Microaggressions in a Micronation

The Scottish education system, once the envy of the world, is now not even the envy of Scotland. And, given the disastrous state of education in England and Wales, captured as it is by woke ideology, climate change and colonialism, that is quite an achievement.

All the problems of Scotland: economic, social and now educational can be ascribed to the party which has ruled since 2007, the SNP. The whole notion of Scottish independence is comical enough, given its economic dependence on England and the utter and prolonged incompetence of the SNP. But, while they have never really done anything that benefited the people of Scotland, the rot really took hold in 2014 when, under the cloud of sexual misdemeanours, the late lamented Alex Salmond was replaced by another fishy character, Nicola Sturgeon.

Nicola, always the loyal lieutenant until a target appeared on her mentor’s back, seized her chance and hastened his downfall by inserting her (metaphorical) blade firmly between his shoulders. Salmond fell, Sturgeon assumed the leadership of Scotland and a new wave of political ineptitude, wrapped in a tartan plaid of political correctness, swamped Scotland.

Eventually, snared in 2023 on the issue of who can have a penis, and in which prisons they can be put when they break the law, Nicola fell on her skean dhu and the rest is history. A man incapable of riding a scooter – literally – assumed power and, surprisingly, things got even worse. Humza ‘useless’ Yousaf’s reign (peace be upon him) was mercifully short, he resigned in 2024. But not without overseeing Scotland’s dreadful Hate Crime Bill becoming law.

There was no reason to expect that things north of the English border would get any better under the present incumbent at the Scottish Parliament, John Swinney. And they haven’t. Scottish education was already sliding down the international educational league table when he took over. Things have not improved and are unlikely to, given the latest developments.

Already damaged beyond belief by the ridiculous closures during the Covid fiasco and top heavy with wokery, the Scottish government is doubling down on its losses and enabling a further erosion of educational achievement for Scottish pupils. The latest obsession is ensuring that teachers are tooled up and enabled to “decode racial microaggressions”.

Part of its Building Racial Literacy programme, Education Scotland (that’s Foghlam Alba for both the Gaelic speakers on the Isle of Skye) is allowing teachers to take three days off teaching to attend the course on racial microaggressions. That’s three days aways from school, from teaching and from the pupils who so badly need their attention.

The contents of the Scottish programme do not appear to be in the public domain, but we have already been treated to the concept of racial microaggressions south of the border at (my alma mater) the University of Sheffield. Here we were given an insight into the kind of thing that could lead to a black mark (oops – see how easy it is) against you.

Asking someone where they are from is unacceptable, apparently, as it shows you assume they are not British, even if they are not. In the same vein, assuming people are foreign or don’t speak English well because of their appearance (and who probably don’t speak English) is unacceptable. Being compared to a black celebrity you look nothing like is not on, which I imagine is especially offensive if you are white. Saying, for example, “I love Chinese food” can be a microaggression, but so can saying that you don’t like it. This is all wonderful stuff because, while it ties native white students up in knots not knowing how to address their international classmates, said international classmates notoriously don’t give a hoot about any of it.

One detail of the content of the Scottish programme on racial literacy has been released, however, and it is a ‘poem’ titled Seeds of Antiracist Education by Tawona Sitholé (the ‘h’ is silent apparently). Sitholé is a research associate in the School of Education at the University of Glasgow and an artist in residence.

‘Seeds’, the poem, is a piece of impenetrable verbal diarrhoea. You can listen to Sitholé squeezing it out here on YouTube. Kicking off with lines written – somewhat exclusively – in the South African language Shona, some of the gems contained therein include:

in the spirit of this dear rugged land

the mouth of a ventriloquist is dummying the run

in dummy time but in running time

it is not going tickety-boo

Not exactly Shakespeare or Larkin, but you can just imagine the knowing nods and appreciative noises as Sitholé recites this garbage to a room full of Celtic honkies. But it is good to see that the £45.5 billion paid to Scotland under the Barnett Formula is not being wasted.

The ‘poem’ is replete with lines such as ‘Fundo cunoastere seekna al táleem ionnsaich’ which, thanks to ChatGPT transpires simply to be a stream of words from different languages, all meaning ‘education’: Swahili, Romanian, Urdu/Hindi/ Arabic and Gaelic.

Another gem, verging on the incomprehensible, is repeated in the ‘poem’ as follows:

instead of raising instead erasing

the young talking of problem behaviour

unfair burden placed on people of colour

racial trauma leading to mental unwellness

in all this embarrassing richness

we cannot afford to ignore race

to ignore race is to ignore ourselves

we cannot afford to neglect healing

to neglect healing is to neglect learning

‘We cannot afford to ignore race’ says Sitholé, and one imagines that with his help, we won’t.

 

Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.

 

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