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There are many thousands of educational psychologists practising in the United Kingdom. These are clinicians who specialise in child development. They work closely with schools, nurseries and children’s social care services. Interventions from educational psychologists range from 1-1 work with children to engaging with entire classrooms. In particular, educational psychologists are enlisted to offer support to vulnerable children with cognitive conditions or who are struggling in school.
With great power should come great responsibility.
I decided to test this theory out and, when I learnt that there was to be a ‘Festival of Educational Psychology’ being held, I decided to send someone undercover to attend and record.
The ‘festival’ was being run by ‘edpsy’, a professional group for educational psychologists. It was even sponsored by the British Psychological Society – the accreditation body for psychologists in the UK. I have previously exposed the ideological capture of this organisation.
Make no mistake, this was not some fringe event. This was as mainstream in the world of psychology as it comes.
I have spent the last few days listening to every session from the conference. In total, I watched over 10 hours’ worth of footage.
I’m afraid to report that, in light of the footage, I have grave concerns over the indoctrination and ideological grooming of children by educational psychologists taking place within British schools. Here are some of the most worrying things I observed at the conference:
Trans Ideology
One of the keynote speakers from the conference was Dr Cora Sargeant.
Sargeant is a man who believes he is a woman. One might think that suffering from such a psychological delusion would preclude someone from becoming an educational psychologist. Yet, Sargeant is a Senior Teaching Fellow at the University of Southampton and is regularly invited to speak and offer training to fellow psychologists.
The title of Sargeant’s talk was ‘Making a world where gender diverse folk can find a place to belong’. This alone signalled that the talk was to be anything but neutral.
The blurb of the session stated: “What a strange world we have awoken to…the British transport police have implemented a policy where transgender women are to be strip searched by male offices…the EHCR interim guidance seeks to ban trans folk from their appropriate toilets….but the science of gender diversity is far clearer in its validation of community experiences”. This is pure propaganda, resting, ironically, on the completely unscientific belief that sex is in some way fluid.
Sargeant appeared on screen flanked by a bunch of plush children’s teddies. I make no apology for passing comment that this felt quite creepy, particularly given the context of the talk.
Sargeant’s session can only be described as a diatribe of gender ideology. He told the audience “only you know how you identify on the inside” and claimed that “gender diverse children…are on a journey of discovery”. A cold chill ran up my spine as I imagined Sargeant delivering these same lines to an impressionable and confused young child.
At one point, Sargeant exemplified that ‘being trans’ is purely performative. When discussing “gender expression”, he reverted briefly to his actual, deep, masculine voice, before quickly changing back to his put-on, high pitched, imitation of a female voice. This was done in order to make a point. Unfortunately for Sargeant, it made a different point to the one he expected.
On recent moves by the Supreme Court and the EHRC to protect women’s rights, Sargeant insisted that these interventions had nothing to do with protecting women and were instead prompted by “growing dis-ease with trans people”.
The hyperbole was, at times, off the scale. Sargeant claimed that the UK was propagating a “hostile environment” and returning to “colonialism”. He spoke lamentingly of the fact that “even India recognises trans women are women…this is an act of ‘decolonising gender’”.
Sargeant even accused the current Labour government of “engaging in the erasure of trans children”. This is the type of rhetoric one would expect from a Stonewall training course, not a conference for educational psychologists.
Sargeant concluded by criticising “cisgender norms” and telling attendees that “we know we get it wrong...on assigned sex at birth”.
Not a single comment from Sargeant was challenged by the moderator, nor indeed the attendees, during the Q&A section of the talk. For a vocation that should be grounded in evidence and reality, this is truly shocking.
Climate Catastrophising
Unfortunately, gender ideology was not the only scaremongering nonsense being spouted at the conference.
What can be best described as climate alarmism was also on the agenda.
Dr Louise Edgington delivered a talk entitled ‘The Polar Bear in the Room: Climate Conversations in pupil work’.
She claimed that everyone, particularly children, experience “climate emotion” and that this comes from a place of “sound education and good mental health”. She pointed, positively, to a global survey of children, in which many had answered that “the future is frightening”. That Edgington believes this type of response is a sign of ‘good mental health’ is telling.
Edgington herself engages in catastrophising, which is a cognitive distortion, and something she should be rooting out, rather than enabling. She referred to anti-net zero initiatives as “heartbreaking”. She told fellow psychologists that, given how ‘triggering’ these themes are, they should deploy the “oxygen mask principle” – making sure they are okay before attending to the children they work with.
