1. Introduction
This essay attempts to answer the question: to what extent does the DfE’s (2022) ‘Guidance on political impartiality in schools’ (henceforth ‘the Guidance’) support de/coloniality? To this end, I divide the essay into four sections. To begin, I briefly detail a selection of pedagogical views on what is and when to treat an issue as ‘controversial’; and employ Kelly’s (1986) four perspectives on the teacher’s role to explore the concept of im/partiality— the purpose here being to construct a theoretical framework with which to support the final decolonial critique. In the second section, I present the pretext for the Guidance’s publication and elucidate upon the socio-political context to which it responds. Thirdly, through a synthesis of ideas by preeminent decolonial scholars, such as Walter Mignolo and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, I outline what decoloniality is, what it seeks to address and provide two examples of decolonial pedagogical interventions. Finally, having laid the contextual groundwork and established a decolonial lens, I embark upon my critique of the Guidance. I argue that it is timely and prima facie consistent with the decolonial worldview. Yet, more importantly, the Guidance risks inhibiting decolonial pedagogies and perpetuating the logic of coloniality. It does so through focusing on reifying ‘fundamental British values’ and thereby prescribing, as first-order, what equates to exclusive partiality in relation to the teaching of anything pertaining to them; and prescribing, as second-order, neutral impartiality on the teaching of all other controversial political issues.
2. Teaching controversial political issues
In its introduction, the Guidance (online only, no page numbers) details its intended function: that it “explains the existing legal requirements relating to political impartiality in schools” and, to this end, provides hypothetical scenarios “designed to support an understanding of how schools’ legal duties on political impartiality can be met.” As I argue below, at its core the Guidance seeks to respond to an era of national and global socio-political uneasiness by mitigating teacher partiality. However, before exploring the social and political pretext for the Guidance, I here address the question of what is and when an issue ought to be taught as ‘controversial’; and draw on the work of Kelly (1986) to present four perspectives on teacher im/partiality. The intention of this section is not to provide a comprehensive exploration of its entailed themes but, rather, to provide a flavour of them to establish the theoretical framework necessary to support the decolonial critique which follows.
2.1 What is and when to treat an issue as controversial?
According to Hand (2008: 213), “[t]eaching something as controversial is properly contrasted with teaching it as settled”. However, what it means for an issue to be settled is itself unsettled. Educators might resolve this by choosing to adopt one of the following criterions at any particular moment.
2.1.1 The behavioural criterion
Firstly, the behavioural criterion defines an issue as controversial if, and prescribes teaching an issue as such when, “numbers of people are observed to disagree about statements and assertions made in connection with [them]” (Dearden in Hand, 2008: 217). Whilst this is relatively intuitive, according to Dearden it fails to preclude nominal and “playground disagreement[s]” (paraphrased in Oulton et al, 2004: 490). That is, as elsewhere Hand (2008: 214) highlights, many disputes that occur in ordinary life “are about questions to which there are entirely satisfactory and well-established answers, and which no educator would be much inclined to teach as controversial”.
2.1.2 The epistemic criterion
As an alternative, the epistemic criterion determines that an issue should be taught as controversial when “contrary views can be held on it without those views being contrary to reason” (Dearden in Hand, 2008: 214). The normative aim of this criterion is to encourage students to recognize rational positions as the only legitimate positions; and in cases where multiple viewpoints are deemed rational, “then teachers have a responsibility to teach that issue […] in a way that frames all rational positions as equally legitimate” (Journell, 2017: 342). In support of this, Hand (2008: 218) argues that when young people are encouraged “to think and act rationally” their prospects of leading a fulfilled life are increased; both they and society are more likely to flourish. However, left unanswered is the question of what rationality amounts to (Warnick and Spencer Smith, 2014: 228) and, moreover, who determines that. For, if rationality is determined by, say, positivistic reason alone, then swathes of unresolved issues for which “significant groups within society advocate conflicting explanations” (Stradling in Oulton et al, 2004: 490), such as religion, ethics and aesthetics, are rendered educationally redundant.
2.1.3 The politically authentic criterion
Somewhat more immune to this criticism, the politically authentic criterion frames issues as controversial “when they have traction in the public sphere” (Hess and McAvoy, 2015: 168-9); when they appear “on ballots, in courts, within political platforms, in legislative chambers, and as part of political movements”. On this definition, issues are deemed controversial when they implicate the governing and legislative bodies of the state. However, climate change and the history of its popular denial long after it received scientific consensus exemplifies how epistemically settled topics can remain politically controversial.
