In this chapter we shift our focus away from adults enacting policy to consider how young people think schools can help them to develop their knowledge and understanding of terrorism and extremism. The evidence suggests that young people generally support the values of democracy and reject the use of political violence, but they want their teachers to develop critical media and political literacy and trust them to explore multiple perspectives. Our review of government-endorsed educational resources concludes that they fall short of what young people want and often represent simplistic and uncritical counter-narratives. We argue that a genuinely educational approach will take more heed of young people's opinions and engage in a more critical exploration of the issues.
This chapter reflects on the key conclusions from across the previous chapters. First, it discusses how the Prevent Duty has become normalised in schools, colleges and early years provision, as professionals incorporated it into existing structures and processes-both in the curriculum and through safeguarding. Second, it discusses how, whilst some professionals might have unconsciously reproduced potentially harmful stereotypes and simplistic assumptions about terrorism and extremism, others have consciously worked to mitigate the possible negative effects of the Duty, and have used the curriculum to further develop values education and opportunities for critical discussion. Third, the chapter reflects on the implications of the apparent banalisation of Prevent within education, and how this may or may not intersect with processes of securitisation.
Governments around the world have developed a range of policy approaches for countering violent extremism (CVE) in education. In this article we review a United Kingdom (UK) government website offering a library of resources (Educate Against Hate), evaluating the extent to which it is consistent with human rights principles. Whilst the advice, guidance and resources are varied and inconsistent, our analysis shows that children are frequently perceived as potential victims in need of protection, rather than individuals with agency, and they are rarely considered explicitly as rights holders. Whilst an equalities framework is used throughout the website, this is rarely linked to human rights, and does not prevent some stereotypical views of religious minorities being promoted. The article ends with an outline of how a more explicit engagement with children’s rights might help teachers to better align CVE policy with human rights education (HRE) principles.
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