A Manifesto Club Report

ho w Off i c i aL haT e sp ee ch R eguL a Ti o n inTe R fe R es in sch oo L L i fe

Adrian Hart

Leav e Th o se K i ds aL o ne

September 2011 www.manifestoclub.com

Contents

Contents Executive Summary Preface 1 2 3

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The Myth of Racist Kids: A More Sensible View of the Stats 10 Alongside Racism, an Epidemic of Homophobic Kids? 13 Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones: What Are Homophobic Incidents? 15 Undermining Childhood: A Bunch of Bad Seeds 19 Eroding the Moral Authority of Teachers 22 A Very Slippery Slope
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Adrian Hart is a community filmmaker and film tutor. After seven years as a parttime lecturer in special needs education, he formed Coyote Films in 1998. His films prioritise the participation of children, and for 10 years he has worked on video projects in schools, in collaboration with various London arts organisations. These include Safe (winner of LWTs Whose London? competition and broadcast in 2002), Moving Here and Only Human (made in 2006 for Essex primary schools and broadcast on Teachers TV in 2009). Adrian has lived and worked in Bethnal Green and Stratford since 1984, and he was an activist in late 1980s/early 1990s East End anti-racism campaigns. Currently living in Brighton, Adrian is now solely focussed on writing and filmmaking on the subject of race, hate-speech regulation and childhood.

The Manifesto Club campaigns against the hyper-regulation of everyday life. We support free movement across borders, free expression and free association. We challenge booze bans, photo bans, vetting and speech codes all new ways in which the state regulates everyday life on the streets, in workplaces and in our private lives. Our rapidly growing membership hails from all political traditions and none, and from all corners of the world. To join this group of free thinkers and campaigners, see: www.manifestoclub.com/join

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Conclusion: The Kids Are Alright 28 Appendices: Statistics and Incident Report Forms 31

Executive Summary

Executive Summary

The top 10 received 536 incident reports, an increase on the previous year. Executive Summary 1. The first complete FOI request into UK school hate-speech reporting reveals that around 34,000 children a year are being reported to LEAs for hatespeech incidents. In 2008/2009: 152 out of 174 (87%) English and Welsh LEAs responded to our FOI request. These 152 authorities received 30,147 hate-speech reports from nursery, primary and secondary schools. Of these, 29,586 were racist incidents; 22 local authorities were also collecting homophobic incident reports, a total of 561 incidents. The top 10 highest reporting LEAs for racist incidents received a joint total of 8,391 reports (Birmingham had the highest, with 1607 incidents). The top 10 authorities for homophobic incidents received 495 reports. In 2009/2010: 17 high-reporting LEAs received a joint total of 9,040 incident reports (Birmingham was again the highest, with 1617 incidents). 13 LEAs received 548 homophobic incident reports (Suffolk was the highest, with a total of 104 incidents). 2. The majority of these incidents affect very young children, who are unlikely to understand the meaning of their words. In both 2008/9 and 2009/10, some 60% of racist incidents occurred in primary schools. This would mean that around 20,000 primary school children a year are being reported for hate-speech incidents. Indeed, 40 nursery school children were reported for racist incidents in 200809 (12 in Brent and 8 in Tower Hamlets). In 2009/10, Hertfordshire reported three nursery school children for racism, and Tower Hamlets reported four; Barnet even reported one nursery-age child for homophobia. 3. The majority of these incidents are name-calling rather than serious bullying. Approximately 95% of racist and homophobic hatespeech incidents reported to LEAs are classified as verbal or name-calling, and involve no physical contact or violence. This report includes cases of children reported for trivial incidents, including:

Executive Summary

Executive Summary

Two primary school children are reported for homophobia after quarrelling over a rubber and calling each other gay and lesbian; Two primary-aged girls are reported for passing a note in class that a boy wants some lip balm cuz hez gay; A primary school child is reported for shouting out in class this works gay!; Two primary-aged boys are reported, a Christian and a Muslim, who call each other gaylord, and burst into giggles when asked what the word means. 4. The imposition of official anti-bullying policies on schools brands children racist or homophobic at a young age and does nothing for the cause of racial and sexual equality. Children need space to play and to learn the meaning of words, without being reported to the local education authority. These policies are an inappropriate intervention into playground life, and undermine teachers ability to set a moral example to children and to teach them right from wrong. These policies also trivialise the real problems of racism and homophobia, and do nothing for the noble goal of equality. There is a world of difference between racist abuse and primary school playground spats blurring this difference does nothing for equality.

