A lone voice of sense in the education wilderness

It's not often you hear someone inside the state education system speak out against the way schools have gone from centres of education to socialist indoctrination farms - and that's not really surprising as schools, colleges and universities were the first target of cultural Marxist revolution - but a headmaster at one of Britain's leading schools does just that today in the Telegraph.

Rod MacKinnon, the head of Bexley Grammar School, south-east London, said schools were being forced to shun traditional lessons as ministers manipulated the education system for the purposes of "social engineering".

His comments came just days after ministers published new guidance requiring schools to monitor obesity rates, drug taking and teenage pregnancy as part of a new duty to promote pupil "wellbeing".

"There are those who wish to use children and schools as social engineers with a view to creating a different society but we should not even be trying to do such things," he said. "Children need to be nurtured, educated and cared for, not thrown into the frontline of social reform. Muddled thinking is guaranteeing failure for the noble aspirations we all commonly hold for the education of the young."

Quite right - except that the thinking is not "muddled" it is quite deliberate with the purpose being to churn out socialist automatons well versed in the progressive liberal ideals and easily manipulated by the ruling class.

It follows claims this week from Bernice McCabe, the headmistress of the independent North London Collegiate School, that the education system was leading to the "cultural and intellectual impoverishment" of a generation of children as ministers focus on "woolly" goals.

That's one of the problems facing conservatives - the belief that the goals of progressive liberalism are "woolly". The fact that most progressive liberals are only able to express themselves in "woolly" liberal talk using vague generalisations and cliches tends to disguise the fact that the actual aims of progressive liberalism are being achieved in virtually every area.

In education the aim was to supplant the traditional education system with a system of indoctrination to progressive liberal ideals and socialist dogma. The "wooliness" simply exists to hide the true nature of the goal - otherwise nobody would fall for it.

Unfortunately, for conservatism and for Britain, voices like those of Mr MacKinninon are few and far between in the state education system - and getting fewer as he himself is leaving to go into the private sector. The indoctrination of our kids will continue unabated.