2.1.4 The politically criterion
Lastly, there is the political criterion which prescribes for an issue to be treated as controversial when “no answer to it is entailed by the public values of the liberal democratic state” (Hand, 2008: 214). Stated otherwise, all that teachers have to do when teaching an issue as controversial is to ensure that a plurality of views exist on it, all of which are compatible with public values. According to this view, schools have a significant role to play in cultivating a “society committed to conscious social reproduction” (Gutmann in Journell, 2017: 342). As I demonstrate in my final critique, what these values are and how they are framed, normatively speaking can result in the social reproduction of ‘abyssal thinking’ and the perpetuation of oppressive or, in our case, colonial onto-epistemologies.
2.2 The role of the teacher
Since the Guidance concerns teacher ‘impartiality’, it is worth considering what this might amount to educationally. Kelly (1986) presents four perspectives on this, as summarised below.
2.2.1 Exclusive neutrality
Those who endorse exclusive neutrality contend that “[t]eachers should not introduce into the curriculum any topics which are controversial in the broader community” (Kelly, 1986: 114). Accordingly, formal education should be “value-free”. However, this view seemingly fails to recognise the inherent role schools and educators have as agents of socialisation (Giroux and Penna, 1979: 22). As Kelly (1986: 115) notes, there is compelling evidence to suggest that education is rarely, if ever, value-free. Rather, beyond the intentions of the formal curriculum is a ‘hidden curriculum’— “the unstated norms, values and beliefs that are transmitted to students through the underlying structure[s] of meaning in both the formal content as well as the social relations of school and classroom life” (Giroux and Penna, 1979: 22). Hence, teachers unavoidably have significant and often unintended impacts upon the development of their students’ values. Indeed, “even when teachers intend and strive to appear neutral, every decision they make has the effect of advocating or dismissing particular points of view” (Geller, 2020: 184; paraphrasing Callan).
2.2.2 Exclusive partiality
The impact of Exclusive partiality is more intentional. This is when educators “assert or assume the correctness of a particular point of view while competing perspectives are ignored, summarily dismissed, or punitively downgraded” (Kelly, 1986: 116). Amounting to indoctrination, this approach is inconsistent with the epistemic criterion since it could undermine the development of students’ rational thought and autonomy (Kelly, 1986: 119-21). Interestingly, proponents of the political criterion would endorse its use to reify public values in cases where issues are contentious in the wider community yet an answer to them is entailed by public values.
2.2.3 Neutral impartiality
Neutral impartiality equates to teachers exploring controversial issues with their students but refraining, as far as possible, from offering their opinion. Accordingly, when pressed by students for their position on an issue, teachers should explicitly caveat their disclosures to ensure that students know that theirs “is just one of several possible positions” (Kelly, 1986: 122). However, not only is this vulnerable to the same criticism as the previous neutral approach, according to Kelly (1986: 127), “this silence of the teacher can be deafening rather than quieting”, creating situations wherein students are denied the “developmental opportunity to compare their own perspectives and refine their advocacy skills with an expressive, responsible adult”. Resultantly, students can struggle to engage which could inhibit the development of their skills in critical thinking and discourse.
2.2.4 Committed impartiality
Lastly, committed impartiality requires teachers to more willingly offer their opinions and to “simultaneously encourage students to disagree with them, consider diverse viewpoints thoughtfully, and welcome all opinions” (Geller, 2020: 184). Kelly (1986: 132-3) provides a convincing rationale for this approach. That is, ideally, teachers should be ‘personal witnesses’ who “recognize authenticity and integrity as the best nutrients for sustaining intellectual, psychological and ethical health” and who thereby live according to well-reasoned praxes. Consequently, they attempt to live by example and when they fail, as at times they inevitably will, they “forthrightly address their imperfections, and […] in so doing, they exemplify a distinctively human achievement”. Through modelling reasoned conviction, self-doubt and through publically reformulating their praxes when reason compels them, such teachers promote rationality, integrity and compromise. And when students are encouraged to challenge their teacher’s views, they are empowered as critical democratic “citizens-in-training”. When confident to teach with committed impartiality, teachers qua personal witnesses are able to “show genuine respect for students’ knowledge and interests, manifested in a nonimpositional, nonpatronizing style of interaction” (Kelly, 1986: 133), encouraging students to intellectually contend with others agonistically, with deference and empathy, rather than antagonistically. Hence, contrary to the thinking behind the neutral approaches, the point of committed impartiality is “to model a thinking process not to advocate for an outcome” (Miller-Lane et al, 2006: 31).
