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

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.

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 with the correct values. From that perspective, children become a primary target.

A clear example can be found in economic policy. Instead of investing in infrastructure or genuine growth, many countries have based their model on precarious, poorly paid jobs with antisocial hours, often filled by immigrants or women. When many women—especially in southern and eastern Europe—prefer to care for their children rather than accept such work, Brussels does not ask whether the problem lies in the quality of employment. It concludes that the problem is ‘gender roles,’ patriarchy, and families. And it decides to intervene as early as possible, from nursery school onwards, to ‘correct’ those preferences.

In your report, you speak of “systematic ideological intervention.” How does that work in practice, from the European Commission to the classroom?

The Commission knows that it has no direct competence in education, and it deeply resents that fact. So it has developed enormous creativity in working around the principle of subsidiarity. It uses indirect levers: mobility, the recognition of qualifications, digitalisation, and teacher training.

Through European programmes, NGOs and universities are funded to design educational materials, pilot projects, and teacher-training courses. Those same actors then evaluate their own projects and present them as ‘European best practice.’ Finally, political and symbolic pressure is exerted on member states to adopt them.

In countries like Hungary, where there are explicit restrictions on teaching LGBTIQ content to minors, the Commission even goes so far as to fund parallel projects: off-site training sessions, clandestine workshops for teachers, and digital platforms. This is a deliberate way of bypassing national law.

You followed the money. What surprised you most?

The extremely poor quality of many of these projects relative to the enormous sums invested. Abandoned digital platforms, materials that disappear once funding ends, educational video games that are neither engaging nor pedagogical, even for their supposed target audience.

That reveals something important: there is no genuine desire for public debate. They do not want to persuade society. Instead, they prefer to identify “change agents”: activists, trainers, young teachers, who then carry the ideology directly into institutions—bypassing parents, parliament, and public opinion.

Are member states aware of how these funds are actually being used?

I think many are not fully aware, although for those of us who have studied the NGO–policy complex for some time, it is not surprising. We live in what I call an interest group democracy. Political elites prefer to deal with highly ideological activist organisations rather than with the general public.

These NGOs do not see themselves as representatives of society but as its moral educators. The message is always the same: you are the problem; you are backward, patriarchal, traditional—you need to be reformed. When this comes to light, people feel insulted, and rightly so.

After the reduction of U.S. funding for programmes such as USAID, the Commission has announced it will double down to maintain this structure in Europe. Should we be worried?

The Commission does not know any other way of governing. When something fails, it does not rethink the model—it intensifies intervention. If its policies do not work, the conclusion is never “maybe we are wrong,” but “we haven’t changed people enough.”

That is why I do not expect a short-term shift. This approach—the idea that social problems are explained by individual behaviour and that the state must correct it—has been deeply entrenched in the political class for decades.

In the report, teachers are portrayed as “champions of change.” To what extent are they responsible?

I do not think it is fair to blame teachers. Many who opposed these trends were pushed out of their positions over the past decade. Today, in a context of precarity and fierce competition, anyone who wants to keep their job must either stay silent or feign adherence.

A system of certifications, courses, and ideological credentials has emerged, functioning as professional filters. To survive, many teachers simply keep their heads down. It is a profoundly unjust situation.

Finally, how do you see the future? Is it possible to reverse this trend?

I do not believe in a lost golden age to which we can return. But I do believe we must recover an ideal that was never fully realised: the idea that all human beings share a basic capacity for reason and therefore have a right to participate in democratic self-government.

Much of this agenda, although presented as progressive, is deeply regressive. It returns us to an infantilising vision of citizenship, where the state acts as mother and father, and citizens as incapable children. The alternative is not less ambition, but more: a vision of shared human progress—material and moral—in which education forms free citizens, not malleable subjects.