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Racial discrimination (key stage 3)
Respect for all: Racial discrimination
This activity was used with pupils in key stage 3, year 8.
Aim
- To define the term 'racial discrimination' and find ways of combating it.
Activity objectives
- To be able to apply the abstract concept of 'racial discrimination' to real-life scenarios.
- To identify when 'racial discrimination' has taken place in any given real-life situation.
This activity relates to the following components in the key stage 3 PSHE framework:
- learning about the effects of all types of stereotyping, prejudice, bullying, racism and discrimination and how to challenge them assertively (3a).
and in the key stage 3 citizenship programme of study:
- learning about the legal and human rights and responsibilities underpinning society (1a);
- learning about the diversity of national, regional, religious and ethnic identities in the United Kingdom (1b).
Activity description
This lesson was part of an eight-week equal opportunities course module delivered through scheduled teaching time for PSHE and citizenship.
First, the pupils were asked to brainstorm the term 'racial discrimination'. They were given a number of scenarios to consider, including the following:
A white boy starts a fight with a smaller Asian boy. Afterwards he speaks of his opponent as 'one of them'.
A girl brings into school a racist magazine published by the British National Party (BNP). It contains nasty cartoons of Asian and black children.
Boys are playing football at dinner time. An Asian boy deliberately trips up a white boy. The white boy starts a fight.
A girl is found in the toilets holding a red marker pen. On the cubicle wall is written a racist remark about another girl.
In a geography lesson pupils are learning about unemployment. A girl says 'Unemployment keeps going up because immigrants took all the best jobs'.
A white boy asks a Sikh why he is wearing a turban.
The teacher asked the pupils to decide which of the following labels best described the event:
- racist and serious;
- serious but not racist;
- racist but not too serious;
- probably not racist (but need to ask more questions to be sure).
The pupils were then encouraged to think about types of racial discrimination that may be encountered in different areas of life, for example:
- in school;
- in the words and/or pictures within books;
- in advertising copy and/or images;
- in social situations;
- in people's everyday speech.
A discussion followed where the main elements were teased out and written down (once the pupils had agreed what these were). From these elements, the pupils were asked to come up with definitions of 'racial discrimination'. Having completed this general task, the pupils considered the equal opportunities policies of key institutions (such as the LEA or school) to explore how the policies related to the examples of racial discrimination they had previously talked about.
The pupils were then split into five groups: each one was allocated a case-study example of racial discrimination. These incidents were:
- a young Asian male who was told a job had been filled when it hadn't;
- a young Irish girl who is the butt of Irish jokes;
- racist comments being shouted by a crowd at a football match;
- a female student facing the hostility of her parents to her boyfriend of mixed heritage;
- a group of young African-Caribbean youths being blamed for vandalism.
For all the examples, the teacher asked each group how the protagonists (or other people relevant to the example) should act. After feedback, the teacher emphasised that everyone has a right to be treated with respect, regardless of ethnic origin. The pupils were reminded that they have a responsibility to speak out against injustice: it was stressed that to remain silent could be seen as condoning unjust attitudes and behaviour.
Commentary
The discussions during this eight-week activity dealt with social issues such as age and gender discrimination. This was important because racism must be considered within a general framework of human rights so pupils can see the whole picture: relationships between people exist at many levels of social organisation (eg individual, group and national).
When evaluating this lesson, pupils were asked what they understood the term 'racial discrimination' to mean. For example:
To what extent did they understand how demoralising racial discrimination can be?
How prepared would they be to speak out against it?
How committed would they be towards not discriminating against others?
Follow-up activities
Pupils could review the school's anti-racism policy and make contributions to it where invited. Such an approach would provide peer-group guidance for other pupils to challenging racism.
This activity could link with work on the history and origins of racism (eg European expansion and colonialism, migration and race relations in Britain).
Resources
The citizenship schemes of work can be found at www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/schemes
The online national curriculum can be found at www.nc.uk.net
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