Anti-Racist Policy and the Regulation of School Life (Oct 2009)
Published on 29 October 2009 by the Manifesto Club this book doubled up as a report to government on recommending (amongst other things) the abolition of compulsory reporting of ‘racist incidents’ in UK schools.
A school playground is a mess of exuberant sociability, of running, shouting, falling-out, making-up, showing off, teasing – and there is something deeply wrong when these childish games become a matter for officials and even the police. The idea that three-year-olds can be ‘racist’, and require specialists to train them out of their prejudice, amounts to a notion that we are born sinners and only officialdom can save us.
The myth of racist kids
Why anti-bullying and anti-racist policies makes things worse
Dr Helene Guldberg (writing in Psychology Today)
eachers in Britain are obliged, under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, to record the number of racist incidents in their schools. This has resulted in the reporting of an estimated 250,000 such incidents, and race relations officials claim this is just the tip of the iceberg.Yet Adrian Hart, a community filmmaker and tutor, argues in The Myth of Racist Kids: Anti-Racist Policy and the Regulation of School Life that ‘the notion of racist kids is in large part a myth’. Hart became concerned about today’s anti-bullying and anti-racist policies while working on a government-funded educational film about racism in schools.
(read the full article here)