5. We call on the coalition government to roll back this coercive and ineffective policy of hate speech reporting. Most LEAs require their schools to report racist incidents, and a number require these schools to also report homophobic incidents. LEAs see the reporting of racist incidents as part of their legal duties under the Race Relations Amendment Act 2000. The coalition government has pledged to ease up on anti-bullying legislation in order to restore autonomy to schools and respect their professional judgment. We strongly urge the coalition to roll back hate-speech reporting duties to give kids more space to be kids, and leave teachers to use their judgement about how to deal with playground arguments.

Preface

Preface

themselves, children are encouraged to rely on superficial and defensive speech-codes. Preface Over the last decade, something disquieting has happened in school playgrounds and classrooms across the UK. The serious business of childrens play making friends, having arguments, falling out and making up again has been steadily stifled. Since the requirement to report racist incidents came into force in May 2002, it has become routine for teachers to record the names of children involved in innocuous teasing and playtime banter. Anonymised reports detailing these occurrences are then submitted to the Local Education Authority. Bizarre as it may sound, this means the behaviour of up to a quarter of a million children have been officially certified as racist or homophobic. The trend looks set to continue. The Manifesto Club calls for the abolition of hatespeech policies in UK schools. Anti-bullying legislation may seem well intentioned or even sensible, but it is a disproportionate measure whose real legacy has been to drain childhood of meaning. Kids can no longer enjoy unfettered peer interaction, whilst their teachers arent trusted to set clear moral standards of behaviour. Such an incursion into childrens everyday play is unprecedented. Rather than being taught to think and judge for The Manifesto Club campaigns for freedom in everyday life. We stand for a civilised society more at ease with the diverse relationships that emerge between people as we go about our lives. Unfortunately, hate-speech reporting only gives credence to the pernicious idea that government supervision of everyday activities is a necessary precondition to ensure order and good sense. It is the worst way to foster a friendly understanding between people regardless of colour, creed or sexual preference and instead defers to the supervision of arbitrary authorities. Ironically, todays children are more comfortable with social diversity than ever before. They couldnt be more aware of issues like discrimination and intolerance, and their teachers are far from complacent when problems arise. Hate-speech reporting sells schools and children short. It undermines the formation of autonomous, decent individuals that we can trust to make up their own minds, and it frustrates the long road towards a truly enlightened and tolerant society for us all. We say: leave those kids alone!

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Section 1

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The Myth of Racist Kids: A More Sensible View of the Stats

In October 2009, the Manifesto Club published a report entitled The Myth of Racist Kids: anti-racist policy and the regulation of school life. Its central argument was that since the requirement to report so-called racist incidents was imposed on schools in May 2002, teachers were being increasingly pressured to search out and record incidents where none existed.1 Not only were schools being called on to use a broad definition of racism, covering everything from name-calling to children leaving others out of games, but the need to confront and discuss racist incidents was becoming a key racialising force in UK schools. Official anti-racism was encouraging children to identify primarily with their own ethnic group and to view their relationships with children from other ethnicities as fraught and somehow different. Based on these findings and underpinned by a firm sense of conviction that todays generation of children are in fact ideally placed to transcend race, we called for the abolition of hate-speech policy in schools. Since then, maybe not so unsurprisingly, the idea that Britains schools harbour an endemic racism has persisted. Statistics derived from the stockpiling of racist incident forms have continued to carry weight in discussions about children and race, both in policy circles and the wider media. Worse, this genuine sense of unease surrounding the young has been extended to cover homophobia too. In turn, the resultant conviction that something must be done has inevitably substantiated the view that opposing official anti-racism or anti-homophobia is itself a sign of
1 A note on the legal position: to fulfil the obligations placed on public bodies by the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, LEAs believed that racist incident reporting represented one of a number of best practice ways to comply with the Acts statutory general duty to promote race equality (it was, after all, a specific recommendation of the Macpherson Report). Racist incident reporting is a nonstatutory requirement and not, in itself, a legal duty. However, until the last election the government intended to make the recording of prejudice-based bullying a statutory legal duty. Racist incident reporting continues as though it were a legal duty (indeed Ofsted insists on it), but most LEAs are waiting to find out if they need to require their schools to submit reports on homophobic and other hate bullying. As of Summer 2011, the coalition position remains ambiguous.

