A TEACHER AND PHILOSOPHICAL ANARCHIST REFLECTS ON SCHOOLS’ IMPOSED LANGUAGE ~ Scott Lux ~ I have two confessions to make; First, I am part of the state system: I am a teacher, inculcating society’s rules in this sociocultural context since the mid-1990s. I entered the world of education with the notion that it could empower others. I’d worked with younger students, those who had fallen by the wayside, or perhaps more appropriately, those who had been failed by the system. I had the belief that I could change the system, especially as an academic. Yet the system appears exceedingly averse to change. My second confession is that I am an anarchist, specifically a philosophical anarchist. Located within individualist anarchist thought, philosophical anarchism critically examines our relationship with authority, particularly concepts around resistance to imposed authority and the legitimisation of authority. Due to its position at the intellectual level, instead of a preoccupation with action (revolutionary or otherwise), philosophical anarchists like Benjamin Tucker, Robert Paul Wolff and John Simmons considered it a “peaceful revolutionary approach” that challenges people to think about what is happening and why. Philosophical anarchism fundamentally addresses the conflict between authority and autonomy. Authority exercises power through demands which are met by obedience, and when necessary force, to achieve compliance. In contrast, autonomy is a form of self-regulation based on the concept that a person is responsible for how their actions compare against their own moral accounting of “reflection, investigation, and deliberation”. With such autonomy, philosophical anarchist investigations  divert from a servitude and mindless obedience. Instead, a person conforms because they have decided it is the best course of action, not simply because they have been instructed to do so by any external authority. PARADOX FROM INSIDE THE SCHOOL SYSTEM With the start of the new school year, I feel increasing conflict: conflict between my anarchist ideals, and being a part of a system that enforces standards — some would say, double standards. Over the previous two decades, successive UK governments have suggested forms of youth national service — most recently under Rishi Sunak. None of these have been successfully implemented, yet these proposals do something just through their utterances. They aim to instil a civil sense, a measuring scale to orient children towards a sense of nationalistic values, indeed, a set of British values. Despite his loss at the general election, Sunak reinvigorated concepts of governmental authority, and reinforced the importance of shared British values in the functioning of the State.  British values, as branded by the UK Government from 2011 onwards, first appeared in the guidance document for the “Prevent” strategy. This was a statutory multi-agency “deradicalisation” programme, which supposedly identifies and supports individuals perceived as susceptible to being involved in extremism and/or terrorism. Section 6.60 in the Prevent guidance outlined the “mainstream British values: democracy, rule of law, equality of opportunity, freedom of speech and the rights of all men and women to live free from persecution of any kind”. The radicalism that the statutory duty aims to prevent through institutional authorities (including schools) is framed as those acting in “opposition to fundamental British values”. In this later part of the document the government substitutes in individual liberty, instead of equality and free speech. Subsequently, these values were discussed throughout the CONTEST Strategy (2018). Thus, a decade has been spent on reframing and reproducing fundamental British values as “shared” values, and as being “understanding” of others’ cultural differences. This was in part due to other legislation such as the Equality Act (2010), which sought “equality of opportunity”, and a series of educational legislation around freedom of speech. Whilst the term “individual liberty” replaced these previously established concepts, they are still championed today. Specifically, Section 119 of CONTEST states that Prevent “does not restrict debate or free speech” within educational institutions, that such institutions can be places where sensitive topics are discussed to promote critical thinking, hence preventing extremist narratives from taking hold. Furthermore, although non-statutory guidance was released by the Department for Education (2014)  about core British values, there is an expectation that teachers promote these values through their “ethics and behaviour”. This is considered to be a duty which teachers must uphold both in their professional and public lives, including through their teaching of “spiritual, moral, cultural” and social education under the Education Act (2002, Section 78). In summary, teachers are expected to promote a set of British values, introduced through anti-terrorist legislation, and if they do not promote these, they breach the Teachers’ Standards by being in contravention of “public trust”. WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE THE TEACHER? While the British values framework can be traced to legislation, there is absolutely no detail about how the five values were established. Was it merely someone’s folly? Are they grounded in academic research? Have they originated from reasoned debate? Furthermore, with the recent accusations that the UK government has adopted a two-tiered approach, by supporting some forms of protest and enforcing state control over others, parallels have been drawn to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Through this, legitimate concerns have been silenced, deemed as an overt posturing of power, with rapid justice for expressing specific views on social media. One could therefore question… what does ‘individual liberty’ mean in relation to British values, when a social media post can lead to imprisonment? Further echoes of Orwell’s premonitory novel may be evident through the concept of thoughtcrime, the offence which describes thinking in ways not approved by the ruling government. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, this government was represented by the Ingsoc (English Socialism) party. Perhaps the current UK government will enforce doublethink, where two conflicting beliefs are held to be true, so that two plus two can equal four, or five, or even six. A system whereby individuals will ultimately believe what they are told to believe, even if this is at odds with their experience and perspective. Having contacted the Department for Education on three occasions in the past month to discuss the role of British values, I am still awaiting a response. My attempt at communication is partly due to the change in government, partly due to the criticisms expressed on social media, and partly to seek greater clarity over what ‘individual liberty’ actually means. At a time when Amnesty International is calling to abolish protest laws and the Prevent strategy, the fundamental right to advocacy, being able to share your opinions and have these listened to, the sense of ‘individual liberty’, one of the British values appears to be on questionable grounds. Within schools and other institutions, British values are here to stay for the foreseeable future. Yet how they are interpreted, especially by those in gGovernment, will be interesting to watch. 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