Most chilling was learning of the techniques and materials Edgington employs when working with young children.
There are the ‘climate dice’, which seek to prompt conversations about global warming.
There is the ‘climate blob tree’, in which children are asked to look at a picture of various ‘blobs’ and say which one represents them when they think about climate change. Some of the ‘blobs’ look incredibly scared. Some are hanging onto a tree branch for dear life.
Then, there is the ‘climate emotions wheel’, which features a list of emotions children can choose from. The vast majority of these are negative emotions, including “depression”, “grief”, “shame”, “despair”, and “betrayal”.
Sometimes, Edgington even asks children to image that they themselves are the Earth and to embody the pain the Earth is experiencing.
She finished by giving an example of a ‘letter to the Earth’ written by a 9-year-old called Daisy, which read: “I hope that all humans will stop destroying you”.
Make no mistake, this is a mental health professional encouraging and causing mental ill-health amongst children.
Racial Activism
Several talks during the conference featured critical race theory, biased and unchallenged attacks on swathes of society, as well as calls for educational psychologist to adopt the role of social justice activist over clinician.
Dr Sarah Gillborn is Associate Professor in Psychological in Education at the University of Birmingham.
She spoke of psychologists who have sought to push back against ‘DEI’ in the profession:
“There is a certain section of psychologists who are quite loud, as people are more confident to be racist”.
To draw an equivalence between being anti-DEI and being racist is shocking. Strangely, immediately after using the word ‘racist’, she then corrected this to “anti, anti-racist”. This goes down as the most bizarre double negative I have ever encountered.
However, the rhetoric did not end there. In fact, Gillborn decided to up the ante. She told colleagues that they need to find a way to “cut them out”. This is a call to ostracise and excommunicate colleagues because of their beliefs and is inherently discriminatory.
She went on to refer to Reform UK as a “far right party”. When a member of the audience asked a question and revealed that they themselves lived in the USA, Gillborn, without a hint of self-awareness responded: “I’m sorry to hear that you’re in the US…that sounds like an awful place to be right now”. This is bare-faced ideology masquerading as clinical best-practise.
The fact that educational psychologists view themselves as activists first, clinicians second, was further exemplified in a talk entitled ‘The myth of neutrality – why psychology and psychological practice are inherently political’.
The talk was delivered by Sr Sean Octigan. His opening PowerPoint slide was an ‘About Me’. However, rather than listing his qualifications and work experience, he instead took the opportunity to announce himself as a self-identified “Marxist” and to reveal that he supports “Free Palestine” and “Trans inclusion”.
To hammer home these points even further, Octigan appeared on screen in front of a Palestinian flag.
During his talk, he spoke of “Israeli genocide”, lamented the “rise of the far right”, called for a “wealth tax” and told colleagues that “we need to be activists for social change”.
This is the antithesis of institutional neutrality.
Language Manipulation
Finally, I heard from Keri Opai, a ‘Māori Educationalist’, who spoke of his attempts to “decolonise psychology” in New Zealand.
He devised over 200 new Māori words, which officially entered the vocabulary, in an attempt to become less judgemental and more inclusive towards those with cognitive or mental health conditions.
For example, the previous term for ‘person with a disability’ has been changed so that it now translates as “person with strength/ability”. So, in New Zealand, a person with a disability is actually a person with an ability.
This is literally revising language so that terms mean the exact opposite of what they are supposed to mean, thereby causing them to, essentially, lose all meaning.
The term ‘person with autism’ has been also re-identified as now meaning “my own time and space”. This isn’t a typo.
This may appear, at first glance, to be relatively trivial. However, the complete re-writing of language is what enables social justice ideologies to gain such a foothold in our societal fabric. The fact that a vocation supposedly grounded in science and evidence is willing to change fundamental meaning of words, in order to spare feelings, is worrying.
Given the range of speakers, sponsors and attendees at this conference, I believe that what I observed is representative of the educational psychology profession as a whole in the UK. That terrifies me.
Professionals who work with some of the most vulnerable children in society appear to see it as their duty to preach to children – whether that is telling them they may have been born in the wrong body, accusing them of racism, or alarming them about climate change.
If this Labour government cared one iota for the wellbeing and safeguarding of children, they would intervene immediately. I doubt they will.
Finally, to parents reading this who are aware of educational psychologists working in your children’s school, please check who they are and what they are ‘teaching’ – your children may be at risk.