closet bigotry. However, the Manifesto Club believes there are many good reasons to oppose hate speech policies in schools. In fact, we think that official sanction and patronising hypersensitivity frustrates the goal of more openness, autonomy and trust between equals. Moreover, the reason genuine race-related abuse is so shocking to us and rightly so is that Britain is so much more tolerant than in the past. So in order to explore whats really happening in UK schools, we have conducted a Freedom of Information (FoI) survey into school hate-speech reporting. We asked all 174 English and Welsh Local Education Authorities (LEAs) to send us data on hate speech incidents submitted to their borough for 2008/09. One hundred and fifty-two LEAs (87%) responded and submitted a sum total of 29,586 racist incident reports. Over half of the children reported on these forms are of primary school age, meaning they range from five to eleven-years-old. Overwhelmingly, approximately 95% of racist incidents are classified as simply verbal or name-calling. For 2008/09, from LEAs who break the figures down according to school phase, 60% of incidents take place in primary schools and 96% are classified as verbal or name-calling. We can see that by far the highest number of incidents are reported from Birmingham primary and secondary schools, with 1,607 incidents reported throughout 2008/09. The frequency of incidents reported from primary schools is also striking (949 incidents, or 60%). Birmingham is Britains largest education authority. Far from suggesting that Birmingham has the most incidents of racist abuse however, it is more the case that Birmingham City Council is particularly stringent in its requirement that all schools are proactive in searching out and recording racist incidents. For the following year, 2009/10, we found similar numbers of racist incidents being reported to LEAs: a total of 9,040 reports from 17 highscoring authorities. Noticeably, the data we received showed that in 2008/9 there were 40 incidents reported in nursery schools; and in 2009/10, a total of eight racist incidents were reported from nursery school level, including three

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Section 2

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from Hertfordshire and four from Tower Hamlets. The fact that under-fives are branded as racist shows clearly the meaninglessness of this category, not least the bizarre consequences of schools being expected to judge the children they teach as if they were hardened bigots posing terrifying threats to society.

This research has also found its way into the recent coalition schools White Paper:
Teachers, pupils and charities report that prejudice-based bullying in particular is on the increase. It is of course unacceptable for young people to be bullied because of their sexuality, yet this happens to two thirds of lesbian, gay and bisexual pupils. Ninety-eight per cent of young gay pupils hear the word gay used as a form of abuse at school, and homophobic bullying is often directed at heterosexual pupils as well.4

Alongside Racism, an Epidemic of Homophobic Kids?

However, rather than being a cause for question and concern, statistics such as the above have more often motivated plans for the extension of anti-bullying legislation. Back in June 2010, as the new coalition governments Department for Education settled in, a new bullying duty on schools originally drafted by New Labour was placed on hold. This measure had been designed to extend the existing practice of racist incident reporting into a statutory obligation to record all prejudice-based verbal and physical abuse according to type, meaning race, religion or culture, disability or special educational needs, sexuality, gender or gender identity. One of the key concerns driving this expansion of hate-speech reporting was a growing and highly generalised concern that children are not only racist: they may just as well be homophobic. Spearheading this planned expansion are calls for urgent action to tackle what has been uncritically labelled the problem of homophobic abuse in Britains schools. Homophobic bullying is almost epidemic in Britains schools reported Stonewall in June 2007.2 Stonewall is certain there is an impending epidemic of homophobia in schools because its research found that 95% of secondary school teachers and three quarters of primary school teachers hear that is so gay or youre so gay in their schools.3
2 School report, Stonewall, June 2007, p.2 www.stonewall.org.uk/documents/school_ report.pdf 3 The Teachers Report: homophobic bullying in Britains schools/The School Report: the experiences of young gay people in Britains schools, Stonewall, 2008. Research was carried out by YouGov and the Schools Health Education Unit for The Teachers Report and The School Report respectively.

Yet despite declarations they will cut burdensome red tape and hand decision-making powers back to schools, the new coalition government appears as convinced as its predecessor that homophobic bullying is a pressing problem. In The Coalition: our programme for government, a section on schools unequivocally states: we will help schools tackle bullying in schools, especially homophobic bullying.5 In our Freedom of Information survey of LEAs, we also asked if incidents of homophobic abuse were already being officially gathered from schools. The majority of respondents told us that schools may have their own internal procedures but there is, as yet, no requirement they report data to the authority. Many informed us they were awaiting a decision from government on whether there will be a statutory requirement to collect this data. However, 22 authorities have already opted to require schools to record and report incidents of homophobic abuse. The data we collected from LEAs that record homophobic incidents show a similar pattern to racist incidents. In 200809, most (60%) incidents are reported from primary school level. In fact, the London Borough of Barnet is something of a pioneer authority, having collected details of both racist and homophobic incidents for
4 The Importance of Teaching: schools White Paper: we will support heads to take a stand against bullying, p.31 www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/ schoolswhitepaper/b0068570/the-importance-of-teaching/behaviour/bullying 5 The Coalition: our programme for government, 2010, p.29

