Stuart Waiton takes a broad overview of the history of our modern, technologically advanced society, its advances, contradictions and problems. This highlights the benefits that have come to society from the liberating power of education.
He concludes that every child should have access to the best that has been thought and known.
Waiton emphasises the decay of the contemporary Scottish education and what has become its negative and narrow view of the past—which inculcates a one-sided and bleak view of history. As a result, moralising replaces knowledge and the results limit, rather than promote, critical thought.
Education in Scotland is now about "committing to social justice" and about diversity, equity, inclusion and tackling a supposed climate emergency. The creeping encroachment of this new ideology is seen in the introduction into schools of Critical Race Theory—a racist philosophy that leads to hypersensitivity about race and an increase, not a decrease, in racial division. Such terms as "white privilege" and the need to "decolonise" the curriculum are also creeping through the education system, the curriculum, and state and other guidance to teachers and head teachers.
Sex education is being conducted in a manner which presses against the very idea of childhood. At the same time, children are being infantilised as the standard of education sinks. The therapeutic education, as it plays out, increasingly sees ideas as threats—and shelters children from challenging knowledge, with predictable effects on the child's intellectual progress.
The effect is that education is being transformed into indoctrination.
Stuart Waiton seeks to reverse this agenda via the Scottish Union for Education. This new organisation involves parents, grandparents and the wider community and seeks to promote education in schools and in wider society.