In the above, I have presented four ways of conceptualising controversial issues and four perspectives on what im/partiality might amount to educationally. In what follows, subsequent to explaining the socio-political pretext for its publication, this theoretical framework will be used to support a decolonial critique of the Guidance.
3. The pretext for the DfE’s publication of ‘Guidance on political impartiality in schools’
In June 2021, the House of Commons Education Committee (2021: 57) published a report recommending that the DfE issue “clear guidance for schools […] on how to deliver teaching on [controversial political] issues in a balanced, impartial and age-appropriate way”. This recommendation was motivated in part by concerns developed consequent to the 2020 Black Lives Matter campaign and subsequent public discussions surrounding ‘White Privilege’. With reference to the Barnardo’s (2020) blog post, ‘White privilege – a guide for parents’, which ostensibly presented White Privilege as fact, the report stated “that there is a risk of some ‘pernicious’ ideology beginning to spread to organisations and charities that work with children” (Education Committee, 2021: 15-6). Neither the name nor essence of this ideology is mentioned in the report. Albeit, the DfE’s (2022) consequent publication of ‘Guidance on political impartiality in schools’ seeks to address the ways in which high-profile and controversial socio-political developments and discourses may affect teaching and learning in English schools.
With that said, the Guidance’s publication seems pertinent, if not overdue, given the polarised nature of contemporary national and global politics. Educationally, the very fear, if not reality, of this political cleavage filtering through into classrooms makes the challenge of teaching controversial political issues ever more precarious (Hess and McAvoy, 2015). As Ryder (2022: 11-4) reports, in recent years, rapid global, social and economic changes have appeared to induced a mass social trauma in the West. Stoked by reactionary and populist political figures and media outlets, this has “fed a discourse of what has been described as ‘moral panic’”, catalysing a ‘culture war’ between ostensibly irreconcilable socio-political imaginaries: “cosmopolitanism against monoculturalism and tradition”. Whilst the former broadly celebrates increasing onto-epistemological diversity, for the latter “diverse forms of sexuality, LGBTQ rights, same-sex marriage, and varied family units, fluid gender identities, tolerance of migrants, refugees, foreigners, and support for multiculturalism are anathema and an affront to tradition” (Ryder, 2022: 13)
Within this context, identity stereotyping and antagonistic discourse are prevalent. Indeed, controversial political issues in the UK, such as Brexit, transgender rights or the decolonial Rhodes Must Fall Oxford protests of 2015 (see RMFO, 2018) have, for many, become identity-defining issues whereby reproving them risks causing their supporters personal offence. In this vein, a so-called ‘cancel culture’ has come into view which functions to expel and silence the unsavoury symbols and expressions of the ideological Other. The public ‘cancelling’, viz. shaming, of popular figures and institutions— such as the National Trust for its estate’s historical ties with slavery— by ‘woke’ activists and scholars appear to have deepened ideological divides further. In response, the UK Government has taken fiscal action to discourage institutions, museums and universities from taking measures to address and accommodate the concerns and values of decolonial movements (Satia, 2021: 4-5) and ‘woke’ cosmopolitans.
Given its aforementioned pretext, one may reasonably infer that the Guidance serves a similar cause. From a decolonial perspective this is likely the case: the Guidance has, at least in part, been devised as a response to a culture war which, from the perspective of the UK Government, is challenging the identity and accepted history of traditionalist Britain. Hence, leaning heavily on the works of Walter Mignolo and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, in the following section I outline what decoloniality addresses and how, to establish a decolonial critical lens which, with reference to the theoretical framework detailed above, I will use to answer the question: to what extent does the DfE’s Guidance support de/coloniality?
4. Decoloniality
Decoloniality is not a commonly known term. Bhambra et al (2018: 2) describe it as “a way of thinking about the world which takes colonialism, empire and racism as its empirical and discursive objects of study”, seeing them as “key shaping forces of the contemporary world, in a context where their role has been systematically effaced from view.” Mignolo (2018: 145) describes decoloniality as “the response of and from people who do not want to be oppressed, exploited, and dispossessed”. Hence, decoloniality constitutes any form of onto-epistemological resistance to coloniality. Still, what is coloniality?
