School-branded holographic litter trays

'Britain's strictest teacher' and her school's ban on 'prayer rituals' are irresistible to newspaper columnists who want to do a little bit of Islamophobia as a treat.

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Previously: Cat shit 22
A false story about a student "identifying as a cat" is being weaponised by publications that have long since stopped identifying as journalistic enterprises.

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When a news story involves Katharine Birbalsingh, it has become practically a legal requirement for her to be introduced with the sobriquet ‘Britain’s strictest teacher’. Was there some National Bollocking Championship in which she triumphed? Or did Ofsted study the sternness of every senior school leader in the nation and conclude that she’s the steeliest? Nope. In 2016, two years after the Michaela School, which Birbalsingh leads, was founded, The Times asked in a headline Is this the strictest teacher in Britain? Previous profiles had focused on the strictness of the school but the headline-hungry head made the new nickname an intrinsic part of her brand.

Birbalsingh’s latest appearance in the news is catnip to the columnists: Her ban on ‘prayer rituals’ at the school — backed by the governors — has prompted a legal challenge from a Muslim student, and gives hacks an (un)healthy stack of issues to mither over. They can talk about school standards, religious freedom, the blasted young, the ‘woke’ left (inevitably), and, most crucially, indulge in the specific kind of Islamophobic scaremongering that British newspapers have made one of the nation’s most reliable exports.

The distinction between a prayer ban and a ban on prayer rituals is important and one that’s been ignored by a lot of the stories supporting Birbalsingh and the school. The act of prayer for Christians does not have to be visual but for Muslims, there is a visual ritual to their prayers and it’s that which is banned a Michaela. And while Birbalsingh has made much play of describing the school as ‘secular’, pupils sing one of three songs every day — ‘God Save the King’, ‘Jerusalem’, and ‘I Vow to Thee, My Country’.

It’s stating the obvious and signposted by the first word of its title that ‘God Save the King’ is not a secular anthem. ‘Jerusalem’ is William Blake’s ‘And did those feet in ancient time’, a poem about a young Jesus — accompanied by Joseph of Arimathea — travelling around the land that is now England and visiting Glastonbury, set to music by Sir Hubert Parry and orchestrated by Sir Edward Elgar. And, ‘I Vow To Thee…’ is built around a parallel between patriotism in the early realm and loyalty to God.

As it goes, I think that schooling should be secular but, while there’s widespread non-compliance with the rules since Ofsted stopped monitoring it in 2004, state schools are still legally required to engage pupils in a “daily act of collective worship” so there is really no such thing as a truly secular school in England and Wales.

Camilla Long’s column in The Sunday Times makes an argument that’s superficially the same as mine — We need to ban prayer in all schools, not just in Birbalsingh’s bastion — but its content could not be more different. She paints a cartoonish picture of how schools work:

Our schools are filled with chaos. There are screens everywhere; dress-up days a trivialising faff, are standard. Teachers, often very young now, fail to project authority. 

One school in Wales has written to parents saying it will not be providing “litter trays” for children who “identify as cats”. What kind of education system even gets involved in that?

I now see Birbalsingh as one of the few people pushing back against such minority posturing. Her method is to erase the individual and, broadly, it works. She bans phones and says there are “no excuses”. You cannot say you are running a secular school and then suddenly you aren’t, she argues. So she is, and now she’s being sued.

If Long was a student submitting her column as persuasive writing coursework, she’d receive a failing grade. The first paragraph is a series of evidence-free statements (“… filled with chaos… screens everywhere… trivialising faff…”) topped off with a ludicrous statement (“Teachers, often very young now…”) which prompts you to ask, “Could it be that you are simply getting older, Camilla? Do you feel the same way about all those suspiciously fresh-faced policemen?”

While the opening is hilarious, the next part deserves only a mirthless laugh. I wrote about the right-wing press trafficking the myth of children identifying as cats last year — it comes from a twisting of the grim fact that some schools in the US have supplies of cat litter in case of a lockdown caused by an active shooter — and noted then that it would harden into an accepted ‘truth’ over time.

The school in Wales wrote a letter to assure parents that it hadn’t provided ‘litter trays for children who identify as cats’ because the press had claimed it had after acting as megaphones for social media rumours. Long and her editors either know they’re repeating a lie or simply don’t care as it serves their argument. On another Sunday, if she were pantomiming that familiar free speech warrior stuff, Long mightn’t advocate for “[erasing] the individual” so enthusiastically.

The rest of the piece features Long honking on the dog whistle as hard as she can. It’s the work of a couple of sentences to make the legal case a conspiracy…

… Hmmm, who is really pushing this? Not the pupil who wanted to pray: a child would never write that not being allowed to pray in breaktime can “fundamentally change” how they feel “about being a Muslim in this country”. That is lawyer/politician-speak. 

… and introduce a rhetoric-by-numbers rant about ‘lefties’:

Perhaps the words were suggested by the claimant’s left-leaning lawyer, who works at Cherie Blair’s Matrix Chambers. The prayer ban is a dream case for the left: minorities, victimhood, a single person wanting to bend the world to their view.

It’s another dose of irony from a woman who begins the same column by explaining that seeing primary school pupils in hijabs “makes [her] so angry [she] cannot look at them”. And isn’t “a single person wanting to bend the world to their view” a rather neat definition of a newspaper columnist?

