I’ve just watched this brilliant video by Russell Howard about how the culture wars are a bunch of bollocks stirred up by the media to profit from outrage.

I admit, I’m guilty of falling into YouTube clickbait rabbit holes. Since returning to New Zealand at the start of this year, after 11 years in Japan, I must say I’ve grappled with a lot of our “progressive” policies, both in education and wider society. It’s fair to say I’ve become “anti-woke.” But the problem with labelling myself that way is that it doesn’t really give you any idea of how I feel about most issues. I’ve come to think of myself as conservative, but I am pro choice, pro gay marriage and pro social welfare. So why would I call myself a conservative? Probably because I think that we should have the rights to our own labour and I don’t think biological men who transition to women are actually female, to name a couple. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t treat them as such. It’s complicated. It’s also difficult to describe in words, which is why to understand anyone’s thoughts on any tricky issue you need to talk about it…in person.

“You should never join twitter, Sir, or you’d get cancelled straight away.”

Year 13 boy in my class, 2022.

But at the same time I’ve noticed exactly what Howard is talking about – I’ve stopped watching and reading our news because it’s clear they’re selling emotion, not information.

The “culture war” between right and left exists online, but not in real life. That’s because the debates are about nuanced topics in which most people have nuanced opinions. Any attempt to tweet about them doesn’t work. And also because the people joining the conversations online are the most outraged. Most people don’t care.

These things are best discussed in person. Take a recent conversation I had with a fellow teacher. I was explaining how insisting that all NZ kids pronounce Maori words “correctly” is culturally insensitive and is the opposite of inclusion. It creates animosity and undermines the teacher-student relationship. A better option, in my mind, is to model correct pronunciation and allow time to work its magic. Instead of the hostile response I expected, it was a pleasant interchange. Maybe that person would go away and tweet angrily about it, or demean me or talk about me behind my back. I’m OK with that. It’s normal.

So how do we keep the “culture wars” out of the classroom? First, I think we need to ensure that our objective as teachers is teaching academics, not activism. Second, when the heated discussions do come up we model patience, tolerance and acceptance. We’re dealing with clunky kids who have clunky thoughts. Whatever they say that might be ludicrous, like “gay people choose to be gay” or “we should tax billionaires 90%” we listen to patiently and keep our emotions out of it. Sure we can discuss our own points of view, but it should never be a “war.” It should be a cultural discussion.

In our wider school communities, let’s stick to what unites us, not what divides us. What are our common goals, visions and values and let’s teach towards that. We might disagree on equity, but surely we can agree that we want all our kids to learn more? We might disagree on the merits of gender or critical race theory, but surely we agree that we treat all our individual students with respect as individuals and we like them for who they are, not what they are.

We need conservatives. We need progressives. The world needs all types of people. Nowhere more so than schools.