4.1 What is coloniality?
Coloniality pertains to the diffusion of European epistemologies throughout the history of European colonial expansion (Andreotti, 2011: 384) and to the continued perpetuation of Eurocentric onto-epistemologies in the post-colonial/post-WWII period. That is, with few exceptions, the era of geographic colonisation qua European colonialism ended in the early twentieth century, yet, decolonial scholars argue, as a legacy, Eurocentric epistemic colonisation perseveres (Quijano, 2007; Domínguez, 2019; Santos, 2013; Mignolo, 2011a). Indeed, “decolonial critiques identify European colonization and slavery in the 15th century as modernity’s epistemological and ontological genesis” (Stein, 2017: 6; referencing Wynter). Furthermore, what historically was instigated and dictated by colonial European nations and the US— coloniality— is now, as a result of globalisation, contemporarily globally normative (Mignolo, 2018: 5).
The problem with this lies in coloniality’s “racial and patriarchal foundation of knowledge” (Mignolo, 2011a: 8) which adheres to a notion of ‘knowledge-as-a-representation-of-reality’ (Dennis, 2018: 191; referencing Santos) and which, in this vein, conceives of Western/European historical and civilizational development as the apotheosis of and an inevitability for all human development (Quijano, 2007: 176). This inherently prejudicial, Eurocentric logic categories and hierarchizes peoples, cultures and objects according to their cultural and historical proximity with Western/European culture and history. For instance, between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries Western/European imperial discourse concerned itself consecutively with Christianising, then civilising and then modernising the colonial Other. As Mignolo (2011a: 28) puts it, “Western civilization emerged not just as another civilization in the planetary concert, but as the civilization [ostensibly] destined to lead and save the rest of the world from the Devil, from barbarism and primitivism”. Semantically speaking, then, the language of colonial discourse has and continues to change but its logic does not. What was once deemed ‘progress’ is today called ‘development’ (Mignolo, 2018: 110). The continuity of this logic is supported by a “disavowal of the history of imperialism” (Andreotti, 2007: 69) and colonialism, placing it firmly in the past and as economically and socio-politically detached from the present. Hence, the logic of coloniality continues to devalue and repudiate non-European systems of belief and alternative ways of thinking and being (Mignolo, 2018: 197), classifying them and, consequently, non-European peoples and cultures as developmentally antiquated, primitive or invalid; and as historically detached from the West/Europe.
According to Santos (2018: 8), the West’s failure to value “colonial […] forms of sociability”, viz. non-European-esque onto-epistemologies, facilitates ‘epistemicide’:“the destruction of an immense variety of ways of knowing”. The logic of coloniality produces an insurmountable epistemic barrier, an “abyssal line” (Santos, 2013; 2018), such that on the other side “[t]here are beliefs, opinions, intuitions, subjective understandings— but nothing that is recognisable as knowledge” (Dennis, 2018: 201; paraphrasing Santos). In a similar vein, Mignolo (2018: 106) describes coloniality as the unknown and unseen “darker side of Western modernity”. Those who live and think on the other side are rendered “incapable of representing the world as their own in their own terms” (Santos, 2018: 8). They are forced to assimilate in order to be recognised and validated (Mignolo, 2011a: 82). By this process non-European, alternative and indigenous onto-epistemologies have and continue to diminish and die out.
4.2 Decolonial interventions
To address this global injustice, decoloniality prescribes prioritising a notion of ‘knowledge-as-intervention-in-reality’ over and above the presently pervasive, colonial notion of ‘knowledge-as-a-representation-of-reality’ (Dennis, 2018: 191; referencing Santos). For, as Santos (2013: 133) explains, “there is no global social justice without global cognitive justice”. Accordingly, “[t]he adequate recognition of injustice and the possible overcoming of oppression can only be achieved by means of an epistemological break” (Santos, 2013: ix) with the effacing qua abyssal, colonial cognitive paradigm— what Mignolo (2011a: 193) calls “delinking” and others refer to as imagining or thinking ‘otherwise’ (Andreotti and Souza, 2012; Dennis, 2018). Thus, decoloniality seeks to expose, challenge and diverge from the ‘terms’— the epistemic foundations; the logic— of popular critical (colonial) discourse rather than merely the utterances constituting it (Mignolo, 2011b: 275).
