British children taught patriotism is wrong

Three quarters of British teachers believe it is their duty to warn their students about the dangers of patriotism, according to a survey conducted by London University’s Institute of Education.

British columnist Melanie Phillips wrote on this trend last week:

[O]n the grounds that love for your country is wrong, many teachers have long stopped passing on to children the knowledge they need if they are to admire and identify with Britain. … Perverse though this may seem, it is not actually a surprise. It is merely the latest stage in the deconstruction of education that has been going on for the past three decades—and at the heart of which lies the teaching of history.

Phillips described how this battle against history has been fought:

Back in the ’80s and ’90s, history teaching was at the center of a tremendous battle over British national identity. In one camp were those who believed that it meant transmitting to pupils the story of this nation and its institutions; in the other camp were those who said that to do so was racist. That was because they subscribed to the view that Britain was itself intrinsically racist: that it had a history of colonial exploitation and that a new society had to be created that would treat the culture of every incomer as equal to the culture of the indigenous British.More fundamentally even than that, they believed the very idea of a nation with a distinct identity at all was racist. According to their reasoning, the nation led to nationalism, and nationalism led to prejudice and war. So destroying national identity would eradicate all such horrors and create the brotherhood of man on Earth.

This utopian dream is ridiculous, explained Phillips. “[W]ithout patriotism, a society starts to die. If the core purpose of education is to transmit a culture down through the generations, it is not patriotism that is a menace to this country, but the teachers whose real target is Britain’s identity itself.”

Multiculturalism in Britain has led to a valueless society. It is no wonder so many British Muslims turn radical—the British school system itself teaches them to be ashamed of British society. For more information on the importance of history, see our article “The Inspiring History Britain Should Never Forget.”