The impact of woke ideology on the socialisation of children
Paper written for the Heterodox Conference, Buckingham, England, 23 July 2026
There is a lot of speculation about whether or not we have reached a post-woke era. Some point to the willingness of governments to challenge some of the more grotesque practices of woke or to the hesitation of corporations to go down further on the road of DEI. Others assert that woke is giving way to the revival of socialist and class based politics. Invariably they point to the growing influence of New York’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani as evidence of a post-woke vibe shift. Such arguments overlook the fact that supporters of Mamdani are steeped in woke identity politics as evidenced by their obsession with the cause of Palestine and their hostility to the assertion of Jewish identity.
Our argument is that despite the occasional criticism of woke practices by politicians and corporates, wokism continues to enjoy a hegemonic status. Why? Because as long as it controls the institutions of socialization it will continue to influence the younger generation and in this is way remains deeply embedded in society’s cultural life.
It is important to note that the current pedagogy dominating the classroom, which is underpinned by the ideal of cultural repudiation, has been around for a very long time. This pedagogy gained traction in the 1960s and became thoroughly politicized through the influence of woke’s predecessor, which in those days was dubbed political correctness. It exploded through the influence of identity politics – which dominates teachers’ training institutions as well as all the institutions involved in the socialization of young people.
Gradually, by stealth, the influence of identity politics became deeply entrenched in the classroom. The curriculum and the educational resources that supported it aggressively promote trans-genderist dogma, a racialised representation of a world associated with critical race theory, and the project of the decolonisation of the legacy of Western civilisation.
The Anglo-American education system is devoted to the project of what I characterise as socialisation-in-reverse. In my book, Wasted: Why Education Is Not Educating, I pointed out that many educators believe that their role is not to socialise young people to embrace the values of their parents and communities but to undermine them and replace them with what they take to be progressive ones.
This approach was outlined as far back as 1922 by John Dewey, arguably the most influential progressive educator of the last century, in the following terms:
‘It is the business of the school environment to eliminate, so far as possible, the unworthy features of the existing environment…As a society becomes more enlightened, it realizes that it is responsible not to transmit and conserve the whole of its existing arrangements, but only such as make for a better future society. The school is its chief agency for the accomplishment of this end’.
In practice, what Dewey meant by ‘unworthy features of the existing environment’ referred to many of the traditional norms that prevailed in American communities. In effect, Dewey called into question the relevance of values underpinning the outlook of the community that children inhabited. Instead, he proposed that schools should teach children the values that he and his colleagues upheld, even if they conflicted with the views of their parents.
Since Dewey’s time, proponents of socialisation-in-reverse have become more aggressive in pursuing their project. They argue that they should possess a central role in young people’s socialisation because parents cannot perform their role effectively. This approach is particularly striking in the sphere of sexuality education, where children are explicitly taught to distance themselves from the view of their parents.
In effect, socialisation-in-reverse turns education into social engineering. This form of social engineering has acquired unprecedented momentum in the past decade. Under the guise of promoting equality and inclusion, schools have taken it upon themselves to challenge the foundational values of western culture forcefully. Children are indoctrinated to despise their society’s history. They are made to feel guilty about their white privilege if they are white. Worse still, they are taught that gender trumps sex and that, therefore, they should not take their biological sex as girls and boys too seriously.
Back in the late 1970s the sociologist Alvin Gouldner ably analyzed the emergence of a curriculum based on the culture of repudiation.
In his The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class (1979). He highlighted the capture of the institutions of socialisation by advocates of cultural repudiation.
He claimed that schools and chiefly universities assumed a central role in the socialisation of young people. They claimed the right to educate young people in line with their enlightened opinions. Even in schools, teachers felt they had no ‘obligation to reproduce parental values in their children’. The expansion of higher education further reinforced the insulation of parental cultural influence from young people.
Gouldner wrote
‘The new structurally differentiated educational system is increasingly insulated from the family system, becoming an important source of values among students divergent from those of their families. The socialization of the young by their families is now mediated by a semi-autonomous group of teachers’.
As a result of this development, ‘public educational systems’ became a ‘major cosmopolitanizing influence on its students, with a corresponding distancing from localistic interests and values’.
Gouldner asserted that ‘parental, particularly paternal, authority is increasingly vulnerable and is thus less able to insist that children respect societal or political authority outside the home’. Parents now found it difficult to impose and reproduce their ‘social values and political ideologies in their children’.
In the 1970s, Gouldner’s analysis pinpointed a trend that has today acquired a formidable force. It is evident that in the current era, teachers definitely feel ‘no ‘obligation to reproduce parental values in their children’. On the contrary, there is considerable evidence that contemporary pedagogy and classroom practices often work towards culturally and psychologically distancing pupils from their parents.
At the time, observers of the institutionalisation of the culture of repudiation in higher education often underestimated the significance of Gouldner’s argument. Campus radicalism was diagnosed as the work of noisy extremist students and faculty members.