Santos (2013: 134) calls this “postabyssal thinking”. That is, thinking in terms that are not derivative from colonial logic. This involves recognising coloniality, understanding its genesis, challenging its legitimacy, realising its contingency, undermining its universality and valorising cultural and epistemological pluriversality (Santos, 2018: 263). Accordingly, he argues, the ‘abyssal line’ can be crossed and we can make visible “the processes by which large portions of the world’s population have historically been prevented from representing and transforming the world as a project of their own”. Similarly, Mignolo (2018: 149-50) prescribes “border thinking”— thinking that unveils the rhetoric and darker side of modernity; thinking not “‘between’ disciplines but past the disciplines”, to bring into focus the knower and their assumptions rather than on what is popularly ‘known’, to question how epistemologies and ontologies are controlled. This requires “going to the very assumptions that sustain our enunciations” (Mignolo, 2018: 150).
Pedagogically speaking, there are several methodologies that can work to this end. Since it is beyond the means of this paper to present a comprehensive list, I will here present just two such methodologies. The first, a popular methodology amongst decolonial and critical pedagogy scholars (Santos, 2013; Andreotti and Pashby, 2013; Domínguez, 2019; Freire, 2017), is ‘strong’ question-posing. According to Santos (2013: 20), ‘weak’ questions obscure and perpetuate, since they are shaped and their answers are limited by, colonial logic. Instead, decolonial pedagogues should ask ‘strong’ questions. Questions which
“address not only our specific options for individual and collective life but also the societal and epistemological paradigm that has shaped the current horizon of possibilities within which we fashion our options, the horizon within which certain options are possible while others are excluded or even unimaginable” (Santos, 2013: 20).
The second methodology is the promotion of critical self-reflexivity. Whilst strong question-posing can enable students to deconstruct the geopolitics of colonial logic and related oppressive structures, self-reflexivity more likely enables individuals to become aware of their internalisation of that logic and their participation in those structures (Dennis, 2018: 195). Further, through critical self-reflexivity students may self-reveal and thus recognise the contingency of their deeper-seated assumptions; and thereby begin to recognise, challenge and diverge from the colonial imaginary and habitus, creating possibilities for the re/emergence of new, alternative or previously disregarded ways of knowing and being.
I present these methodologies to demonstrate how concerned pedagogues can work to intervene on coloniality. Clearly, however, the decolonial pedagogical path is tortuous. Indeed, de/coloniality is itself an epistemically and politically controversial topic. Furthermore, research suggests that many teachers are anxious about teaching controversial issues (Miller-Lane et al, 2006; Geller, 2020). This is a problem which needs addressing if decolonial pedagogies are to have any significant impact. However, in the following critique I demonstrate how, unfortunately, the DfE’s Guidance may function to exacerbate these anxieties, risking inhibiting decolonial pedagogies and perpetuating the logic of coloniality.
5. A decolonial critique of the DfE’s Guidance
In his introduction to the Guidance, Secretary of State, Rt Hon Nadhim Zahawi MP (DfE, 2022), states that teaching about controversial political issues “is an important way in which schools support pupils to become active citizens who can form their own views, whilst having an understanding and respect for legitimate differences of opinion [all emphasis added].” Here (see italicised text) there is an implied emphasis on schools’ and teachers’ responsibility to promote ‘fundamental British values’ (DfE, 2014); those being: democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs. Specifically, the first, third and fourth. Hence, one might extrapolate that the DfE’s overarching rationale for the teaching of controversial political issues somewhat accords with the political criterion. That is, the DfE sees the value of teaching controversial political issues to be teleological; that those being taught, in the prescribed way, should not in the slightest way contravene or, rather, should result in the reproduction of public values qua ‘fundamental British values’. Moreover, to this end, it seems that the Guidance prescribes, as first-order, exclusive partiality, at least with respect to the teaching of all themes related to ‘fundamental British values’. Indeed, this interpretation is supported by the Guidance’s repeated emphasis on the need for educational reinforcement of “basic shared principles, such as tolerance and opposition to discrimination and prejudice”, as well as the Secretary of State’s closing introductory statement to schools and teachers that they should “continue to reinforce important shared principles that underpin our society, whether that be upholding democratic rights or more generally promoting respect and tolerance.” On this reading, the Guidance’s response to the contemporary culture war amounts to an attempt to reify through schooling ‘fundamental British values’ by emphasising to schools and teachers, and encouraging them to embed within their methodologies, their responsibility to protect them.
