Eton headmaster: Am I woke? Guilty as charged

Simon Henderson – who backs Pride and Black History Month – says the word has become an ‘easy label to apply to things you disagree with’

The headmaster of Eton College has said that he is unashamedly “woke” and hit out at people for using the word as a label for things they disagreed with.

Simon Henderson, 47, told a podcast he was “guilty as charged” when it came to being labelled woke.

“If by woke people mean I believe in kindness, understanding, respect, tolerance, treating people decently, trying to have empathy, trying to understand things from other people’s perspectives – then, guilty as charged,” he said.

Speaking to the Big Fish podcast, he added that “woke” had become a “pejorative” phrase that people simply applied to concepts they disagreed with and said that there was no “ideological framework that we’re trying to indoctrinate” pupils with.

Mr Henderson, 47, became the youngest ever head of Eton when he was appointed in 2015 at the age of 39, and said that he was not a “revolutionary” but somewhat “institutionalised”.

He warned that politicians are fuelling an atmosphere in which society is reduced to people being put in “polarised, binary positions”.

He has championed the celebration of both Pride and Black History Month at the school and notably sacked Will Knowland, an English teacher, for refusing to take down a controversial lecture on patriarchy from his YouTube account.

“When you’re leading an historic institution and trying to lead it forward, it’s a balancing act between best of the old and best of the new,” he told the podcast.

“There are going to be some issues and some debates where there’s a wide spectrum of views about what you should be moving forward with and what you shouldn’t and that’s a good thing.

“Challenge, scrutiny, I think is a really positive thing, it means better decisions get made in the end.

“Eton has a particular place in the public consciousness. From time to time when there have been difficult moments I think some people have latched onto that. I would not say that I’m a revolutionary.”

He added: “I always raise a bit of a wry smile when people describe me as woke because I’m pretty institutionalised. I went to a boarding school, I’ve taught in boarding schools for many years, I’m the headmaster of Eton which is a 600-year-old institution. I think the word woke, what does it mean?”

He said that the word had become an “easy label to apply to things you don’t like or that you disagree with”.

Mr Henderson said that most people recognised that on many complex social issues there “aren’t often easy answers” and that he was “guilty as charged” when it came to being called “woke”.

“But there’s no ideological framework that we’re trying to indoctrinate young people in which you sometimes get accused of.

“We do celebrate Pride every year, we do celebrate Black History Month – those things are, I think, important.

“Why wouldn’t we celebrate the experience of significant groups within our community, some of whom have perhaps been marginalised over time. So, those are things we’re proud to do and I think part of being a modern institution.”