BRITISHNESS LESSONS AND RACISM

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[align=left]BRITISHNESS LESSONS AND RACISM
http://www.voice-online.co.uk/content.php?show=11196
by Paul C Boyd

The recent outburst by the new president of the National Union of Teachers, Baljeet Ghale, that plans by the government for schools to teach children 'core British values' will fuel racism is shocking.

I thought it was settled that British society and its institutions ooze with institutional racism. I think it would be inconceivable that any government would wish to fuel the 'shadow of racism' by insisting that 'British core values' are transmitted in our educational institutions.

VALUES

As a black African- Caribbean male professional who has been concerned with black underachievement, the disproportionate number of black exclusions, and black youth suffering from mental illness, I fully endorse any proposal which demands that our core values are taught in schools.

Core British values are being transmitted through the informal or hidden curriculum in any event. We might as well have it out in the open so that we can assess what is being transmitted in our schools to our children.

By core British values I am not suggesting in the least those embraced by the extreme right, or notions of nationalism and patriotism which continue to haunt us from certain quarters.

I am convinced that these core values were spelled out in All Our Futures (1999), a government commissioned report.

In my view, the report spelled out what Britishness means within 21st century Britain.

It recognised that "Britain comprises an extraordinary variety of different cultures". And that 'culture' should be used within the broader social context of "the shared values and patterns of behaviour that characterise different social groups and communities".

These communities, the report suggests, include people from Bangladeshi, Bengali, Pakistani, African, Caribbean, European, Middle Eastern, Far Eastern and many faith communities.

It was also mindful that problems of racism are 'persistent and 'insidious'.

Therefore, it insists, any approach to cultural education or the transmission of our core values would need to take account of 'this diversity', in order to 'mitigate the difficulties of intercultural understanding.'

Here we are concerned that the old style Britishness, with its concomitant ethnocentrism and Eurocentrism, is shorn of racism; root and branch.

Thus the transmission of our core values is inextricably bound with purging our educational institutions of institutionalised racism.

Institutional racism, declared McPherson (1999) after the Lawrence Inquiry, is the "collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin", which "can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness, and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people".

Now, All Our Futures endorsed the view that our core values are 'dynamic', 'diverse' and evolving'.

Clearly teachers as value shapers, pathfinders and transforming leaders, have a role in helping pupils to question received knowledge.

The report had no doubt that 'there clearly are some values which are at the core of our national way of life - our national culture.'

These were identified as first, 'a commitment to the unique value and central importance of the individual'; and, second, 'the idea of contingency: the view that things might be different from how they seem or are currently believed to be.'

These two core values, it argues, and 'the practices and attitudes they give rise to lie at the heart of our national heritage,' and are 'not negotiable if individual fulfilment and open enquiry are to continue to characterise our way of life.'

The matter is entirely now in the hands of the teaching profession to transmit 'core British values' within contemporary British society which develops critical awareness in our children and challenges conventional wisdom.

Paul Boyd, B.Ed; MA. FRSA is the author of The Pupil Exclusion Maze

Published: 17 April 2007
Issue: 1265

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