The powerful drivers leading to the institutionalisation of the culture of repudiation tended to be overlooked, and time and again, premature obituaries declared the death of campus radicalism and identity politics.
Commentaries frequently portrayed identity politics in the past tense and prophesied its imminent demise. The authors of the first book to refer to identity politics in 1973 claimed that ‘identity politics swallowed itself’.3 ‘Time to Retire a Cliché – “Politically Correct” – Shopworn and Blinding’, wrote Brent Staples in The New York Times in November 1993.4 Writing in 1995, Ross Posnock, a Professor of Literature, wrote that ‘after twenty-five years of identity politics’ a ‘renascent cosmopolitanism is currently gaining ground on the left; indeed, belief that the prestige of identity politics is fading in the academy is fast becoming the received wisdom’.5 ‘After Identity, Politics: The Return of Universalism’ is the title of an essay in New Literary History in 2000.6 In the wake of The Brexit Referendum and the election of Donald Trump, British journalist Janet Daley declared that ‘Identity politics is Dead’. Today this short sighted assessment of the strength of the culture of repudiation is affirmed by advocates of the post-woke vibe thesis.
Woke ideology in schools
One of the most disturbing developments in western societies is the alarming speed with which the school curriculum has become a vehicle for promoting political objectives and transforming children’s values, attitudes and sensibilities.
There are four recurring patterns that support this development
1. institution -led socialization distances young people from their parents
2. identity-inclusive sexuality education beginning at younger ages;
3. race and identity play a central role in the framing of the curriculum
4. a ‘equity’ used to revise traditional academic practices leadd to the lowering of educational standards
These trends are illustrated by the following examples
Relationships and Sexuality Education is mandatory for pupils aged three to sixteen under the Curriculum for Wales. The framework includes relationships, identity, diversity and rights and does not provide a general parental right to withdraw children from the programme. Its compulsory, identity-obsessed character is a clear example of the institutionalization of the culture of repudiatiom[i].
In 2025, Alleyn’s School in London published a revised curriculum incorporating queer theory, non-binary and drag authors, postcolonial readings of The Tempest, and discussion of “toxic masculinity” in Macbeth. Critics argue that literature was being subordinated to political consciousness-raising; the school presented the changes as broadening interpretation while retaining Shakespeare[ii].
California schools serving grades nine to twelve have been required to offer ethnic studies from the 2025–26 school year. Beginning with the graduating class of 2029–30, pupils must complete a semester of ethnic studies. The state’s model curriculum foregrounds race, racism, equity, justice, ethnicity and indigeneity[iii].
Take the institutionalisation of the ideology of transgenderism. Social observers and commentators have widely noted the rapid spread of this ideology amongst the young. The global diffusion of this ideology should not come as a surprise since powerful international organisations have devoted considerable resources to ensure that transgenderism gains influence amongst school children.
The principal medium for spreading this ideology is sex education, which has been rebranded as sexuality education. Unlike sex education, which is principally about sex, sexuality education is about promoting the cultural politics of identity. This approach is aggressively promoted by a coalition of international organisations, such as WHO, the United Nations Population Fund, the United Nations Children’s Fund and UNESCO.
These organisations have produced a curriculum for schools throughout the world. It is titled; International technical guidance on sexuality education: An evidence informed approach. Don’t be fooled by the technical framing of this document. Despite its claim to be an ‘evidence-based approach’, this a thoroughly ideological document. The curriculum it offers shifts attention from the traditional focus on biological sex to gender identity. It seeks to influence children to be open to the idea that what matters is their ‘sexuality’, that is, their gender identity rather than their biological sex.
Young people are also taught to regard free speech as a mixed blessing. Through the policing of language, institutions of socialization, encourage self-censorship. Implicitly and sometimes explicitly they teach young people to adopt a selective orientation towards the right to free speech. The result is the emergence of a censorious youth culture. Therefor it is not surprising that in the UK a new poll on a range of free speech issues 35% of full-time undergraduate students say they Reform UK ‘should be banned from speaking at events held at higher education institutions’[iv]
Supporters of the claim that ‘The post woke era is here’ highlight relatively superficial trends to sustain their argument[v]. As long as young people are constantly subjected to the culture of repudiation by their educators, and the dominant institutions of culture all talk of a post woke era is immature. As long as woke ideals continue to influence the young in one form or another this ideology will continue to enjoy its commanding influence over the conduct of public life.
[i] https://www.gov.wales/curriculum-wales-relationships-and-sexuality-education-rse-code?utm
[ii] https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/school-drag-queen-shakespeare-alleyns-plnvfschl
[iii] https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/gs/hs/hsgrmin.asp?utm
[iv] https://www.hepi.ac.uk/reports/are-students-still-woke/
[v] A well argued example supporting the post-woke thesis is https://unherd.com/2022/10/the-post-woke-era-is-here/.