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Section 3

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several years. In 2008/09, it received 112 reported homophobic incidents from its schools, pupil referral units and nurseries. Most (63) derive from primary schools, and are verbal or name-calling incidents. A number of incidents involve adults simply overhearing what they consider derogatory comments. From the data available, it appears none involve physical or violent behaviour. The data for 2009/10 show one homophobic incident is reported by a nursery in Barnet. Barnets proactive stance in requiring its schools to report homophobic incidents gives an indication of what to expect if the government forces every LEA to do the same. Rather than occasional intervention from teachers in extreme cases, a zero-tolerance approach will ensure children become hypersensitive to homophobia, whilst the number of homophobic incidents, defined in broader and more defuse terms, will rise.

of childish playground code: if somebody calls you gay, then the proper response is to say they are a lesbian. Then you have established yourself, and everyone can be friends. Another homophobic incident form records that one child becomes upset and tells a teacher because the other children had been holding playground elections to vote on whether or not he is gay. (Form B). Rather than admiring the democratic impulse of a group of seven to eleven yearolds however, and telling the children to find a different game, the teacher must submit a form describing this incident in detail. The somewhat cruel but perfectly normal behaviour of kids in the playground becomes repackaged as an incidence of homophobic hatred, as if on a par with the systemic and institutional discrimination against gays in 1950s Britain. However, for the purposes of playground insult-exchange, deciding whos in and whos out of the game today, it matters very little what gay or lesbian actually mean. They simply have the status of insults. For instance, one boy shouts out in class, This works gay! (Form C). Here, of course, the real problem is that the primary school child is disrespectfully announcing to the class that the work the teacher has set is rubbish. Similarly, another child declares that both Muslims and the Koran are gay, presumably in a bid to be as inflammatory as possible (Form D). However, rather than a matter of simple classroom discipline, both occurrences must be categorised as hate speech and written up as an official incident. The relevant form must be submitted to the head teacher within 24 hours, and the child is informed that next time, his mother will receive a phone call. But of course, the meaning of gay when used by children diverges from what we take from the word as adults. When children pluck words from the adult world to insult each other, these terms take on new and childish meanings. It then becomes unbelievably funny when grown-ups repeat the word in its childish sense, and challenges the child to explain what it means. In one case, two boys, a Christian and a Jew, are insulting each other coming out of assembly, and are overheard using the term gaylord (Form E). When challenged to explain the meaning of this term by a

Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones: What Are Homophobic Incidents?

Opposed to the accepted view that children are constantly engaged in various forms of homophobic abuse, we have found that most homophobic incident forms submitted to us by Barnet and Bath & NE Somerset primary schools record relatively trivial incidents. The problem is that children tend to use the word gay as slang for rubbish. Perhaps the quintessential illustration of what constitutes an incident of homophobic abuse is the form that records one child, on not being given a rubber to borrow from a second, as having called her a lesbian. The predictable response that they are gay comes back in return (Form A). This simplistic form of tit-for-tat between two primary-aged children is surely immature and unedifying, if not rather unkind. Yet it is hardly an incident of homophobia: in fact, on that reading, both children would be equally perpetrators and victims of homophobic crimes. Rather, this exchange ensconces a sort

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Section 4

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teacher, the boys burst into fits of giggles. Significantly, when asked by the teacher what gay means, the boys dont know. This lack of understanding of the adult meaning of gay is a particular feature noted by teachers in their reports (Form F, Form G, Form H). For instance, one incident from a primary school describes a teacher asking a child after using the word gay if he knows what it means (Form I). The boy demures. The teacher then asks the class if any of them know what gay means. The answer comes back that gay is when a boy kisses a boy. The teacher then has to explain that it is actually when a boy wants to kiss or is with another boy, or a girl is with another girl. This cryptic language further confuses and confounds children. Such an obviously innocent understanding of the sexual relations of adults as a boy kissing another boy should make us want to protect children, not conclude they are homophobes and submit them to the hard edge of state regulation. Children should have a right to their childish, but no less serious little world where the possibility that your dad is gay or your mum is a lesbian is a matter of great and ponderous importance. Of course, older children slowly begin to learn about sex and sexuality. This is reflected in their tendency to flit from gay as a vernacular for rubbish to gay as describing same-sex relationships. Its unsurprising, then, that homophobic incidents emerge from the novelty and inevitable hilarity of pondering same-sex relationships. The same amusement is often found in heterosexual relationships, too. For examples, as two boys celebrate scoring a goal by rolling around on the grass together, two girls watching are overheard saying this is gay (Form J). They are then written up as homophobic speech-offenders. A further instance we found was a note being passed between girls in a primary-school classroom saying that a classmate must want some lip balm cuz hez gay (Form K). In coming into possession of the teacher, the girls who are hazy on the meaning of gay must miss break-time the following day to have it explained and be suitably disciplined. We must acknowledge, though, that primary-aged children have very little grasp of what adult sexuality actually entails, and certainly cannot engage in homo-

