The cancel culture and racist, and ableist teachers

[tim]

Philip Pullman and others of the literary great and good have been getting worked up by a book by a teacher called Kate Clanchy who in the nicest liberal way makes disparaging remarks about her students.

The book may now be re-edited to remove the most egregious. Personally, I think the book highlights a very real problem and perhaps it is the author who needs to be, in the most liberal manner re-educated and the book used as an example of one of the things that is wrong with British education, perhaps retitled "Some of the Teachers we Employ".

As a teacher, in a very multinational context, I do try to be self-critical and monitor, my own attitudes, although plenty of unconscious biases must seep through.
Kate Clanchy book may be updated to remove racial stereotypes after criticism

Here's an extract from the Guardian article:

In particular, readers criticised the inclusion of racial stereotypes such as “almond-shaped eyes” and “chocolate-coloured skin”, and references to one student as “African Jonathon” and another being “so small and square and Afghan with his big nose and premature moustache”.

 

[SpookyFrank]

If she's written a book in which she's referred to specific kids in ways that could allow them to be personally identified then that should be enough to get her barred by the TRA, even disregarding the dodgy racial stuff.

 

[Santino]

I thought Pullman and other authors were actually defending the book against uppity non-verified twitterers who probably haven't even got a publisher.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

Weird that it's taken 2 years for it to be highlighted, although it sounds like the author getting defensive on Twitter was the catalyst. Her quotes about stuff being made up are a bit weird too - she wrote it, surely she can recognise her own words?

 

[NoXion]

Since the article doesn't actually quote the supposedly racist passages in question, I can't tell if this "controversy" has any real merit, or whether it's just the result of yet another colicky outburst from the baby radlibs on Twitter.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

Since the article doesn't actually quote the supposedly racist passages in question, I can't tell if this "controversy" has any real merit, or whether it's just the result of yet another colicky outburst from the baby radlibs on Twitter.

There are more examples in the Goodreads reviews if you're interested, aside from what is in the OP.

 

[cantsin]

Since the article doesn't actually quote the supposedly racist passages in question, I can't tell if this "controversy" has any real merit, or whether it's just the result of yet another colicky outburst from the baby radlibs on Twitter.

the author uses lots of dodgy, stereo typical / borderline racist / ableist stuff, get's arrogant and arsey on twitter when called out for it, actually claiming quotes from her own books are made up, alongiside her literary big wig defenders rolling up to start whingeing about cancel culture.......and your wondering about ' colicky' ' radlibs' ?

 

[Brainaddict]

It's a strange book to have got published without some editing and shows a publishing industry very much not understanding the times as well as being grossly insensitive. You could see it as 'just another twitter storm', but the reality is the publishing industry published offensive things for decades and nobody could shout back. Now they can - ethnic minorities, autistic people, everyone is on twitter. It's not that people have just started getting upset at being treated as exotic oddities. It's that the technology now allows them a voice going back in the other direction. Here's an autistic author responding to her writing on autistic pupils:

 

[Athos]

Whilst I have qualms about a teacher using their pupils as material, the issue of others identifying particular kids, and the impact on kids of reading a trusted person's comments about them, I'm not sure what's wrong with the content of what she says about the autistic kids. It seems a fairly balanced (if unvarnished), recording the 'good' and the 'bad' of those particular kids (and accepting that neurotypical people are similar in that regard), often in warm terms.

 

[Pickman's model]

It's a strange book to have got published without some editing and shows a publishing industry very much not understanding the times as well as being grossly insensitive.

Loads of books get published without the editing they merit

 

[maomao]

Phil Beadle is a teacher who writes books for teachers with jokes about autistic kids in them because he's so cool and edgy. I've been meaning to call him a cunt on Twitter but that would mean going on Twitter.

 

[baldrick]

Phil Beadle is a teacher who writes books for teachers with jokes about autistic kids in them because he's so cool and edgy. I've been meaning to call him a cunt on Twitter but that would mean going on Twitter.

So many people on edutwitter are grifters. I find a lot of it unedifying tbh but I need to use it for work. Had an enlightening conversation with someone at work about the number of education consultants who have been sacked from schools....

