2025.But the EPI criticised the failure to set out a clear plan to reduce the disadvantage gap leaving the poorest pupils behind. The institute said disadvantaged pupils in England – the 1.74 million children eligible for free school meals – will still be 18 months of learning behind their peers by the time they finish their GCSEs. “This gap had stopped closing before the pandemic and is now significantly wider,” said EPI executive chair David Laws.“If the government wishes to meet the white paper aims, it may well need a further education recovery package, targeted on the pupils, schools and local areas which have missed out most,” the former Liberal Democrat minister added.Meanwhile, Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said the plan lacked “big ideas”, describing the proposal for boosting pupils’ literacy and numeracy targets as “vague”.“There is little recognition of the wider societal factors which affect those outcomes, such as the fact that nearly a third of children in the UK live in poverty,” he said. “It is hard to learn when you are hungry, cold, poorly clothed and live in inadequate housing.”Labour accused the government of making a “smoke and mirrors” announcement, saying that developing good reading, writing and maths skills should be fundamental and not just an “add-on”.Shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson said the strategy is “distracting from the business of teaching with yet more tinkering with school structures whilst offering nothing to change children’s day-to-day experience in the classroom”.And Conservative MP Robert Halfon, chair of the Education Committee, said he hoped that “increasing parental engagement through the ‘parent pledge’ will help break down long-standing and often complicated barriers that exist to help increase attendance”.Mr Zahawi said the white paper was “levelling up” in action. It also includes a pledge for all schools to join a “strong” multi-academy trust by 2030, and a commitment for Ofsted to inspect every school by 2025.Councils will be able to establish and run their own academy trusts, which it is hoped will encourage more primary schools to become academies. Councils will also legally be able to request for their non-academy schools to join a trust.And where schools have received two consecutive Ofsted judgements below “good”, the government plans to help them to join strong trusts – with an initial focus on schools in the 55 education “cold spots” identified in the levelling up paper.The NAHT said the decision to change school structures was likely to be “controversial”, warning it could prove distracting unless the government presented a “compelling case” for the changes.Among the white paper’s other announcements is that 500,000 teacher training and development opportunities would be introduced, and a commitment to raise starting salaries to £30,00 was affirmed.However, Mr Zahawi indicated that senior school teachers would not be receiving a pay rise, saying that the public sector had to “exercise restraint” as inflation levels soar. The education secretary told Times Radio: “For more senior staff, we’re looking at a 5 per cent increase over two years … inflation is running ahead of that, of course.”He was also grilled over findings from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) showing that the gap between private and state school spending has doubled in just over a decade. The education secretary blamed a period of “tightening our belts” after the financial crash. “The important thing is to continue that investment now and deliver,” he told Sky News.Mr Zahawi also defended the “deserved” awarding of a knighthood to Sir Gavin Williamson – who oversaw the exams fiasco in 2020 – but said the closure of schools during the pandemic was “a mistake”. More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Taliban reversal on girls’ education derails US plan for diplomatic recognition

