Allan Massie: No place on the school curriculum for bigotry

Some 40 years ago I was tutoring a 19-year-old boy with an Eastern European name. One day he remarked that the lower classes were all lazy and work shy, and that trade unions should be made illegal and Unemployment Benefit abolished. I told him this was a ridiculous and repulsive thing to say. Whereupon he became angry and told me I was insulting his father who was a businessman who knew about these matters.

I remembered this exchange when I read of moves by the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) to ask the General Teaching Council (GTC) to have teachers who are members of the British National Party (BNP) or the SDL (Scottish Defence League), or who express racist or “extreme right-wing views”, removed from the teaching register.

Now, of course, my position with regard to that student was in a sense the other way round, in that he might be regarded as the extremist, while I was putting forward the moderate, socially acceptable view. Yet his father might well have complained that I was seeking to indoctrinate his son with opinions of which he strongly disapproved.

Why recall this little exchange? Simply to suggest that the argument about what is acceptable and what is not, is not always straightforward. We may all agree that it is improper for teachers to indoctrinate their pupils. Yet there are certain subjects – history and modern studies, for instance – where the teacher will unavoidably express a particular view that may offend some pupils or their parents.

Was the hostility of the Protestant Reformers to the Church of Rome justified? That is a difficult question, and questions become far more awkward when you deal with modern times or current social and political issues. The teaching profession is, by its nature, liberal, promoting the spirit of free inquiry. But where, if anywhere, should you draw the line? And do the activities of teachers outside the classroom – joining certain political groups, expressing their opinions in newspapers or social media – render them unsuitable?

Education Secretary Michael Gove has condemned the English GTC for allowing a BNP activist to remain on the register after he described immigrants as “savage animals” on an internet forum. Yet the man was a technology teacher and it has not been reported that he expressed similar opinions in the classroom.

During the Cold War there were teachers and lecturers who were members of the Communist Party (CP). Quite rightly they were not banned, and the CP remained a legal organisation, despite being financed by the Soviet Union. Other countries took a different line: the CP was outlawed in Australia, and, in the United States, Communists were held to be guilty of un-American activities and often lost their jobs as a result.

One must conclude that the EIS then regarded Stalinism as less offensive – and less of a threat to civil liberties – than some of its members now judge the BNP and SDL to be.

Once you start censoring opinion, or dismissing – persecuting? – people for their opinions, you are on treacherous ground. What, for instance, would be the view of the EIS if a modern studies teacher leads a discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We might think it reasonable if he promoted sympathy for the Palestinians and was severely critical of the Israeli policy of planting settlements in the West Bank. These are, after all, widely-held, respectable opinions. But at what point does criticism of Israel slip into antisemitism which is disgusting and not respectable at all?

One may argue that no distinction should be made between what a teacher says in class and his extra-curricular activities. This certainly seems to have been Mr Gove’s view when he condemned the English GTC for “failing to protect pupils from extremist views” – even if they may not have been exposed to them in class. The difficulty is that, no matter how reprehensible you may find them, both the BNP and the SDL are legal organisations. In the 2009 election for the European Parliament the BNP won two seats. It has also won council seats. So the implication of the demand by some EIS members that teachers with links to extremist – by which they mean “far-right” – organisations should be removed from the register, is that a BNP member may be democratically elected but should not be permitted in a Scottish classroom.

One may have sympathy with the view that some teachers are unsuitable because of their political opinions; nevertheless this is a dangerous precedent. Suppose the membership of the EIS moved to the Right and voted to bar members of the Scottish Socialist Party or the Socialist Workers Party from the classroom. I doubt if this would meet with the approval of those who would now ban the BNP. Or suppose that Sinn Fein sympathisers or members of the Orange Order were threatened with a ban?

If a teacher is qualified and does not break the law, then membership of a political party or grouping, however repulsive many, even a majority of people, may think it, should not be a bar to pursuing his profession.

Lots of parents may object to the political opinions of some who teach their children, and some indeed may object strongly. Christian parents may dislike the idea of their children being taught by atheists, and atheist parents may likewise object to Christian teachers. Yet, as long as the teacher is law-abiding, there should be no sanction against him. It is not as if we do not have laws prohibiting the expression of certain opinions – against racism, for example. Anyone convicted of such an offence may properly be barred from teaching. But, unless a teacher has been found guilty of a criminal offence, he or she is entitled to continue to work.

Finally, while it may be desirable to protect children from extremist opinions, this is pretty well impossible nowadays. They have only to log on to the internet, and they will be bombarded by such opinions, often expressed in language far more disgusting than the worst graffiti in public lavatories.