5.1 Perpetuating the colonial imaginary
Decolonially speaking, prima facie this is not necessarily problematic. Certainly, the four ‘fundamental British values’ presented above are entirely consistent with the decolonial worldview. Indeed, arguably “[o]nly when a [multicultural] nation-state is unified around a set of democratic values” are its citizens properly afforded “freedom, justice, and peace” (Banks et al, 2005: 7). However, the framing of ‘fundamental British values’ during their conception was clearly deeply colonial and a legacy of this remains which, from a decolonial perspective, is unshakably problematic for the DfE’s Guidance.
That is, during his appeal for their legal introduction, in 2014, the then UK Prime Minister, David Cameron (2014) wrote in the Mail on Sunday that British values (subsequently entitled ‘fundamental British values’) are
“as British as the Union Flag, as football, as fish and chips. Of course, people will say that these values are vital to other people in other countries. And, of course, they’re right. But what sets Britain apart are the traditions and history that anchors them and allows them to continue to flourish and develop.”
The issue here lies with the implication that ‘fundamental British values’ are deeply rooted in British history (Chantiluke et al, 2018: 292). Aligning these values with British history and tradition is “to gloss over Britain’s role in imperialism, colonialism and the slave trade, whose barbarous genocides have served to institute the colonial hierarchies that continue to oppress communities across the world” (Chantiluke et al, 2018: 293). In short, this framing of ‘fundamental British values’ constitutes a disavowal of the history and legacy of colonialism; the pretension that Britain and the world has long since moved on. Furthermore, that, together with their ‘British’ insignia, perpetuates a colonial logic which functions to apotheosize ‘Britishness’ whilst simultaneously subalternizing non-‘British’ peoples, cultures and normativities. Accordingly, the further displaced people are from the ‘British’ ideal, the further they are from civilization; the closer they are to primitivism.
It is worth noting too that, by framing politics secularly the Guidance appears to condone partiality on issues pertaining to religious faith when it states that
“[s]chools designated with a religious character are free to teach according to the tenets of their faith. We do not consider principles or views in line with these tenets to be covered by statutory requirements on political impartiality.”
Whilst in contemporary secularised Britain the relationship between politics and religion may be obscure, historically this was not the case. Indeed religion, specifically Christianity, was a manifest feature of colonial Britain and Europe; and, as demonstrated above, played a significant role in establishing the logic of contemporary coloniality. Arguably, therefore, by segregating politics from religion, the Guidance places Christian colonialism as historically and normatively detached from present-day politics and mainstream onto-epistemologies. Where this becomes a problem for the Guidance is that through the DfE’s employment of the political criterion and the Guidance’s concomitant advocation of exclusive partiality with respect to all things pertaining to ‘fundamental British values’, the Guidance exacerbates an already deeply colonial hidden curriculum. Since teachers already have a legal duty to promote these values, one might contend that this conclusion is inevitable— that this is a criticism against the duty rather than the Guidance. However, the Guidance could have placed less emphasis on ‘fundamental British values’ or, additionally, it could have addressed the charge that their title perpetuates coloniality. Since it does neither, the Guidance not only neglects to address coloniality but could compound it by inhibiting decolonial pedagogies; and since it treats issues of religious faith as apolitical, there is a greater potentiality of this happening in schools designated with a religious character.
5.2 Inhibiting decolonial pedagogies
Educationally, the reification of coloniality through the promotion of ‘fundamental British values’ places decoloniality, both as a topic and worldview, as deeply epistemically and politically controversial. This is demonstrated in the Guidance when it states that “[f]or more recent historical events including those which are particularly contentious and disputed, political issues may be presented to pupils. This includes many topics relating to empire and imperialism”. However, since, as I have stated, decoloniality is not inconsistent with ‘fundamental British values’ as such, teachers are not prohibited (by the political criterion)from teaching, as controversial, issues pertaining to decoloniality. Indeed, when teachers explore controversial political issues that are unrelated to ‘fundamental British values’, the Guidance clearly prescribes neutral impartiality, as demonstrated in the following:
“As a general principle, they [teachers] should avoid expressing their own personal political views to pupils unless they are confident this will not amount to promoting that view to pupils. Where staff do share their personal political views, they should ensure that this is not presented as fact and note that there are opposing views which pupils may wish to consider.”
