BNP teachers and Where's The Line

posted by Graham - 11:40 12/03/10

It’s all about behaviour; not what organisation you support. Support for one or another organisation does matter – but only in the way it affects your behaviour. Clearly some organisations might suggest one behaves in a particular way – but at the end of the day it is the actual behaviour that is of concern and affects other people.

Teachers are tasked with changing the behaviour of children. This is usually considered to be around skills and knowledge but cannot avoid being around moral issues too. For example it would be unacceptable for a teacher to ignore one child bullying another for whatever reason. Well . . . we might expect that as parents.

But what if the teacher ignores the behaviour and says I’m only here to teach Maths or Science. “I’m not interested if your child behaves like an animal at any other times – so long as s/he gets on with the work I set and does well in the exams at the end of the year; I don’t care about anything else”! How do we feel about that? I for one expected my children to be treated with respect, to respect others and to be supported if someone is bullying them; whether that person be another child or a member of staff! And they were supported – (in both these areas) – thankfully.

According to the outcome of a government review, teachers will not be banned from teaching if they are members of the BNP. On one hand – quite right – it’s a legally constituted organisation and we live in a country that places a high value on freedom of choice. On the other hand – how can a person who feels that they want to support a party that challenges the values of multiculturalism and a racially rich Britain, be able to teach in a school that supports those values.  If a school doesn’t support those values it’s going to be quite rightly criticised by government standards agency (OFSTED).

So … where’s the line? Well it’s right here. We create resources for schools – and a recent one called ‘Where’s The Line' supports a schools attempts to deliver the DCSF guidance for schools on PREVENT. Interestingly enough the resource was quickly seized upon by the BNP as … well, let’s put it this way … they didn’t like it! Why? Because we were helping schools to help young people identify and then tackle attempts to recruit them into extremist organisations – ‘any’ extremist organisation – and they took offence. The resource was guided by the DCSF who had input into the resource and welcomed it as part of their ‘Toolkit for schools’. So to now come out and say it’s OK for a teacher of a resource like this to be a member of a party that displays those same extremist behaviours is questionable. Unless. Unless we believe that a teacher should be able to hold whatever views they wish so long as those views don’t interfere with their teaching. I’d argue in this case that it’s pretty much impossible for certain views not to influence their behaviour towards the children in their care. Especially if the name of the child in front of them is Mohammed.