Politicians underestimate young people's critical faculties

 Peter Black draws attention to an appalling attempt by a Tory MP to skew the political climate of English education. One hopes this proves to be an isolated example of extreme prejudice, like the call in the 1960s for all civil servants who administered the transition to membership of the European Common Market to be tried as traitors, and will be ignored. However, under Johnson, who more and more resembles Mussolini as the days go by, one cannot be sure.

Apart from seeing a quite objective description of "white privilege" as an extremist view, Gullis also displays an exaggerated belief in the ability of teachers to indoctrinate their pupils. With rare exceptions, ones world view, including any political views, is formed at home and hearth. I recall that at the grammar school I attended, we had a pretty good idea of the leanings of those masters who were politically driven and were not particularly influenced by them. The senior history master was so conservative that he was part of the Wimbledon establishment, but he did not spawn generations of anti-Semites. Nor did the senior German master create loads of young Marxists, even though we knew he had communist views. (Perhaps he did try to groom me by lending me a Telefunken cast recording of Dreigroschenoper, but the only permanent result of that was a partiality to the word-setting of Kurt Weill.) The English master made clear his visceral loathing of Alexander Pope (one of the set texts in my sixth form years) as a person but, though he may not rank as one of the greats, Sunday's BBC4 presentation notwithstanding, Pope is still one of my favourite poets.

What has troubled me more over the years is what is not taught. I believe Margaret Thatcher first as education minister and later as prime minister attempted to influence the history curriculum to reverse the trend to more social history and to revert to the traditional kings and queens, dates and battles. In those pre-devolution days, that would have affected the teaching in Wales as well as England. Certainly, the debate leading up to the 2016 referendum betrayed a general ignorance of twentieth century history.  If my memory is at fault, and if the Welsh education curriculum is now more liberal, I am ready to be corrected.