Teachers are thus not prohibited from employing decolonial pedagogies, nor their associated methodologies, such as strong questioning and promoting self-reflexivity. Yet, the Guidance potentially creates for educators a psychological tension, pressurising decoloniality-sympathising pedagogues into becoming “docile bodies” (Foucault in Gutting, 2005: 80)— servants to the powers of the state; sustainers of the abyssal line. This tension resides not in a conflict between decoloniality and teachers’ responsibility to promote ‘fundamental British values’ in theory. For, as we have seen, in theory they are consistent. Rather, the tension resides in a conflict between their respective associated imaginaries. For many teachers this conflict is likely palpable. Indeed, in their research into how teachers respond to their responsibility to promote ‘fundamental British values’, Vincent (2019: 24) found “that the naming of the values as ‘British’ was perceived as potentially problematic by the majority of teachers” and that schools often package them as “universal or school values”. Hence the palpability of this conflict may be enough to dissuade teachers from employing decolonial pedagogies with any impactful consistency. Making this more probable, and in fashion with the Education Committee’s report which preceded it, the Guidance (DfE, 2022: Scenario I) explicitly refers to and in so doing implicitly denounces Black Lives Matter, an outwardly decolonial campaign group. By employing the aforementioned decolonial methodologies, pedagogues can discursively expose and subsequently enable their students to challenge and diverge from the colonial imaginary, yet the Guidance makes this already difficult task even more precarious. Hence, on a practical level, it is likely that the Guidance inhibits decolonial pedagogies.
5.3 Entrenching the culture war
From a decolonial perspective, advocating for teachers to act with committed impartiality would be a more suited educational response to the contemporary culture war. Democracy and tolerance are two of the public values that the Guidance seeks to protect. Whilst the Guidance may reduce the odds of teachers going rogue when teaching controversial political issues, its prescribed modes of im/partiality— that is, exclusive partiality with respect to all issues pertaining to public values, and neutral impartiality on all others— fail to cultivate in students the cognitive and social skills and virtues required within a tolerant liberal democracy. As demonstrated previously, neutral impartiality creates socially sanitised education environments which can inhibit students from engaging with each other in any authentically critical way. Further, neutral approaches run the likely risk of favouring existing power structures. Indeed, it is one thing for teachers to denigrate racism when they see it— as the Guidance prescribes— and a much more powerful thing to discursively demonstrate anti-racism as a part of one’s ontology, the latter of which is made difficult by means of neutral impartiality since it encourages teachers’ to neuter their identities. Hence, on a civic level, committed impartiality better empowers students as critical democratic “citizens-in-training” (Kelly, 1986: 133), cultivating social environments wherein agonistic rather than antagonistic interactions with difference are normative. In failing to prescribe a mode of im/partiality capable of such effects, the Guidance ironically risks reifying the culture war it seeks to address by perpetuating the antagonism of contemporary politics.
6. Conclusions, limitations and recommendations
Hence, taking into account its pretext and perceived intention to reify ‘fundamental British values’, the Guidance appears to have been devised as a response to a culture war which, from the perspective of the UK Government, is challenging the identity and accepted history of traditionalist Britain. From this decolonial perspective, the Guidance constitutes less a part of a peace process and more a part of an armoury. In this vein, I have argued, it likely perpetuates a colonial imaginary by prescribing, as first-order, exclusive partiality in relation to the teaching of anything pertaining to public values; and, as second-order, neutral impartiality on the teaching of all other controversial political issues. Furthermore, by doing so the Guidance inhibits decolonial pedagogies by exacerbating educators’ anxieties surrounding the teaching of controversial issues and, arguably, could function to normalise the antagonism which has come to define contemporary global politics.
Nonetheless, suspending the decolonial lens, it is plain to see that the Guidance has its positives. For instance, repeatedly it demands that teachers address racist and discriminatory views and attitudes. Whilst this does not amount to the sort of “epistemological break” (Santos, 2013: ix) which decoloniality demands, it does signify a positive step towards addressing racial injustice. Hence, this essay recommends that future such guidance should highlight and prioritise addressing epistemic racism over and above performative or attitudinal racism, so that racial injustice can be tackled at its cognitive roots. This, I have argued, would be made easier if educators, when teaching about controversial issues, were encouraged to adopt a mode of impartiality more consistent with committed impartiality.
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Megapedagogy 