sexual sexual acts any more than they can engage in heterosexual sexual acts. This makes the extension of adult meanings and responses to these terms on to children all the more worrying. However, criticism of hate-speech incident reporting is often met with stern declarations that children, despite what they intend, must learn that adults find certain language unacceptable. This is true. Its important that teachers offer moral guidance and set clear standards of respectful behaviour. However, this shouldnt mean that every time a child speaks out of turn the event must be subjected to official procedure and form-filling. In fact, the forms we received offer more nuanced examples of the confusing dynamics hate-speech reporting is creating in schools, especially concerning racist and homophobic incidents. For instance, in Bath, a racist incident vies for recognition with a homophobic incident as children hurl batty boy and broccoli head back and forth (Form L). They are officially recognised as both perpetrators and victims at the same time. Finally, one form reveals a Christian and a Muslim uniting together to shout underneath a teachers window that Mr B. is gay! (Form M). Far from an instance of homophobia, it would seem that children are bonding across religious lines through the lively playground practice of banter and insult and in so doing, making firm friends. Of course, Mr B should also be free to assert firm adult authority in the face of such cheeky behaviour.

Undermining Childhood: A Bunch of Bad Seeds

Since most hate-speech incidents are drawn from the everyday world of primary aged children, this is the sphere that urgently needs defending. The policy that every misplaced word with a hate-speech connotation must be challenged might seem sensible. But in reality, children need a balance between experiencing clear lines of adult authority on the one hand and having the space to experiment through unfettered peer interac-

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Section 4

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tion on the other. The whole idea of hate-speech in this context blurs the boundary between childhood and adulthood by subjecting kids to adult categories and judgements, which in turn squeezes the meaning out of childhood. In general, school hate-speech policy is driven by the notion society is riddled with homophobia, racism, Islamophobia and so on. It therefore tries to preserve cohesion between what it sees as vulnerable social groups. Yet at the heart of hate-speech policy lies the uncritical and pernicious idea that schooling is the ideal starting point for engineering resolutions to problems both real and imagined in the world outside. Rather than confronting the complexities and nuances of contemporary society, it is much easier for policy advocates to avoid this responsibility by recasting children as the poisonous bad seeds of future adults. The approach underlying hate-speech policy also begets a worrying determinism about how children develop. Indeed, it neurotically imagines that kids errant behaviour is a portentous sign of the bad adulthood that awaits. The policy reconceptualises children as miscreant mini-adults, in need of constant correction. This is a quaintly old fashioned and blinkered viewpoint. Precisely because they are children, any attempt to sanitise and whitewash their behaviour is destined to fail. Of course, children can be pretty good at acting grown-up when required. But any teacher knows that after a class discussion on the importance of kindness, children will say all the right things and then, minutes later, do exactly the opposite in the playground. The nip-it-in-the-bud mindset of policymakers avoids considering how children actually develop. By labelling their actions as racist or homophobic, it assumes children are inescapably tainted by a latently racist and homophobic society. In fact, childrens behaviour is dominated not by poison leaking in from society, but overwhelmingly by the condition of being a child. In reality, children are seldom (if ever) homophobic or racist in the way policy advocates imagine. Children simply access words, phrases and fragments of understanding from the adult world and re-employ them

in the service of their own child-like interactions. As we have seen, in a childs world, these terms correlate quite differently. For instance, an article which appeared in BBC News Magazine entitled How gay became childrens insult of choice revealed how grounded and sensible both teachers and their pupils are, counter to the official hysteria surrounding homophobia.6 In this case, we get children themselves informing adults that they know exactly what gay means and that its alright to be gay (thank you very much), but they use the word in a different sense. Children are more than capable of grasping this difference of context, in a way that seems to escape policymakers. For example:
I have interviewed scores of school kids about this and they are always emphatic that [gay] has nothing at all to do with hostility to homosexuals, says Mr Thorne, compiler of the Dictionary of Contemporary Slang. It is nearly always used in contexts where sexual orientation and sexuality are completely irrelevant.

Yet the Stonewall survey lumps gay in with clear insults such as poof, bender and batty boy. In the comment section below the BBC article appear the sober responses of pupils and teachers alike, some self-professedly homosexual, noting how they remember gay rarely being used in a homophobic sense. This heartening conclusion is buttressed by recent academic research which finds that teenage boys in particular are now far more likely to intellectualise pro-gay attitudes and have friends who are openly gay. Indeed, Mark McCormack (2011) finds that if anything is stigmatised today it is homophobia and not homosexuality: observing sixth form college students reveals openly gay students are adamant they have been neither bullied or harassed. In one example, John, an openly gay 16-year-old, runs for student president, arguing that being gay helps him understand equality issues:
6 BBC online, Winterman, 18 March 2008 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7289390.stm

