Multiculturalism in Britain is bound to fail unless schools instil children with “small-c conservative” values, including pride in being British, the former social mobility tsar has said.
Katharine Birbalsingh said it was “non-negotiable” that children need to be taught love of country but too many schools viewed this idea with “contempt”.
Ms Birbalsingh, who has also been called the UK’s strictest headmistress, told the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference that too few schools teach children virtues of personal responsibility and self-sacrifice.
“I put it to you that when schools do not immerse children in these small-c conservative values, when schools do not have strict behaviour systems, when schools do not hold their standards high for all children, whatever their backgrounds, multiculturalism fails,” she said.
The headmistress of Michaela Community School in London said too many teachers “cheered on” identity politics that encourage children to see themselves as victims who have no “agency” to improve their lives.
Instead, she said that children needed to be taught to reject victimhood if they are to succeed.
Ms Birbalsingh accused schools of exaggerating differences between races and religions, encouraging pupils to “retreat into tribalism” and causing division in the country, saying: “Our schools should immerse children in values that promote cohesion, rather than division.”
She said children at her school were “immersed in small-c conservative values, where we teach them to take personal responsibility, to embrace the idea of self-sacrifice, and to love their country”.
“No matter how often they’re told that they are oppressed, that the establishment is against them because they are poor or they’re black or they live on an estate, it will always be the case that we have agency,” said Ms Birbalsingh.
