03 December 2020
Eton Mess
Woke or broke?
By Lynda Goetz
Woke didn’t make it to be the 2019 ‘Word of the Year’ for either the Oxford, Cambridge or Collins dictionaries. It was, though, the word of the year for Global Language Monitor. “In progressive-based language, ‘woke’ describes an epiphany-like experience, where one is awakened to the call of social justice and the failures of the past, (my italics),” said Paul JJ Payack, president and chief word analyst of the Global Language Monitor. Not necessarily then the sort of word one would have associated with Eton College – until this week, when ‘Eton’ and ‘woke’ seem to have appeared together rather a lot.
The brouhaha which has arisen over the dismissal of English master Will Knowland appears to highlight tensions at the heart of one of this country’s most famous schools. Tensions, it has to be said, which are repeated in several established institutions around the country. The National Trust last week admitted to hiring Hanbury Strategy , a strategic advisory firm, to improve its image after being accused of virtue signalling and being too woke, following the publication of a 115-page report on some of its properties’ links to slavery. After numbers of members threatened to leave and others demanded that the Trust focus on looking after the properties for which it is responsible, rather than lecturing them on how they should view history, it appears that the board decided they needed to pay thousands of pounds for advice on how to get back in touch with its membership. Whether or not this is money well spent is probably open to question.
Simon Henderson, Head Master of Eton, appears to be relying on his own judgement* and knowledge of the Eton rulebook in dismissing the master of 9 years standing over a lecture he had been going to give senior boys on the subject of masculinity and the current feminist radical orthodoxy. According to Mr Henderson, the dismissal, “was not about free speech”, more apparently a concern over the dubious use of images and certain outlandish assertions in the talk, which is entitled The Patriarchy Paradox. Whether it was or not, this is certainly the way it appears and it has aroused the ire of pupils, staff and alumni as well as the interest of the national press and social media. Nigel McNaire Scott, billionaire property tycoon, former pupil and a co-founder of Helical Bar, has even threatened to write the school out of his will if Mr Knowland is dismissed. Mr Knowland, as far as the information in the public domain informs us, was dismissed for failing to remove the offending speech from his YouTube site, where it was presumably still accessible to pupils at the school.
Having seen the video, it is probably fair to say that it is a starting point for discussion. Whether or not its author agrees with all the assertions made in it, what he is doing is attempting to provoke thoughtful discussion. The Perspectives curriculum, designed to introduce older boys at Eton to controversial subjects and issues of public debate, is surely an ideal forum for a topic such as this one? Clearly, at this point, we the public cannot know whether this matter was for the Head Master, a final straw and whether there are other issues of which we are unaware. If it really is simply a matter of the content of the talk, then freedom of speech is at stake here and one would have hoped for better from the school which has given us twenty prime ministers (although admittedly our current old Etonian incumbent is also tending towards the authoritarian rather than the libertarian approach). One member of staff in a letter to the ViceProvost compares the current progressive orthodoxy to religious fundamentalism.
Woke is a word which comes from the United States. It dates back to the 1940s and comes from an African-American expression ‘stay woke’, referring to a perceived awareness of racial and social justice issues. However, it is ‘the failures of the past’ which have come to take precedence in the current use of the word and this is where the word and what it represents becomes dangerous. We can be aware of the way in which the moralities and attitudes of the past differed from ours. We cannot be responsible for them – only for our own. Progressive woke thinking may not provide all the answers. The current tendency of the illiberal left to attempt to control all thought and to cancel those who disagree with their point of view is increasingly alarming. More and more places of education are succumbing to this tyranny. The cancel culture at many universities is destroying debate and discussion. Students increasingly feel they have to keep to themselves any thoughts which do not accord with the current orthodoxies.
Eton is an elite all-male school. There are female equivalents such as Roedean or Cheltenham Ladies College. If a talk were instigated in one of these on the subject of third-wave feminism or the recent decision in the courts on puberty-blocking drugs* for example, would it be halted if just one other (male) member of staff objected? It seems unlikely. So why is it currently okay to discuss feminism but not masculinity? Toby Young, who founded The Free Speech Union in February, which is funding Mr Knowland’s appeal against his dismissal, said that the ‘dispute is over the purpose of a good education and whether it is to “equip children with the knowledge and skills to think through the big questions facing our society or to just teach them the ‘correct’ view”.
If a school like Eton has lost sight of what education should be then we are indeed in a mess.
*Although the Provost, Lord Waldegrave, has resigned from the appeal panel as he has openly supported the Head.
** A High Court ruling earlier this week restricts the use of puberty blockers for under-16s (to the dismay of the trans community).