      by

      Taliban reversal on girls’ education derails US plan for diplomatic recognitionJoint event had been planned ahead of Doha Forum that would have set process in motion to grant group diplomatic recognition The US was poised to set the Taliban on the path to diplomatic recognition before the plan was derailed by the Afghan rulers’ sudden U-turn on a promise to allow girls’ education, the Guardian understands.The group prompted international outrage and confusion on Wednesday when it reneged on a deal to allow teenage girls to go to secondary school, just a week after the education ministry announced that schools would open for all students.Taliban decide against opening schools to girls in Afghanistan beyond age of 11Read moreUS diplomats had been so optimistic that the Taliban would make good on the promise that a joint event had been planned ahead of this weekend’s Doha Forum in Qatar that would have set the process in motion to grant diplomatic recognition to the group.A seat had been reserved for the Taliban at a panel at the forum dedicated to girls’ education in which a Taliban representative would have addressed the role of women with Afghan female activists.The sudden reversal undermined the argument that a more “moderate” leadership now dominates the Taliban, and such optimism was further clouded this weekend when the group ordered Afghanistan television stations to remove BBC news bulletins in Pashto, Persian and Uzbek.In a statement on Sunday the BBC said “This is a worrying development at a time of uncertainty and turbulence for the people of Afghanistan. More than 6 million Afghans consume the BBC’s independent and impartial journalism on TV every weekWestern officials made it clear that diplomatic recognition will be impossible unless the decision on girls’ education is reversed. The move will also make it harder the international community to raise money for an international pledging conference next week, and require tighter handling of any cash raised so that it does notThomas West, the US special envoy for Afghanistan, said: “I was surprised by the turnaround this last Wednesday and the world has reacted to it by condemning this move. It is a breach first and foremost of the Afghan people’s trust.“I believe hope is not all lost. I am hopeful we will see a reversal of that decision in the coming days.”But West defended the US engagement with the Taliban saying that a complete diplomatic rupture would mean abandoning 40 million Afghans amid growing concerns over a possible famine in the country.“We are talking about the modalities of an urgent humanitarian response, the need for more than a humanitarian response, a policy not just an admire the problem of a broken banking sector but find ways to fix it, a professionalisation of the Central Bank so that the international financial community can begin to have confidence in it, we are talking about terrorism and we are talking about women’s rights.“One of the first times we sat down in October in a formal setting they had a request of us ‘please put our civil servants – 500,000 – back to work’. We thought a logical place to start given the sector resonated so much in the international community was education. We had requests of them, as well. Number one, women and girls could attend at all levels across large swathes of Afghanistan. Number two we wanted to see a monitoring mechanism and third there be a serious and rigorous curriculum. Over the following the months the international community receive the necessary assurances, and more importantly the Afghan people were told on March 23 we would see girls attend secondary education and that did not occur.”Hosna Jalil, a former interior minister was one of many Afghan women at Doha to claim the Taliban will not be able to keep a lid on the demand for education. She said the last 20 years had not been a waste but left a positive legacy. “We facilitated a generation, two thirds of the population, that knows what a better life looks like. That is why we will not give up. They are loud, they believe in freedom and democracy.”Malala Yousafzai, who won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize for her fight for all children’s right to education, told the Forum that times had changed since the Taliban first banned girls’ education in 1996. Taliban U-turn over Afghan girls’ education reveals deep leadership divisionsRead more“It is much harder this time – that is because women have seen what it means to be educated, what it means to be empowered. This time is going to be much harder for the Taliban to maintain the ban on girls’ education. They are learning in the hide-outs. They are protesting on the streets. This ban will not last forever. They were waiting outside the school gates in their uniforms and they were crying. Seeking education is a duty of every Muslim,” she said.Dalia Fahmhy, an Afghan professor of political science said in 1999 no girls were in secondary schools. “Within 15 years later there were 3.7 million girls. Over that period a thousand women became business owners. This cannot be curtailed. We live in a digital age and 68 % have cellphones and 22 % are connected to each other and to the world. This cannot be curtailed. 27 % of the parliament were women.”TopicsTalibanAfghanistanUS foreign policyUS politicsSouth and Central AsianewsReuse this content More

    • 148 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      If You Think Republicans Are Overplaying Schools, You Aren’t Paying Attention

