“Brussels doesn’t believe its policies have failed: it believes you are the problem”—Sociologist Ashley Frawley

The European Conservative ^ | 28 Dec, 2025 | Javier Villamor

[MtnClimber]

Education has become one of the main ideological battlegrounds across the Western world and particularly within the European Union. Although the EU treaties recognise education as a national competence, in recent years Brussels has developed an increasingly sophisticated architecture of programmes, funding streams and partnerships with NGOs aimed at exerting direct influence over what happens in classrooms—especially in areas related to identity, gender and sexuality.

It is in this context that the report Indoctrinating Children: How Brussels Embeds Gender Identity in the Classroom, published by MCC Brussels and authored by sociologist Ashley Frawley, must be understood. The study documents how millions of euros from programmes such as Erasmus+, CERV, and Horizon are channelled into activist-designed educational projects, which are then promoted as ‘best practice’ at the European level—even in countries where such policies have been explicitly rejected by national parliaments or parents.

Frawley, a researcher and author specialising in the analysis of contemporary social problems and the growing use of ‘behaviour change’ as a political tool, warns that these are neither isolated nor benign initiatives. Rather, she argues, they form a coherent project of social engineering. In an interview with europeanconservative.com, she unpacks Brussels’ underlying motivations, the mechanisms used to circumvent subsidiarity, and the democratic consequences of a strategy that, in her view, seeks to “reform the citizen” from childhood.

Ashley Frawley

Why do you think it is so important right now to understand the obsession of European institutions with education and the so-called re-education of children?

Because the European Union is increasingly convinced that its policies do not work—and that the problem is not those policies, but the behaviour of ordinary people. The idea has taken hold that Europe would be a wonderful place if it could just ‘fix’ Europeans, if it could manufacture the perfect citizen

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TOPICS: Business/Economy; Education; Society
KEYWORDS: leftism

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Because the European Union is increasingly convinced that its policies do not work—and that the problem is not those policies, but the behaviour of ordinary people. The idea has taken hold that Europe would be a wonderful place if it could just ‘fix’ Europeans, if it could manufacture the perfect citizen

I think that was tried already and wound up with over 100 million people dead because of it.

[Salman]

One cannot say a policy has "failed" without a clear idea of what it is supposed to accomplish.
And that is not necessarily the same as the stated aim of the policy.

... millions of euros from programmes ... are channelled into activist-designed educational projects ...

Mission accomplished. The policy has not failed.

[Leaning Right]

EU to native Europeans:

[TalBlack]

Hitler did the same thing and had children ratting on their parents.

[chopperk]

What s bunch of retards? Libs don’t want you to know muslims have taken control of the Country.

[Wuli]

The EU learned how the Left has been managing their agenda in the U.S. through the Department of Education and money sent into U.S. education-activist NGOs.

[fuzzylogic]

IOW - the EU is nothing but an authoritarian dictatorship that isn’t interested in just representing the people. The people are ‘wrong’. They don’t know how they ‘should’ be.

The president is a white liberal woman. Color me shocked.

[Gil4]

Throughout history, the messenger is the problem, not the message. No one liked the OT prophets, or Jesus for that matter. Rather that focus on the messenger, We need to look closely at the message.

I'm not sure this article is the right context for your comment. Are you agreeing with the EU bureaucrats that the people are the problem, and not the the EU policies? (And comparing the bureaucrats with the prophets and with Jesus?)

Is the messenger the problem? Who is the messenger? The messenger is nameless and faceless. The constant drumbeat of the leftist message is the issue.

[No.6]

Creating the youth conforming to the future of endless compliance.

Or, “oldthinkers unbellyfeel Ingsoc.”

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

This is the result of Open Society programs. In the view of the "Planners", anyone who opposes their views are facists. They believe that everyone needs to find their own meaning without reference to "truth" and Metaphysics and tested traditional ways of living. In the end, however, they cease to encourage, and become the thing they claim to oppose. A good discussion in this book.

Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West: R.R. Reno

"With compelling insight, R. R. Reno argues that we are witnessing the return of the “strong gods”—the powerful loyalties that bind men to their homeland and to one another. Reacting to the calamitous first half of the twentieth century, our political, cultural, and financial elites promoted open borders, open markets, and open minds. But this never-ending project of openness has hardened into a set of anti-dogmatic dogmas which destroy the social solidarity rooted in family, faith, and nation. While they worry about the return of fascism, our societies are dissolving.

But man will not tolerate social dissolution indefinitely. He longs to be part of a “we”—the fruit of shared loves—which gives his life meaning. The strong gods will return, Reno warns, in one form or another. Our task is to attend to those that, appealing to our reason as well as our hearts, inspire the best of our traditions. Otherwise, we shall invite the darker gods whose return our open society was intended to forestall."

[wafflehouse]

“Brussels doesn’t believe its policies have failed: it believes you are the problem”

this is how every tyrannical government behaves, and yet we are surprised every time it happens

[Ban Draoi Marbh Draoi]

Qhi are tou talking about?

[Carry_Okie]

Qhi are tou talking about?

You have never heard of him (I'm writing a book about what he did). In my opinion, he was the most influential person of the 20th Century, long term.