 

[Storm Fox]

Whilst I have qualms about a teacher using their pupils as material, the issue of others identifying particular kids, and the impact on kids of reading a trusted person's comments about them, I'm not sure what's wrong with the content of what she says about the autistic kids. It seems fairly balanced, recording the 'good' and the 'bad' (and accepting that neurotypical people are similar in that regard), often in warm terms.

This is part of what Dara highlighted


She thinks it funny that after setting them a really difficult piece work. (Whether to trip them up and hope they fail, or to challenge them, I cannot tell) but they are still doing this successfully 90 minutes later then criticizing them being sarcastic, but that's how I read it.
It probably could be interpreted another way or she's not that great at writing.

Personally I don't think she should be cancelled, and she seems to have realised she is rather insensitive.
Possibly she should have training about ASD pupils not and to see them as 'other' has the passages highlighted by Dara seem to show.

 

[prunus]

This is part of what Dara highlighted
View attachment 285812

She thinks it funny that after setting them a really difficult piece work. (Whether to trip them up and hope they fail, or to challenge them, I cannot tell) but they are still doing this successfully 90 minutes later then criticizing them being sarcastic, but that's how I read it.
It probably could be interpreted another way or she's not that great at writing.

Personally I don't think she should be cancelled, and she seems to have realised she is rather insensitive.
Possibly she should have training about ASD pupils not and to see them as 'other' has the passages highlighted by Dara seem to show.

I read this (and I read all the highlighted passages on that Twitter thread) very differently to you (and to the people on the thread I think). None of it seems sarcastic or mocking to me - it seems affectionate and recognising of the fact that people are not all the same, and some people are so different that they may never truly understand each other, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be mutually respectful of and have admiration for each other. The writing also seems to me to implicitly acknowledge that the writer is (or course also) only human, with failings, and trying to do the best they can without all the answers.

I don’t see that she is saying she thinks anything in the passage you quote is funny, and I don’t read any sarcasm in her response, only a kind of delighted awe at what humans are capable of (such as that one might experience when eg watching/listening to a virtuoso musician play) and a reminder as it were that such capability might arise in what one might otherwise consider to be unlikely places.

 

[Athos]

This is part of what Dara highlighted
View attachment 285812

She thinks it funny that after setting them a really difficult piece work. (Whether to trip them up and hope they fail, or to challenge them, I cannot tell) but they are still doing this successfully 90 minutes later then criticizing them being sarcastic, but that's how I read it.
It probably could be interpreted another way or she's not that great at writing.

Personally I don't think she should be cancelled, and she seems to have realised she is rather insensitive.
Possibly she should have training about ASD pupils not and to see them as 'other' has the passages highlighted by Dara seem to show.

I didn't take it as a piss take (or get the impression she was setting them up to fail); more a mixture of admiration and bemusement; at the fact that could produce 100 couplets, and that they would do so unquestioningly.

I don't really get the point about seeing them as 'other'; they are clearly extreme outliers (in some positive and some less positive ways). It would seem odd to have a memoir that doesn't record such experiences.

Over all, I actually thought what she said about these kids was affectionate, but clearly some people have been upset what she said, so maybe some sensitivity training might help.

 

[Edie]

I don’t think challenging someone on what they write is cancelling them, whatever the hell that means. If you write shit about autistic young women being ‘hard to identify as girls’ or that they come from ‘ASD land’ then expect to have some come back. It’s fucking crass.

 

[Edie]

In fact if that was my autistic kid she was teaching and talking about I’d want a word with her. It’s 2021 ffs, she needs to step up.

 

[Athos]

In fact if that was my autistic kid she was teaching and talking about I’d want a word with her. It’s 2021 ffs, she needs to step up.

What, specifically, did you find untoward in what she wrote?

 

[Edie]

What, specifically, did you find untoward in what she wrote?

The bits I quoted, which is the only part of the book I’ve seen. They are thoughtless. Clumsy. Ignorant. Unaware of how they come across.

 

[Edie]

If you wouldn’t say that to a young person or their parents face then shut your loud literary mouth. Have some skill, some understanding, some nuance, some kindness.

 

[Athos]

The bits I quoted, which is the only part of the book I’ve seen. They are thoughtless. Clumsy. Ignorant. Unaware of how they come across.

I'm not sure I read them the same way as you.

