Britain cannot police its way out of its current condition

Over the past few weeks, many Jewish people in Britain have quietly started doing calculations again.

Can I wear this openly? Should I mention I’m Jewish here? Do I feel safe sending my child into town? Will anyone say anything if something happens?

For a lot of non-Jewish people, these moments pass by as headlines. For Jewish people, they land in the body.

And every single time tensions rise, Britain responds in the same predictable way.

Extra policing. Extra security. Extra funding. Extra statements. Extra photo opportunities. Extra rhetoric. Extra blame directed at whichever group people already wanted to blame anyway.

But almost nobody asks the deeper question.

What kind of society keeps producing these conditions?

Because this is not just about antisemitism or the Jewish community, but about the kind of human beings our society is shaping in the first place.

I have spent years questioning our education system, long before I became a parent myself. One of the people who articulated many of those concerns most powerfully was Sir Ken Robinson, who warned for years that industrial models of education were standardising people instead of humanising them.

He was not some fringe voice shouting from the sidelines. He advised governments, wrote extensively on creativity and education reform, and gave the most watched TED Talk on education in history.

And yet Britain has continued moving in the opposite direction.

More testing. More standardisation. More rigid curriculums. More teaching children what to memorise rather than how to think.

And this is not about one political party. Governments of different colours have largely continued the same trajectory.

Because somewhere along the way, education stopped being primarily about forming thoughtful, responsible, emotionally intelligent citizens, and became increasingly about producing measurable economic outputs.

But education is the foundation of a society.

If you want to understand a society’s values, look at its education system.

Look at what children are rewarded for. Look at what is ignored. Look at what is measured. Look at what is never spoken about.

Children spend years preparing to pass tests many of them will barely remember a decade later. I can honestly say this will probably be the first and last time I mention the Kellogg–Briand Pact since my GCSEs.

And that is not because history does not matter. It matters enormously.

But somewhere along the way, we turned history into a giant memory exercise instead of using it to ask deeper questions about human behaviour, fear, propaganda, prejudice, courage, and responsibility.

Too often we teach children to collect dates from the past rather than reflect on the lessons those events hold for the present.

Surely the point is not simply: “When did this happen?”

Surely it should also be: “How does this happen?” “How do ordinary societies slowly become desensitised to cruelty?” “How do human beings justify treating each other terribly?” “How does tribal thinking override empathy?” “What kind of society prevents that from happening again?”

Because history has already shown us the very worst of humanity.

The question is whether we are raising generations capable of recognising those patterns before they repeat themselves.

We are also living through a moment where the old model of education makes less and less sense by the year.

For centuries, schools partly functioned as places of information transfer. Memorising facts mattered because access to knowledge itself was limited.

But we now live in a world where most people carry access to more information in their pocket than entire libraries once contained.

Within seconds we can find dates, treaties, statistics, definitions, historical timelines, and endless streams of information online.

Our computers and technology will always be able to store more raw information than any human being ever could.

So the question becomes: What is the purpose of education now?

Surely it cannot simply be the memorisation of information that machines can retrieve instantly.

Surely education must increasingly become about helping human beings develop the capacities that technology cannot replace so easily: discernment, wisdom, ethical reasoning, creativity, emotional intelligence, critical thought, human connection, and the ability to navigate complexity without collapsing into fear, manipulation, or tribalism.

Because information alone does not create good societies.

Human beings do.

One of the most important things schools should be teaching children is how to hold complexity without collapsing into hatred.

How to hold opposing truths at the same time.

That you can care deeply about Palestinian suffering whilst also caring deeply about rising antisemitism in Britain. That criticising a government does not justify hatred towards ordinary people. That disagreement does not require dehumanisation. That another person’s pain does not invalidate your own.

Yet we continue building systems that reward compliance over discernment, performance over humanity, conformity over curiosity, and tribal outrage over thoughtful dialogue.

You cannot build a healthy society purely through policy, slogans, performative diversity language, or reactive policing.

You build it through human connection. Shared experiences. Creativity. Meaningful conversation. Collective responsibility. Local community. And an education system that helps children become fully human.

Right now Britain feels increasingly fractured, reactive, emotionally volatile, and unable to hold disagreement without hostility.

The Jewish community is feeling one sharp expression of that reality right now.

But the fractures run much deeper across society as a whole.

So what do we actually do?

We stop outsourcing the moral formation of society entirely to politicians, algorithms, and institutions that are clearly failing to hold us together.

We demand an education system that teaches children not just how to pass tests, but how to think critically, hold complexity, disagree responsibly, recognise propaganda, and participate in society with compassion and courage.

We support schools, educators, parents, and communities trying to nurture emotionally intelligent human beings rather than simply compliant performers.

We create more spaces where people from different backgrounds genuinely encounter one another as human beings instead of as political caricatures online.

We teach children that another group’s pain does not threaten their own humanity.

We refuse the seductive simplicity of “us versus them” thinking, even when politicians, media outlets, and social media algorithms profit from keeping us emotionally reactive and divided.

And perhaps most importantly, we stop waiting for permission.

Because if we are honest, many of the systems currently shaping society are not accidentally producing disconnection, tribalism, outrage, and emotional fragility. They are rewarding it.

At some point ordinary people have to decide that we want to build something healthier instead.

Not through violence. Not through hatred. Not through becoming another tribe shouting at the other side.

But through the conscious and persistent refusal to participate in the dehumanisation of one another.

This is not weakness.

It may be one of the most important forms of civic courage left.