Fundamental British Values in Education by Revell Lynn; Bryan Hazel;

Author:Revell, Lynn; Bryan, Hazel;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
Published: 2017-12-21T16:00:00+00:00

THE SOFT POWER OF EDUCATION

The bombers who perpetrated the suicide attacks on 7 July 2005 or ‘7/7’ were ‘home grown’, born in the United Kingdom and experienced a Western liberal childhood and youth, including an education characterised by a National Curriculum, and yet they had become radicalised. The concept of ‘radicalisation’ to understand the forces that give rise to terrorism began to be used following the attacks against the United States on 11 September 2001 (Neumann, 2008). Whilst this approach held the promise of an objective analysis of events following 9/11, some argue that ‘the radicalisation discourse was, from the beginning, circumscribed by the demands of counter-terrorist policy-makers rather than an attempt to objectively study how terrorism comes into being’ (Kundnani, 2014, p. 15). A range of influential theories to explain the disposition of the perpetrators have emerged since 7/7, such as the ‘cultural-psychological predisposition’, developed by Walter Laqueur (2004) which proposes a focus on the psychology of individuals, fundamentalist religious beliefs, aggressive youth culture, anti-Western attitudes and self-segregation (Kundnani, 2015a, 2015b, p. 19). Other influential theories include the notion of radicalisation as a theological process, championed in particular by Gartenstein-Ross and Grossman (2009, p. 29), who propose six ‘manifestations’ of radicalisation, five of which refer to religious considerations (‘the adoption of a legalistic interpretation of Islam, coming to trust only a select and ideologically rigid group of religious authorities, viewing the West and Islam as irreconcilably opposed, manifesting a low tolerance for perceived religious deviance’) and only one of which refers to political considerations (‘… and the expression of radical political views’). A third influential theory, the ‘bunch of guys’ model, developed by Sageman (2008), has an emphasis on kinship, childhood friendships and personal networks. Kundnani (2015a, 2015b) on the other hand asserts that whichever theory government aligns with, the result of such approaches is to convince security advisors that intensive surveillance, structured around a tick list of indicators, will pre-empt terrorist attacks. Rather, Kundnani proposes an alternative model, rooted in political dissatisfaction, arguing that ‘the leap into terrorism is not religiously inspired but better seen as sharing many factors with other forms of dissent, either political (the ultra-left) or behavioural’ (2015a, 2015b, p. 31). The focus on the individual, whether through religious affiliation or psychological attachment to friendship groups, makes it possible to cast that individual as ‘vulnerable’ and to legitimately place them under surveillance in school. This approach casts those at risk of radicalisation as individuals who have fallen under the spell of religious fanaticism or lost their identity within a social group rather than casting terrorism as a political act against liberal democracy. Indeed, this belief is articulated in the ‘Comment’ page of The Times under the heading ‘Find the Lost Boys before the Extremists Do’ (8 August 2017, p. 21). Journalist Rachel Sylvester concludes in her article, ‘… the best way to keep the country safe is to find the lost boys in the jungle and give them a home’. The belief that young people

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.