On the 'girls' point, I interpreted it a saying that they don't affect stereotypical traits in the way that most of their peer group do (whether knowingly or not); that doesn't seem an unreasonable observation when providing a 'pen portrait'. And we mustn't forget they they don't identify themselves as girls.

On the 'ASD land' point, I interpreted that as a comment on their condition making them outsiders at least as much as can happen by English not being a first language, but that it's not recognised/recorded in the same way.

Maybe I'm being unduly kind in my interpretation, but that's coloured by the fact that, overall, the piece seemed warm.

Though I do agree that it's silly to suggest that criticism is 'cancelling'.

 

[Storm Fox]

Thanks prunus and Athos for your interpretation , as I said I'm not too sure on what she meant, perhaps, as suggested up thread a good editor would have helped to try and make her points clearer.
For me, it's the 'This is fun' in this passage that makes the intent of the paragraph less clear, it makes it come over as 'Aren't these ASD kids odd' Perhaps it could have been rephrased as 'An interesting observation' and then go on to explain why it's interesting.

 

[Edie]

I'm not sure I read them the same way as you.

On the 'girls' point, I interpreted it a saying that they don't affect stereotypical traits in the way that most of their peer group do (whether knowingly or not); that doesn't seem an unreasonable observation when providing a 'pen portrait'. And we mustn't forget they they don't identify themselves as girls.

On the 'ASD land' point, I interpreted that as a comment on their condition making them outsiders at least as much as can happen by English not being a first language, but that it's not recognised/recorded in the same way.

Maybe I'm being unduly kind in my interpretation, but that's coloured by the fact that, overall, the piece seemed warm.

Though I do agree that it's silly to suggest that criticism is 'cancelling'.

Would you read that as warm if one of those girls was your daughter? It’s othering, at best. Being human includes people who are autistic, they are not from ‘another land’.

 

[maomao]

She sounds like my mum. Except that my mum is almost certainly autistic. She couldn't understand why I thought she was being offensive for saying that Meghan Markle was letting black people down by having white hair.

The stuff on the kids races and appearances (I'm on my phone, can't be arsed to quote, it's on Twitter) was the same mix of warm and appreciative while being unbelievably patronising and rude. I found it worse than the autistic stuff tbh.

 

[Athos]

Would you read that as warm if one of those girls was your daughter? It’s othering, at best. Being human includes people who are autistic, they are not from ‘another land’.

If it was my kid, my issues would be less with the content (which is largely positive), and more with the issues I flagged at the outset:

"... I have qualms about a teacher using their pupils as material, the issue of others identifying particular kids, and the impact on kids of reading a trusted person's comments about them..."

Being from 'another land' doesn't make someone not human either, but it can make them an outsider - which I think it's the point she was making.

And I don't think recognising someone is an outlier - where its relevant, like here where it poses different issues for a teacher - is negative 'othering' per se.

I think it would've been better if she was a more able writer, and expressed herself more clearly.

 

[Athos]

She sounds like my mum. Except that my mum is almost certainly autistic. She couldn't understand why I thought she was being offensive for saying that Meghan Markle was letting black people down by having white hair.

The stuff on the kids races and appearances (I'm on my phone, can't be arsed to quote, it's on Twitter) was the same mix of warm and appreciative while being unbelievably patronising and rude. I found it worse than the autistic stuff tbh.

I agree that the race stuff seemed more odd. Particularly if, as I suspect, she didn't draw attention to the 'default' white kids' stereotypical features.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

People can definitely be nice and generous while also being patronising and stereotypical. And yes if you're going to express this publicly let alone write a frickin book you should expect to get pulled up on it.

 

[Storm Fox]

I've re-read Dara's post and it's just made me more annoyed.




So the two girls have found a way to express themselves and the poem, to me, seems to be literally about how they feel about the world and the teacher, a person of authority, shuts the kids down.
Maybe it's her bad writing, and she does need to get on and teach the rest of the class, but surely she should have explained that to the girls and if they wanted more time to discuss it talk to her after class.

 

[DJWrongspeed]

Given this is a thread about education your thread title has faulty grammar.
Plus I couldn't work out what it was about exactly........

 

[Pickman's model]

Given this is a thread about education your thread title has faulty grammar.
Plus I couldn't work out what it was about exactly........

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