Over recent years the UK’s Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) has updated their curriculum guidance in all subject areas to include themes of social justice. They have done this by requiring that all courses include elements of Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD).

As a result, economics departments are told they should “adopt a zero-tolerance approach to everyday micro-aggressions”. Business and Management courses are instructed to take advantage of “opportunities to involve students as co-creators of the curriculum to ensure the use of inclusive language.”  Mathematicians are advised that “Values of EDI (Equality Diversity and Inclusion) should permeate the curriculum and every aspect of the learning experience to ensure the diverse nature of society in all its forms is evident.”

One might well question how to incorporate the values of EDI into a course on abstract algebra or functional analysis. We are told it should be done by teaching that “some early ideas in statistics were motivated by their proposers’ support for eugenics, some astronomical data were collected on plantations by enslaved people, and, historically, some mathematicians have recorded racist or fascist views or connections to groups such as the Nazis.” Similarly, bioscientists should acknowledge “that influential scientists might have benefited from and perpetuated misogyny, racism, homophobia, ableism and other prejudices”. Likewise, “Engineering curricula should foster global perspectives and facilitate the recognition of historic western assumptions”.

While the encroachment of EDI across university curricula is perhaps now quite familiar, the QAA’s second theme of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is currently more obscure.

The programme of ESD can be traced back to the UN’s “Agenda 21” in 1992 which pledged to “reorient education to address sustainable development.” It is a radical programme which according to UNESCO “requires revising education from early childhood care and up through higher education. It requires rethinking what is taught, how it is taught, and what is assessed, with sustainability as the central theme.” For example, “in music lessons one might consider asking students to compose song lyrics about water conservation.” The desired learning outcome is no longer understanding, it is social change. “Empowering and mobilizing young people of all genders, therefore, is a central part of ESD implementation”.

The inspiration for such educational innovations comes from the Marxist educator Paulo Freire, the father of “critical pedagogy”. Freire argued that “The educator has the duty of not being neutral” because “Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.” Giroux, who popularised the term critical pedagogy explains, “It views teaching as an inherently political act, rejects the neutrality of knowledge, and insists that issues of social justice and democracy itself are not distinct from acts of teaching and learning”. As the QAA acknowledge, ESD is “grounded” in critical pedagogy and its influence can be seen throughout their recommendations.

It is all but a tautology that promoting social justice is desirable. However, there is no consensus on what social justice actually is. The QAA talks glibly of “the values of EDI”, but EDI is one of the most contested topics in contemporary politics. There are fierce debates over such foundational topics as the definitions of racism, antisemitism and women. Similarly, in their recommendations on ESD, the QAA recommend orienting curricula around the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, on the apparent assumption that these represent a universally agreed consensus. However, perhaps with the Chinese in mind, these goals do not include “democracy” or “free speech”, yet many would view these as cornerstones of social justice. The very concept of “sustainable development” glosses over the fraught issue of whether one should prioritise sustainability or development and the complex question of who should choose between these conflicting priorities.

If one incorrectly assumes a consensus view on the concept of social justice, then teaching will degenerate into indoctrination

This brings me to the central concern with critical pedagogy. If one incorrectly assumes a consensus view on the concept of social justice, then teaching will degenerate into indoctrination. Freire addresses this by asserting that the educators have a duty not to be neutral, but some may find this unconvincing. The UNESCO guidance acknowledges “a few will abuse or distort ESD and turn it into indoctrination” but does not provide any evidence to support the claim that it will only be a few. The QAA do not seem to discuss this risk at all.

This is not the only risk of following their guidance that the QAA fail to consider. One should also consider the opportunity costs for students of studying social justice instead of their preferred specialism. This leads to a risk of dumbing-down if advanced specialist material is replaced with elementary political content. There is a legal risk of discrimination against protected beliefs of those who do not adhere to critical social justice theories, and a severe risk of limiting academic freedom. Finally, since critical pedagogy is founded in a school of thought which rejects the basic tenets of science and its claims to objectivity, there is a risk of undermining science.

Given such significant risks, one would expect that the QAA would have gathered considerable evidence on the effectiveness of their recommendations before seeking to roll them out across all universities and all subject areas. However, if they have such evidence, their benchmark statements omit to mention it.

This is not the only evidence gap in critical pedagogy. The literature on critical pedagogy focuses heavily on the political imperative to bring about change and has comparatively little interest in its effectiveness as a teaching method. For example, one significant factor in Freire’s almost mythic status among educational theorists is his claim to have taught 300 adults to read and write in only 45 days. Given that it would seem to provide a dramatic vindication for his theory, it is surprising that I have been unable to find any evidence of any attempts to reproduce this remarkable feat.

Fortunately, there is now a case-study one can consider to evaluate the effectiveness of the QAA’s recommendations. The module “Gateway to King’s” was piloted at King’s College London and was designed to introduce all first-year students at King’s to topics which map closely to the QAA’s required themes. The plan was to roll the module out as a compulsory module for all first-year students. However, the module was canned after the pilot. 1657 students were eligible to take the course, 366 enrolled and 42 completed it. I describe the contents of the course in this paper so you can decide for yourself which of the risks I have identified were realised.

I believe the reason the course failed is that the QAA’s recommendations are fundamentally flawed. University students want to be taught high quality content by renowned experts. They do not want bland platitudes about citizenship, regurgitated myths about personality types, or indoctrination in postmodern politics. Nor do students want to pay the opportunity costs of pursuing someone else’s hobby horse. Maths students wish to study maths, music students music, and politics students want to study politics. All students want to learn how to think, not what to think.

Academics should not allow quangos to determine what we teach. Instead, we should pursue academically led curriculum development, guided by the individual research expertise of academics. This is the route to high quality Higher Education.