{"id":7801,"date":"2020-10-29T08:07:26","date_gmt":"2020-10-29T08:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7801"},"modified":"2020-10-29T08:07:26","modified_gmt":"2020-10-29T08:07:26","slug":"teaching-6th-formers-about-racism-and-inequality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2020\/10\/29\/teaching-6th-formers-about-racism-and-inequality\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching 6th formers about racism and inequality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I'm glad I don't have responsibility today for teaching students in schools about\u00a0racism and inequality. \u00a0I don't think in all my years of teaching in schools and HE that I ever did very much of that, save through trying to set a personal example \u2013 not always successfully, I'd have to say when it came to equality. \u00a0Teaching school students about politically-charged issues in a thoughtful, balanced, and fair-minded way is always hard, and especially so when set in a contemporary political context such as that presented by the Black Lives Matter movement and its revolutionary purposes. \u00a0But for their own sake and for the sake of all our futures, young people\u00a0should always be encouraged to think critically and talk about about complicated issues in the sort of conducive space that a well-managed classroom can offer. \u00a0And we need to remember the legal context for this in that\u00a0under the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.legislation.gov.uk\/ukpga\/1996\/56\/part\/V\/chapter\/IV\/crossheading\/politics\">Education Act 1996<\/a>\u00a0schools have a duty to teach children about political matters in a balanced way.\u00a0\u00a0Section 406 of that Act prohibits the promotion of partisan political views in the teaching of any subject in the school, and Section 407 says that where political issues are brought to the attention of students they should be offered a balanced presentation of opposing views. \u00a0I wrote about this the other day.<\/p>\n<p>This is why it's good to come across a guide for teachers that seems both measured and sensible. \u00a0The author of the guide says in the introduction,<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAlmost all politicians, journalists, academics and other public figures agree that racism is an evil that should have no place in our society, and that we must do everything we can to fight it. \u00a0Yet there is also <em>great disagreement<\/em> about how to identify racism, the causes of inequalities between groups, and the right solutions for tackling racism.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Just so. \u00a0See what you think. \u00a0The guide is on the Free Speech Union [*]\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/freespeechunion.org\/black-lives-matter-a-guide-to-teaching-sixth-formers-about-racism-and-inequality\/\">website.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>......................................<\/p>\n<p>[*] I should declare an interest in that I am a member of the FSU.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I'm glad I don't have responsibility today for teaching students in schools about\u00a0racism and inequality. \u00a0I don't think in all my years of teaching in schools and HE that I ever did very much of that, save through trying to...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7801\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}