Over at The Daily Telegraph, the former Chief of Staff to Theresa May, current Tory prospective parliamentary candidate, and ’Trojan Horse’ scandal-pushing Policy Exchange ghoul, Nick Timothy takes advantage of the story to play the old (s)hits:

Multiculturalism is becoming a Trojan horse for Islamist domination 
The Michaela scandal is another clash between this hostile ideology and British values

… Michaela, founded by Katharine Birbalsingh, is loathed by many on the Left, who despise its methods and resent its success. But the news that a pupil is suing the school over restrictions on ritual prayer has shocked many on the Right. “How could this happen?” ask immigration liberals and advocates of multiculturalism, with a naivety that is difficult to believe.

The answer is plain. In many respects, and compared to other countries, Britain has succeeded in managing its newly multiracial identity. But in other obvious and very visible ways, it is failing. There is widespread self-segregation along ethnic and religious lines in British towns and cities. In many schools, segregation is more pronounced than in the communities they serve. 

Meanwhile, backed by ideological academics and lawyers, and encouraged or appeased by politicians and public bodies, activists peddling grievance harry individuals and organisations to win favour, special 
treatment and institutional power. 

Yes, the paper actually put ‘Trojan horse’ in the headline; less dog whistle and more foghorn. As usual with a Nick Timothy column, there are more giant strawmen than a craft morning on Summerisle — “the Left [despise Michaela for] its methods and resent its success” rather than disliking Birbalsingh’s endless posturing and a school culture that believes treating pupils more like inmates is justified by results; “‘How could this happen? ask immigration liberals and advocates of multiculturalism,” who oddly sound like Timothy putting on a silly voice.

The column is also home to the columnist’s familiar irregular use of “ideological”. He, his friends, his political allies, and whatever think tank is paying him at the current time are principled, while his enemies/anyone to the left of Mussolini is “ideological”. Similarly, Timothy and the Telegraph only deal in reasonable complaints while those bastard lefties never have anything but grievances.

Timothy, in common with all the columnists and reporters whose output I’m looking at today, outlines the case as put forward by the school:

At Michaela, when the playground prayers began, more aggressive behaviour followed. A girl was pressured to wear a hijab. Another left the choir because she was told music was haram. Others were pressured to pray in public. 

I’m not in a position to disprove these claims in this edition but, conversely, the columnists don’t provide evidence for them. The Times, Telegraph, and columnists like Timothy are inclined to see Islamist conspiracies wherever they turn and are rarely willing to offer any space for the other side of the argument.

When Timothy argues…

Extremists are turning our schools – and other public institutions – into a battleground. But instead of confronting them, the authorities are appeasing and encouraging them. 

… I think not only of extreme elements in Muslim communities but also the extremists employed at think tanks like Policy Exchange and nestled comfortably in the comment sections of national newspapers who are definitely appeased and encouraged by the government and other authorities.

The paranoid style in Timothy’s column is inevitably present in other contributions on the issue from Telegraph columnists — with the paper taking its usual approach of firing a burst of rhetorical buckshot. Isabel Oakeshott rages that…

Day in, day out, a cabal of Left-leaning academics, woke warriors and religious zealots do everything in their power to bring her down and reduce Michaela to the standard state of dismal mediocrity that characterises so many of our state schools.

… while the paper uses Fraser Nelson’s column to turn the dial even further, with a headline framing the court case as…

… a battle for the future of Britain

Nelson describes the situation at the school in almost identical language to Timothy. There is no space for questioning the framing established by Birbalsingh because her politics are in line with those of the Telegraph and The Spectator. It’s also worth remembering that far more unlikely claims she made last year were reported without query or pushback:

Katharine Birbalsingh, founder of the Michaela School in west London, said she was aware of a child at one school who identified as a gay male hologram - and at least one school where a group of students identified as cats. The headteacher, who said she has no pupils identifying as animals at her own school, said it is a 'societal problem' where teachers and parents have allowed children to lead the way. 

There are hundreds of schools in the country where Muslim students can pray and still play a full part in the wider school community. The argument being made by some commenters and commentators that Muslim pupils can attend faith schools if they want to pray during school hours is a line for segregation that contradicts their other points. Fraser Nelson complains in his column:

One piece of official advice says schools must ensure they are “enabling Muslim pupils to pray at prescribed times”. Another says schools are not “required to provide any pupil with a physical space, such as a prayer room”. Which is it?

There’s not really a contradiction there but you remember a key part of the way right-wing papers and columnists spin up this kind of controversy is pretending that simple things are, in fact, very complicated. For all the papers’ faux shock at the use of legal aid to fund the court case, it’s quite clear why there is a case in the first place — a ban on prayer in the playground is a de facto ban on Muslim prayer and, in a school with a 50% Muslim student body, appears discriminatory and is subject to challenge.

The elephant in the room is screaming that columnists are so energised by this issue because it involves Muslim pupils and offers the chance to dust off all those ‘Islamist conspiracy’ takes they’ve been nurturing for years.

Birbalsingh argues that she’s an equal opportunist when it comes to religious objections — brushing aside Jehovah’s Witness families objecting to Macbeth due to the presence of witches, Christians’ complaints about Sunday revision sessions, and Hindus asking that plates in the dining hall don’t touch eggs. She — and her defenders — are being disingenuous. Those ‘compromises’ are not the same as restricting someone’s ability to practice their faith.

While ‘Britain’s strictest headteacher’™ says she would rather the school had not been named publicly in the case — and she and the school did try to avoid that — now it has, she’s following her usual script with the aid of her allies in the press: ‘The woke lefties are out to get me!’ Her attempt to “erase the individual” has failed this time and you’d think newspapers who can never get enough of boasting about their love of free speech would be in favour of the debate. Instead, they’ll paint ‘Britain’s strictest headteacher’™ as a victim and a teenage pupil as a villain.

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