Reform schools
Braverman's new world
As the Turkmens do
Pity the King. This week the monarch is in Washington DC on a state visit to a president who has done more than any other to damage British interests, and last week Suella Braverman unveiled Reform UK’s plan to force all schools to display his portrait in a communal place.
Our sense of humour and our secular history will act together to make compulsory flags, compulsory portraits and enforced pride seem ridiculous. Or else I don’t know my country any more.
His Majesty may be able to console himself with the idea that the first has some conceivable utility (at least for a week or two): the second, however, has none at all. If enacted it would become like the 50s convention of standing to attention during the national anthem at the end of a film, the subject of ridicule before being abandoned in the 1960s. In a song I learned as a child – a Cockney pastiche of Frankie and Johnny called Stanley and Dora – the cheating Stanley was “killed in the rush for the door when they played God Save the Queen”.
Launched on St George’s Day it wasn’t Ms Braverman’s only patriotic school policy, As she explained in an article for the Daily Telegraph:
Under Reform UK, there will be a duty for every school to fly the Union Flag proudly, every day of the year, alongside the Cross of St George in England, the Saltire in Scotland and, in Wales, the Red Dragon.
Not hidden away. Not treated as controversial, but displayed with pride. In addition, every school will have a portrait of His Majesty the King, which must be displayed prominently as a reminder of the continuity, service and stability at the heart of our nation.
Every school would be given funding for flagpoles to fly the Union Flag, as well as the English, Scottish and Welsh flags.
That’s two flags per school, and there are some unanswered questions here. Is it one flagpole per flag? What is the patriotic utility in flying flags in a school during the summer break? Is the required pride with which these flags are to be flown to be inferred purely from their position, or will OFSTED be asked to survey staff and pupils on how proud they feel and build the results into their school ratings? “The teaching was excellent but unfortunately there was an absence of obvious patriotic feeling, so this school must be rated ‘unsatisfactory’”?
How prominent should the obligatory portrait of the King be? How big? If the school is a large one, should several portraits be displayed so everyone gets to be reminded of “continuity, service and stability at the heart of the nation”? I have provided you above with an illustration of how this might work, courtesy of ChatGPT.
A cursory search provided me with a list of other countries where the head of state’s portrait is an obligatory presence in schools. There aren’t many.
North Korea (above) is one. Turkmenistan is another, where in 2022 a major logistical effort was put into replacing portraits of the retiring president Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow with those of his son and successor, Serdar. The revered Thai monarch is usually displayed, but this isn’t mandatory. It seems hardly necessary to point out that the image of no other European monarch, from Spain to Sweden, is currently forced upon schools. In this Braverman proves herself to be plus royaliste que tous les roi.
The patriotic curriculum
But more important even than compulsory prominent flags and Charlie pics are Reform UK’s plans for a “patriotic curriculum” to be introduced in the “first 100 days” of a Reform administration. It is apparently the contention of the party that the current school syllabus has been “taught through a progressive lens” and “retrofitted to justify mass immigration”. Note: Braverman’s article seemed to elide the English, Scottish and Welsh syllabuses, of whose existence she seemed to be unaware. But then she’s only been an education spokesman for just under two months, and so far her priority is flags and portraits.
Here’s the relevant excerpt from Braverman’s article, included to give a flavour of her thinking. The emphases are mine:
This St George’s Day, I am announcing our Patriotic Schools Initiative, a clear, unapologetic plan to restore pride, balance and common sense back into education.
We will introduce a curriculum that teaches the full richness of British history, including the triumphs and the struggles that made us who we are. Not a myopic one focused on the “evils of the Empire” or how our flag is “racist”. No, we will teach our kids an honest account of a country that has done more good than almost any other.
Our children will learn about Alfred, Magna Carta, the defeat of tyranny across the ages, about the expansion of freedom, democracy and technology. They will learn more about Wilberforce and the West African Squadron than about reparations. Our young people will appreciate the heroism of Churchill instead of wanting to vandalise his statue. They will learn what Britain has given the world, and why it still matters.
One thing I would teach children is not to put things in quotes that aren’t quotes. Another might be to not invent improbable impulses and attribute them to large groups of people. The idea that we harbour hordes of youthful wannabe Churchill statue-vandalisers is not one that will easily pass a “common sense” test. Or perhaps I’m wrong and even now coachloads of British teens are en route for their nearest Churchill statue to engage in some fun destruction before taking in a movie or a nightclub or changing gender.
Braverman’s hallucinations of Britain’s schoolchildren and young people have probably been induced in part by talking to Reform’s head of policy, the Orbáne theology don, James Orr. Orr posted on X in support of the “patriotic initiative” that:
You cannot love what you do not know. Children taught to be guilty about Britain’s history and heritage will neither celebrate it nor defend it. To the teachers and parents who have witnessed this happen and despaired: Reform will always back you.
This assertion irked Michael Gove, who politely reminded Orr that the (absurdly over-prescribed) history curriculum in England is essentially the one he introduced in 2013 when education secretary. Woke it wasn’t. And changed it hasn’t been. It was stuffed full of British history and heritage because of his reforms, said Gove, and it sure is. So, for example, Key Stage 3 (in case Suella is reading, that’s the first three years of secondary school) requires that:
Pupils should be taught about:
The development of Church, state and society in Medieval Britain 1066–1509
The development of Church, state and society in Britain 1509–1745
Ideas, political power, industry and empire: Britain, 1745–1901
Challenges for Britain, Europe and the wider world, 1901 to the present day.
Many historians think this is ridiculous, but schools do it. For those interested in junior school history I’ve included here a link to how one typical primary school – Charles Dickens in Southwark, London – offers history to its pupils:
https://www.charlesdickens.southwark.sch.uk/academic-excellence/history-curriculum
Not a reparation in view. Last year Orr, in Esztergom, Hungary, for the annual festival of the Orbán-funded MCC institute, gave an interview to the Orbán-subsidised magazine Hungarian Conservative. In the course of his slick jeremiad concerning the moral collapse of the UK, Orr turned briefly to schools. “If we look at education”, he told his interviewer…
…there are vast swathes of London where you can’t send your kids to school because English is just not spoken any more. Or they’re being taught in history how to hate their country and hate their heritage and be ashamed of everything their parents used to look up to.
As a matter of pure fact there are probably no state schools whatsoever where “English is just not spoken any more”. And (though this is more a matter of judgment), none where children are taught in history lessons to “hate their heritage”. The time is coming when Reform figures like Orr are going to be challenged to support claims like this. I just wish interviewers would do it now.
So it’s obvious that Orr and Braverman have no idea what’s happening in most state schools. Braverman was privately educated after the age of 11. Her husband Rael came to the UK as a teenager from South Africa, and I can’t find a record of where he went to school. Their oldest child is seven. James Orr was a year above Rishi Sunak at Winchester (fees currently £44,000 per year for non-boarders); his wife Helen, the vicar’s daughter of the former Bishop of Coventry (himself an Etonian), attended King Henry VIII School (fees currently £25,000 per year). My apologies in advance if I am wrong about this, but I am prepared to bet that neither of their two children attends a state school.