      by

      The warning signs are everywhere. For 30 years, polls showed that Americans trusted Democrats over Republicans to invest in public education and strengthen schools. Within the past year, however, Republicans have closed the gap; a recent poll shows the two parties separated on the issue by less than the margin of error.Since the Republican Glenn Youngkin scored an upset win in Virginia’s race for governor by making education a central campaign issue, Republicans in state after state have capitalized on anger over mask mandates, parental rights and teaching about race, and their strategy seems to be working. The culture wars now threatening to consume American schools have produced an unlikely coalition — one that includes populists on the right and a growing number of affluent, educated white parents on the left. Both groups are increasingly at odds with the Democratic Party.For the party leaders tasked with crafting a midterm strategy, this development should set off alarms. Voters who feel looked down on by elites are now finding common cause with those elites, forming an alliance that could not only cost the Democrats the midterm elections but also fundamentally realign American politics.The Democrats know they have a problem. One recent analysis conducted by the Democratic Governors Association put it bluntly: “We need to retake education as a winning issue.” But reclaiming their trustworthiness on education will require more than just savvier messaging. Democrats are going to need to rethink a core assumption: that education is the key to addressing economic inequality.The party’s current education problem reflects a misguided policy shift made decades ago. Eager to reclaim the political center, Democratic politicians increasingly framed education, rather than labor unions or a progressive tax code, as the answer to many of our economic problems, embracing what Barack Obama would later call “ladders of opportunity,” such as “good” public schools and college degrees, which would offer a “hand up” rather than a handout. Bill Clinton famously pronounced, “What you earn depends on what you learn.”But this message has proved to be deeply alienating to the people who once made up the core of the party. As the philosopher Michael Sandel wrote in his recent book “The Tyranny of Merit,” Democrats often seemed to imply that people whose living standards were declining had only themselves to blame. Meanwhile, more affluent voters were congratulated for their smarts and hard work. Tired of being told to pick themselves up and go to college, working people increasingly turned against the Democrats.Today, as the middle class falls further behind the wealthy, the belief in education as the sole remedy for economic inequality appears more and more misguided. And yet, because Democrats have spent the past 30 years framing schooling as the surest route to the good life, any attempt to make our education system fairer is met with fierce resistance from affluent liberals worried that Democratic reforms might threaten their carefully laid plans to help their children get ahead.In California, plans to place less emphasis on calculus in an effort to address persistent racial and socioeconomic disparities in math achievement have spawned furious backlash. So, too, did the announcement last fall that New York City schools would be winding down their gifted and talented program, which has been widely criticized for exacerbating segregation — an announcement that Mayor Eric Adams has begun to walk back.Mr. Youngkin was one of the first to recognize that these anxieties could be used for political gain, and he carefully tailored his messaging to parents from both affluent families and the conservative movement. In his appeals to the Republican base, he railed against critical race theory and claimed that allies of George Soros had inserted “operatives” on local school boards. To centrist parents, he pledged to undo admissions policy changes aimed at bolstering diversity at Virginia’s prestigious Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, where graduates regularly go on to attend Ivy League universities.These promises seem to have worked. A recent focus group conducted by a Democratic polling firm showed that education was the top issue cited by Joe Biden supporters who had voted or considered voting for Mr. Youngkin. Participants referred to an array of complaints about education, including a sense that the focus on race and social justice in Virginia’s schools had gone too far, eclipsing core academic subjects. Similar charges echoed through the San Francisco school board election last month as Asian American voters, furious over changes to the admissions process at a highly selective high school, galvanized a movement to oust three school board members.How can Democrats claw out of this bind? In the near term, they can remind voters that Republican efforts to limit what kids are taught in school will hurt students, no matter their background. The College Board’s Advanced Placement program, for example, recently warned that it will remove the AP designation from courses when required topics are banned. Whatever the limitations of the AP program, students from all class backgrounds still use it to earn college credit and demonstrate engagement in rigorous coursework. Democrats could also take a page from Mr. Youngkin’s playbook and pledge, as he did, to invest more “than has ever been invested in education,” an issue that resonates across party lines.But if Democrats want to stop bleeding working-class votes, they need to begin telling a different story about education and what schools can and can’t do. For a generation, Democrats have framed a college degree as the main path to economic mobility, a foolproof way to expand the middle class. But now kids regularly emerge from college burdened with crushing student debt and struggling to find stable jobs. To these graduates and to their parents it is painfully obvious that degrees do not necessarily guarantee success. A generation ago, Mr. Clinton may have been able to make a convincing case that education could solve all people’s problems, but today Democrats risk irrelevance — or worse — by sticking with that tired mantra.So, yes, strong schools are essential for the health and well-being of young people: Schools are where they gain confidence in themselves and build relationships with adults and with one another, where they learn about the world and begin to imagine life beyond their neighborhoods. But schools can’t level a playing field marred by racial inequality and increasingly sharp class distinctions; to pretend otherwise is both bad policy and bad politics. Moreover, the idea that schools alone can foster equal opportunity is a dangerous form of magical thinking that not only justifies existing inequality but also exacerbates our political differences by pitting the winners in our economy against the losers.Democrats can reclaim education as a winning issue. They might even be able to carve out some badly needed common ground, bridging the gap between those who have college degrees and those who don’t by telling a more compelling story about why we have public education in this country. But that story must go beyond the scramble for social mobility if the party is to win back some of the working people it has lost over the past few decades.Schools may not be able to solve inequality. But they can give young people a common set of social and civic values, as well as the kind of education that is valuable in its own right and not merely as a means to an end. We don’t fund education with our tax dollars to wash our hands of whatever we might owe to the next generation. Instead, we do it to strengthen our communities — by preparing students for the wide range of roles they will inevitably play as equal members of a democratic society.Jennifer Berkshire (@BisforBerkshire) is a freelance journalist, and Jack Schneider (@Edu_Historian) is an associate professor of education at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. They are the authors of “A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School” and the hosts of the education policy podcast “Have You Heard.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in UK Politics

