Toby Young and the phony war on Shakespeare

Toby Young – soon to be Lord Young, and a UK legislator for life thanks to his recent peerage, donated by Kemi Badenoch – is worried about the future of English education in this country.

On Monday, he posted about an all-new (and yet strangely familiar) attack on how English is taught in schools from Labour’s education secretary Bridget Phillipson. “According to Bridget Phillipson, Shakespeare is ‘outdated’,” he posted. “She’s devising a new ‘decolonised’, ‘anti-racist’ curriculum which she’s going to force all schools to teach in the name of ‘diversity’.”

Young, as the founder of a free school himself, will be well aware that reading comprehension is a vital component of GCSE English. Students by this stage should be not only able to read a text, but also to “understand and critically evaluate” it. And so it seems that Toby Young’s own education has badly let him down, as his post contains multiple foundational errors.

It is at least correct that Phillipson has commissioned a review of the English curriculum and that its terms of reference do indeed use the dreaded word “diversity”, as accurately reported in write-ups in the Daily Mail and the Telegraph. But at no point do either the terms of reference nor the newspaper’s reporting of them ever call Shakespeare “outdated” – instead suggesting that the current framework of how English is taught may be outdated in some elements.

In reality, Phillipson in November said the absolute opposite – publicly rejecting a teacher’s call to strip back Shakespeare from the curriculum and committing to teach it in the future. “Mark my words: Shakespeare is staying put,” she told the Sun. “He is one of our most celebrated writers and his works will proudly remain a fixture in our classrooms for every child to study.”

GCSE students are also taught that it is essential to appraise who is saying a particular thing, and the context in which they say it – another basic task expected of all school-age teenagers at which Toby Young has failed. This time, it’s his suggestion that Phillipson is devising an “anti-racist” curriculum – for which he used direct quotes.

Phillipson, however, did not use the phrase and neither did her department’s review. Instead, it was included in a submission to the review from NASUWT, one of several teachers’ unions. Two failures of attribution in such a short time speaks of terrible standards of scholarship.

Clearly, Toby Young is right to be worried about education – but it’s his own that should be causing him concern before he worries too much about anyone else’s.