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Section 5

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John is applauded at the end of his speech. As he leaves the hall after the event, several sporty boys gather round, congratulating him. One comments, mate, youre such a homo, while another says, youre so gay. Youve got my vote. John laughs, saying Im gay for all of you.7

Eroding the moral authority of teachers

Yet, with some irony, we can see how the policy mindset converts a world (where attitudes are liberalising) into a world full of insipient dangers. In particular, childrens dangerous language becomes the harbinger of a rising tide of prejudice. Back in the real world, McCormacks observations debunk this jaundiced view and give us cause to celebrate. Yet despite this wealth of commonsense, current policy encourages the idea that the only way to ensure children learn right from wrong is by monitoring their playground squabbles and reporting any troublesome words to the local authority. This means invoking a very superficial and derivative kind of moral approval from government policy, rather than any firm, principled sense of right and wrong that children can begin to understand in any real depth. Ultimately, this impedes childrens moral development by refusing them a space safe from adult responsibilities and concerns to test out the consequences of their kindness and their cruelty. As an alternative to hate-speech regulation, we should stand up for the ability of children to learn to think and act for themselves. We should feel comfortable allowing kids to experiment through unfettered peer interaction, rather than encouraging them to mimic shallow, over-sensitive speech codes. This means trusting that teachers can make the judgment of if and when to intervene if things look like theyre getting out of hand.

One less remarked consequence of the imposition of hate-speech regulation on schools is that it bypasses teachers ability to judge incidents themselves and know when and how far to intervene. Teachers are expected to behave as drone-like mediators of policy rather than decent human beings and experienced hands trusted to set suitable moral standards of behaviour. Indeed, policy advocates consider teachers who demonstrate zero-tolerance towards the speech-offences of children as exemplars of their profession. Meanwhile, teachers who do anything less are held in contempt:
When some children, young people, or adults describe what they see negatively as gay, for example those trainers are so gay, they are using homophobic language. If this is not challenged, the school or youth service is condoning homophobia.8

The Brighton and Hove guidance makes it explicit that not challenging every single use of the term gay is in fact the real definition of homophobia. The view is widely shared: for example, Oldham NUT, following its own survey of homophobia in schools, warned of the dire consequences of teachers failure to act:
The alternative cannot be anything other than the continuation of the status quo: passive acceptance in the midst of the very institutions dedicated to enlightenment and good citizenship [of] the incubation and perpetuation of deeply ignorant and deeply injurious bigotry.9

This flies in the face of common sense. On this reading, the choice playground insults of young children become a direct reflection of the
7 The declining significance of homohysteria for male students in three sixth forms in the south of England, British Educational Research Journal (37), April 2011, p.345 8 Safe places for all children and young people challenging homophobic language, 2008, Brighton & Hove City Council Children & Young Peoples Trust, 2008, p.1 9 Prevalence of homophobia survey, Oldham NUT, November 2008

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moral integrity of their teachers. No wonder teachers go along with reporting requirements: to challenge this zero-tolerance mindset is a sign of homophobia. A new generation of teachers brought up on these ideas might well have become accustomed to the lack of space for critical manoeuvre. It therefore tends to be older, more experienced teachers those more confident in their own judgement and professionalism who stand up to these policies:
Words like epidemic are a gross exaggeration [My local authority] is now requiring us to record homophobic incidents and bullying but I am ignoring this request.10

One of the more worrying consequences of the wide definitions of homophobia and racism used by hate-speech policy is that both become interpreted in highly subjective and increasingly arbitrary ways. Schools must exercise common sense. But its no wonder that schools bypass common sense when numerous local government websites advise:
Failure to investigate, even where an incident appears to be of a relatively minor nature, could be seen as condoning racism and could be used as evidence that a school is not taking seriously its legal duties under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act.13

This is the view of an experienced deputy head teacher. Refusing to complete official incident forms would no doubt mean this teacher, in the eyes of the authority, is condoning homophobia or indeed, is themselves a homophobe. Yet, in common with probably all teachers, this deputy head teacher is far from complacent about discrimination or intolerance:
Ive always addressed it with kids by teaching them that homosexuality is acceptable and therefore the word gay should not be used as an insult.11

Whether its policy-makers in government or teachers in the playground, the priority has become to be seen as being anti-racist, anti-homophobic and so on. As one East London primary teacher puts it:
You might think its daft, you might even wonder if youre racist to think its daft, but in any case these days youre going to think, hang on Id better be careful here. The best thing to do is just report it.14