      Graduates to pay back student loans into their 60s under government reforms

      by

      Graduates will be paying university fees into their 60s after the government announced plans to extend the period before student loans are written off.Student debt will be wiped out after 40 years, rather than the existing 30, under proposals which have been likened to a “working-life-long graduate tax”.The government said the extension would ensure a greater proportion of student loans are paid back, reducing the burden on taxpayers. But the changes mean lower-income graduates will have to repay their loans earlier, as well as for longer, with the threshold at which payments begin cut from £27,295 to £25,000 for those beginning courses at September 2023. Martin Lewis, founder of MoneySavingExpert.com, said: “The plans will see most university leavers pay far more for their degrees over their lifetime than they do now.“It effectively completes the transformation of student ‘loans’ for most, into a working-life-long graduate tax.”Michelle Donelan, minister for higher and further education, insisted the reforms would create a “fairer system for students, graduates and taxpayers” and were “future-proofing the student finance system”.She added the removal of interest rates from loans after 2023 meant graduates will not have to repay more than they borrow. Nadhim Zahawi, education secretary, described the new student finance system is “more sustainable” and said it would “put an end once for all to high interest rates on their student loans” as well as keep “higher education accessible and accountable”. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in UK Politics

      UK universities hit by 40% fall in EU students since Brexit

      by

      UK universities have seen a 40 per cent drop in the number of applications from EU students since Brexit, official figures show.The admissions body Ucas cited the “uncertainty” sparked by Britain’s exit from the bloc as a reason for the slump in the number of students coming from Europe last year.EU applicants were down to 31,670 in 2021 – falling by 40 per cent since the previous year, according to the latest annual Ucas report.The number of EU students who won places at British universities dropped down to 16,025 – a 50 per cent decline.“Undergraduate applications and placed students from the EU have been impacted by a range of factors – including the uncertainty associated with the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, and changes to student support arrangements,” the admissions body said.The latest Ucas figures for the 2022 cycle show the post-Brexit effect continuing – there have been just under 20,820 EU applicants, a fall of 19 per cent since this point last year.However, Britain’s higher education institutions saw a 48 per cent rise in the number of US students applying for courses last year.China remains the largest “market” for international students, ahead of India, but America saw the largest increase in applicants of any major nation.Overall, applicants from outside of the EU rose by over 12 per cent last year to a record 111,255, according to the Ucas report.Kareem Dus, founder of Favisbrook firm helping American students get visas to study abroad, told the BBC that Britain’s apparent shift towards the US after Brexit had made it more attractive to some of his clients.“This is a growing market for us – we’ve certainly noticed an increase in orders for UK visas from the American side,” he said, adding that foreign students are “highly skilled and however long they stay they will contribute to the economy”.The latest, 2022 cycle figures shows that the number of applicants from outside the EU continues to rise – the numbers are currently up 5 per cent.Clare Marchant, chief executive at UCAS, said: “Whilst applications have been very resilient throughout the pandemic, the robust demand from China, India and Hong Kong … shows the enduring appeal of our world-class universities.”It comes as graduates are reportedly set to be forced to pay more for their student loans. The i newspapers said the government is “poised” to lower the repayment threshold from £27,295 a year to £25,000.The government’s long-awaited Augar review of higher education funding in England is set to be published this week, and it could see