RACE, RIOTS AND THE CURRICULUM
The violence which erupted on UK streets in July/August 2024 was a shocking reminder of the fragility of our society and the ever-present subcurrent of racism which remains a force threatening to engulf us. The speed by which the violence became directed towards not just immigrants but towards mosques and any citizen seen as belonging to an ethnic minority shows that, despite the nearly 60 years since legislation first banned discrimination and made the promotion of hatred on the grounds of ‘colour, race or national origins an offence, racism remains an active and pernicious disease in our society and its elimination a priority for all of us.
For those who believed that contemporary society had embraced equality and that the disease of racism was an increasingly distant memory the events of July/August provided something of an existential crisis. The respect for equality and diversity enshrined in our school policies and value statements which we thought evidenced our progress and formed the architecture of the tolerant society was exposed as frail and tenuous. The collective shock and horror we experienced at the sight of racist riots on our streets and on our TV screens and the pictures of people of a wide variety of ages including school children not only proclaiming their racism but showing that racism could motivate them to extreme violence and potentially murderous acts demonstrated that the tolerant society was flawed and not capable of defending its citizens.
It is fortuitous that with this background the government should announce a major review of the curriculum. An essential part of that review must be, as always, what role we want the curriculum to play in providing an education which upholds and promotes values of tolerance, diversity and equality. The curriculum response to the riots must be more than providing a set of skills in how to s social media. People acted as they did in the riots not just because of misinformation on social media. That misinformation was acted on because of a disposition to believe it and the actions of many young people in the riots and the data we have of the increase in school suspensions and expulsions for racist behaviour show that we have failed to successfully eliminate or marginalise racism in our schools.
We need a debate amongst all educational professionals and participants as to how we can deliver an effective education which provides an understanding of right-wing extremist ideology, its nature and history, opposes the racism it feeds off and provides an objective and balanced view of the context of human migration. Education cannot, of course, fully compensate for the racism which may be engrained in some of our institutions and which is platformed by some politicians and their media supporters, but if we fail to embed throughout our curriculum and teaching the importance and essential need for equality and diversity we will have failed to deliver what the curriculum, in its broadest sense is, the selection of values, knowledge, skills and understandings they need for the futures they deserve.