Teachers understand children better than the advocates of hate-speech reporting. They know the playground is a messy place, full of banter and teasing, falling out and making friends again. They recognise that children need this experience. Adults must step back and allow kids to work things out. For many schools, balancing this with the obligations of official incident reporting highlights the absurdity of it all:
They [the local authority] dont really trust us do they? Of course we let children know certain words are unacceptable. But theyre not going to stop behaving like children are they?12
10 Primary school teacher, 19 October 2010 11 Ibid 12 Primary school teacher, 27 October 2010

In the name of a more enlightened and confident approach, we should trust teachers and schools to operate as they see fit and apply their professional skills and experience. Strict zero-tolerance policies force teachers to abdicate their professional judgement. We have implemented a system that bestows certain words with near magical powers, capable of infecting children with prejudice they invariably dont properly understand. Ironically, the purpose of a liberal education should be to foster the kind of autonomy that enables children to formulate their own values, rather than simply recite what they think adults wish to hear.

13 p.2 www.wiltshire.gov.uk/dealing-with-racist-incidents.pdf 14 Primary school teacher, September 2009

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A Very Slippery Slope

We can see how easy it has become to promote new policy initiatives as vitally important for society to filter out various forms of supposedly incipient bigotry in children. As we have seen, in recent years, government proposals have sought to place new legal duties on schools, not just to report racist incidents, but all incidents of verbal and physical abuse by type. If such extensive hate-speech and anti-bullying regulation is imposed on schools, the atmosphere will become increasingly fraught, and childrens perfectly innocent and innocuous play even more stifled. In response to growing evidence that hate-incident reporting is absurd, however, its advocates typically resort to a list of reasons why there is no alternative. The policy may, they say, be something of a blunt instrument. But without it, the problem runs unchecked. There would be no way of flagging up escalating patterns of serious hate-related bullying. The list of reasons inevitably includes the idea that ignoring incidents sends out a powerful message to children that racism and homophobia are acceptable. This argument is often substantiated by implicit or explicit appeals to the pyramid of hate. According to this diagram, playground bullying constitutes the foundation of an inevitable sequence of escalating incidents. Each level supplies the necessary grounds for the next, until we arrive at murder and eventually genocide or the Nazi holocaust at the top. This terror of the potential tyrant within us all bespeaks a genuine concern about what might happen if people are left to their own devices. Not only does it reflect a profoundly crass understanding of history, but it rests on a disturbingly deterministic understanding of the future. It suggests that rather than being capable of critical reflection and open to debate and discussion, people will instead only learn to do the right thing through the increased supervision and monitoring of the state.
Figure 1: The pyramid of hate from Show Racism the Red Card training material

For example, quoted in an equally decontexualised setting, Stonewall cites the murder of a gay man:

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Conclusion

27

Homophobic bullying in Britains schools damages the life chances of young lesbian and gay people forever. While it continues to go unaddressed in so many schools it also validates the prejudice of others, such as the killer of Michael Causer, against gay people too.15

This correlation between playground spats and murder echoes the arguments deployed by official anti-racism following publication of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report (1999). In that case, too, a direct connection is made between murder and the need for zero-tolerance interventions at the earliest age. This led to the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 and imposed duties on schools, which most LEAs interpreted as a requirement to record and report all racist incidents. The call for action on homophobic and transphobic abuse in schools looks like following a similar path with the Education Act 2002 (and now the Equality Act 2010) cited as the legal basis to lever in new statutory duties. As our FOI research shows, authorities who have implemented the policy record most incidents from primary schools. These incidents are trivial. And yet, the link is repeatedly and lazily made between these instances and extreme behaviour we would all recognise as profoundly wrong. In fact, Britain is far more tolerant than in the past. Indeed, today its the rarity of racial tension and violence that makes it so shocking to us.

Advocates of hate-speech policies think that a zero-tolerance approach is necessary, regardless of how trivial an incident may seem. Often underpinning this view is an exaggerated sense that British society is as gripped by discrimination and prejudice as ever. Insofar as this idea tends to crumble in the face of social reality, another impulse is often revealed. Energising the demand for state intervention is the notion that everyday social interactions themselves are inherently abusive or contaminated. Children, their parents and teachers become in various ways redefined as helpless. A school could be markedly untroubled by bullying or conflict of any kind, and yet its pupils are assumed to be on the cusp of developing into racists or homophobes due to malign influences residing at home or lurking somewhere in society. It also seems that teachers cant be trusted. Instead, they are accused of failing to recognise that even trivial incidents contain an emergent prejudice and must be nipped in the bud. Under this kind of pressure, schools bypass their professional judgement. We welcome the coalitions new guidance on bullying. On the recording of hate incidents, it explicitly states that we want schools to exercise their own judgment as to what will work best for their pupils. However, despite backing off from imposing legal duties, the government has to some extent reinforced assumptions about the prevalence of homophobic bullying in schools. It is perhaps understandable, therefore, that LEAs continue to require schools to record and report hate incidents, and we can expect the Equality Act 2010 to broaden and underscore hate-incident regulation. Our concern is that the new Department for Education will succumb to pressure groups and associated research that claim to hold hard evidence proving the existence of serious hate-related bullying in UK schools. We hope the DfE will return autonomy to UK schools and genuinely respect their professional judgment, free from the debilitating burden imposed by LEAs in the name of good practice. A good start would be to make it clear that there is no statutory legal duty to record and report racist incidents, and that a zero-tolerance approach is unnecessary and potentially damaging.

