The headmistress of a leading private girls’ school has defended ‘woke’ pupils and demanded older generations stop labelling them ‘snowflakes’.
Samantha Price from Benenden School, Kent said dismissing students who are demanding change can mean that they will abandon equality and sustainability efforts.
Mrs Price, president of the Girls’ Schools Association, will tell her organisation’s annual conference in Manchester that some parents are ‘deeply unsettled’ about issues such as gender identity and should be helped to understand the ‘new language’ around such topics.
Samantha Price, the head of Benenden School (Kent), said that students who ask for change may be dismissed. This could lead to them abandoning equality and sustainability programs.
But she will call on school leaders to challenge anyone who dismisses the younger generation as ‘woke’, ‘snowflakes’ or a part of the ‘cancel culture’.
Mrs Price said: ‘I think that if they are consistently dismissed in this way then what will happen is that they will just give up.
As they go into their 20s and into further maturity, what was such a passion for them will end up just going by the wayside.’
In a speech to more than 100 heads of private girls’ schools, Mrs Price will also criticise references to teenagers as being ‘woke’ and adults who comment that they cannot say anything without being ‘called out’ by young people.
She will say: ‘It would be unforgivable for the older generation to close its mind to new ideas, to retreat to “the good old days” and dismiss the energetic changes of this generation as something to be referred to in derogatory tones and sighs.
Benenden School in Kent (pictured). The leading private girls’ school’s headmistress has defended ‘woke’ pupils and demanded older generations stop labelling them ‘snowflakes’
‘What has really struck me is that this so-called ‘woke’ generation are actually simply young people who care about things: about causes, about the planet, about people.
‘It ultimately comes down to something very simple: being kind.’
Following the rise of several high-profile movements such as Black Lives Matter or efforts to stop sexual harassment, pupils have demanded that action be taken on a range of issues.
However Mrs Price drew the line at ‘walking out of class over climate’, explaining that does not think that ‘standing in a street with a banner’ will have much of an impact on the fight against climate change.
Numerous schools and colleges have altered their names of commemorative items in the wake anti-racism protests. This includes Bristol where institutions have moved away from being identified with Edward Colston, the slave trader, after Colston’s statue was overthrown by a mob.
A school in East Sussex also said it was dropping Winston Churchill as a house name after pupils protested that he ‘promoted racism and inequality’ and was guilty of torture, while in Yorkshire a primary school changed the names of its houses from Sir Walter Raleigh, Admiral Nelson and Francis Drake after a former pupil said they supported ‘institutionalised racism’.