the introduction of both student number controls and minimum entry requirements for some university applicants.The Department for Education (DfE) said the measures are being considered to prevent pupils being “pushed into higher education before they are ready” and to ensure “poor-quality, low-cost courses aren’t incentivised to grow uncontrollably”.Lee Elliot Major, said a professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter, said that if the plans are implemented “crudely” they will stop poorer pupils getting to university from age three.He said: “If this is implemented crudely it will effectively be closing off university prospects at age three for many poorer children – our research shows the depressingly strong link between achieving poorly in early age tests and failing to get passes in English and maths GCSEs at age 16.” More

    • 138 Shares109 Views

      in UK Politics

      School leaders condemn ‘headlong rush’ to scrap Covid testing and isolation

      by

      School leaders have criticised Boris Johnson’s plan to scrap Covid self-isolation rules and end regular testing of pupils in England, with the plans described as a “headlong rush” out of restrictions.The prime minister told the Commons on Monday that the government was removing the guidance for staff and students to undertake regular, twice-weekly testing when asymptomatic.But teachers’ leaders and school leaders have said the “living with Covid” announcement could cause further disruption – and create conflict between schools and parents.Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the announcement felt like a “headlong rush”, not a “sensibly phased approach”, adding: “Saying that [Covid] is at an end does not make it so”.Mr Barton said that in removing legal requirements to self-isolate following a positive test, along with twice-weekly testing, there was a risk of increased disruption if more positive cases came into classrooms.“Staff and pupils are often absent not just because they test positive but because they are actually ill with the coronavirus and this will obviously not abate if there is more transmission,” he said.“We are also concerned about where this leaves vulnerable staff and pupils, or those with a household member who is vulnerable,” he added. “These individuals will inevitably feel more scared and less protected by the relaxation.”Mr Barton that the change in rules requiring isolation also opened the door for conflict between schools and parents, where families interpreted symptoms that may or may not be coronavirus “differently from their child’s teachers”.“The goal must be to keep children in the classroom for as much of the time as possible. This plan does not seem to meet that objective and may in fact be counter-productive.”Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU teaching union, also said that “it is not the case that we have defeated Covid, nor that everyone can ‘live’ with it”.Dr Bousted said that schools needed to know whether chief medical officer Sir Chris Whitty and the chief scientific officer Sir Patrick Vallance supported the move to end isolation for those testing positive with Covid, which will come into place from Thursday.“It is vital that public health, not political considerations, decide that date. We also want to know if the government is planning any further investment in measures such as improved ventilation,” she saidPaul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, said that the announcement potentially had “an enormous impact” on schools but that there was now a need for swift, “clear and unambiguous guidance”.The school leaders’ chief said it was “crucial” that lateral flow tests remained free for pupils, otherwise the consequences for “disadvantaged pupils, in particular, could be severe”.Meanwhile, Steve Chalke, the founder of the Oasis academy trust of dozens of schools across England, said the prime minister’s decision was a “huge gamble”.I think it will become a forced form of exclusion of those who are vulnerable, those immunosuppressed children and staff who are put at increased risk,” Mr Chalke told The Guardian.He added: “I think we will see a group of children turning away from education. It will lead to a further rise in home education … All of this will play together in some unhelpful ways.” More

    • 213 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Cancel culture is real but it’s not the ‘woke mob’ you should worry about | Arwa Mahdawi

      by

      Cancel culture is real but it’s not the ‘woke mob’ you should worry aboutArwa MahdawiBooks deemed anti-church or containing LGBTQ issues are being banned across the US at a terrifying rate by the conservative right Hello, my name is Arwa Mahdawi and I would like to cancel myself, please. I have a book to sell, you see, and it would seem that the easiest way to drum up a lot of free publicity these days is to declare yourself the latest victim of cancel culture. Suddenly everyone is inviting you on the telly to wax on about how you’ve been cruelly silenced by the woke mob. “Nobody can say anything any more!” the usual pundits lament in their 972nd piece on whether cancel culture has gone too far. “Free speech is dead! It’s just like Nineteen Eighty-Four!”I don’t know if Big Brother is going to let me share this, but I have something terribly shocking to tell you about cancel culture. Here we go: you should definitely be worried, but it’s not the woke mob you need to be worried about. A depressing amount of energy is being expended on arguing whether calling someone out for using language a lot of people perceive as bigoted is “cancel culture”. But, while endless arguments rage about the intolerant left, free speech is under a terrifying assault from the right.Want to know what real cancel culture looks like? Well, just sit back and look at the unprecedented surge of book banning efforts happening across the United States. Last year, for example, a county prosecutor’s office considered charging library employees in a conservative Wyoming city for stocking books about sex education and containing LGBTQ themes. Around the same time, Moms for Liberty, a rightwing advocacy group, tried to get a number of books banned from Tennessee schools because they contained content that disturbed them. They deemed a book about Galileo to be “anti-church”, and were outraged that a book about Martin Luther King contained “photographs of political violence”.More recently, a school board in Tennessee banned Maus, Art Spiegelman’sPulitzer prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, from its classrooms. Their reasoning? It contained eight swear words and a picture of a naked cartoon mouse. Yep, you read that right. What upset these people most about a book detailing how Jewish people were gassed to death in concentration camps by Nazis were some curse words.Let’s be clear: there is nothing particularly novel about uptight school boards in conservative areas getting worked up over material they deem offensive. However, what is happening in the US at the moment is a lot scarier than a few over-involved parents clutching their pearls over naked mice. As the American Library Association noted last year, there has been a “dramatic uptick in book challenges and outright removal of books from libraries.” The free-speech organisation, PEN America, has voiced similar concerns. “It’s a pretty startling phenomenon here in the United States to see book bans back in style, to see efforts to press criminal charges against school librarians,” the organisation’s chief executive recently told the New York Times.It’s not just school boards trying to police what kids can read about: it’s politicians, too. Last year, Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, introduced proposed legislation that would let parents sue schools for teaching critical race theory to kids. To be cute, he called this the Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (W.O.K.E) Act. Now, Florida is trying to pass a bill that critics have nicknamed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which would let parents sue schools or teachers who bring up topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity. (Just a little reminder to everyone that DeSantis loves describing Florida as a beacon of freedom, in what he deems to be an increasingly authoritarian America.)In an interview with the Washington Post last week, Spiegelman warned that what is happening now should be seen as a “red alert”. Maus being banned was no anomaly, but “part of a continuum, and just a harbinger of things to come”. What can I say? If it’s the “woke mob” that scares you after all this, then you must be fast asleep.
      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
      TopicsCensorshipOpinionFreedom of speechLibrariesUS politicsLGBT rightsReligioncommentReuse this content More