Conclusion: The Kids Are Alright

Our Freedom of Information analysis demonstrates that most racist incidents are reported by primary schools, involving children between six and eleven years old. The vast majority are verbal or name-calling incidents. The early indication is that homophobic incidents also follow the same pattern. This shouldnt surprise us: children have a tendency to engage in petty insult exchange and banter involving words they invariably dont understand.
15 p.4 www.stonewall.org.uk/documents/the_teachers_report_1.pdf

Conclusion

28

Appendix

29

Nurseries and primary schools especially should be spared the futile exercise of hate-speech regulation. Children start to feel increasingly hectored by zero tolerance procedures that erode their freedom to experiment and interact. It is through free play that children flourish. How ironic that these policies are justified by the idea that you can make the future brighter by nipping certain behaviours or words in the bud. Of course they insult each other; theyre kids! If there is something vital adults can offer children its firm adult authority on the one hand and unfettered peer-interaction on the other. This will foster a childs capacity for autonomy and ability to form their own judgments about issues like racism and homophobia. There is a long way to go if our aim is to live in a civilised and tolerant society where people are free to live as they choose and to interact freely with others in public and private regardless of race, gender, religion or sexual orientation. Yet ironically, whilst nominally claiming this noble aspiration as its own, hate-speech policy moves in entirely the opposite direction by elevating the role of speech codes and state supervision and sanction. We say, leave those kids alone!

Appendix: Statistics and Incident Report Forms

Homophobic Incident Reports 200809

Based on academic, financial or calendar year figures (ending 2009)

Secondary

LEA Barnet Hertfordshire Camden Sheffield Brighton & Hove Bristol Bath & NE Somerset Haringey Cambridgeshire Cornwall Waltham Forest Wigan Leicestershire Tower Hamlets Conwy Kirklees South Glos Northamptonshire North Lincs Durham West Berks Medway Total

63 24 14 26 8 7 7 4 2 155

41 21 15 10 7 3 2 1 2 102

8 8

15 15

Total Incidents 112 73 66 45 44 41 36 31 26 21 15 10 9 9 5 5 4 3 3 2 1 0 561

Primary

Special

PRU

Appendix

30

Appendix

31

Homophobic Incidents: Selected LEAs 200910

Based on academic, financial or calendar year figures (ending 2010)

Racist Incident Reports: 17 High-Scoring LEAs 200910

Based on academic, financial or calendar year figures (ending 2010)

Special/PRU

Secondary

Secondary

PRU/Other

Primary

Nursery

Primary

Special

Nursery

Total

LEA Suffolk Hertfordshire Barnet Camden Brighton Bristol Tower Hamlets Waltham Forest Cambridgeshire Bath & NE Somerset North Lincs Kirklees Medway Total

LEA Birmingham Leeds Hertfordshire Kent Suffolk Essex Hampshire Coventry Northants Barnet Bristol Kirklees Durham Tower Hamlets Camden Bath & NE Som West Berks Total

26 46 22 23 1 4 4 126

77 42 7 3 16 11 1 157

1 19 20

1 1

104 92 89 88 48 38 29 17 16 15 6 5 1 548

1090 672 567 480 239 371 228 230 185 191 153 107 201 22 15 4751

405 502 418 345 429 224 261 209 149 111 68 125 22 27 23 3318

110 63 92 41 16 5 45 38 1 3 4 8 426

12 15 12 8 20 5 13 85

0 3 1 4 8

1617 1252 1092 874 684 600 534 439 392 309 287 237 236 235 165 49 38 9040

Total

Appendix

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Appendix

33

Class Verbal/ Name Calling

class Physical violence

Secondary

Primary

Nursery

Special

Middle

Based on academic, financial or calendar year figures (ending 2009) submitted by 152 LEAs (England and Wales). Resulting in Police involvement LEA Bradford Hounslow Havering Redbridge Islington Leicester Sutton Oldham North Yorkshire Tower Hamlets Brighton & Hove Portsmouth Camden Ealing Brent Rochdale Luton Calderdale Central Bedfordshire Durham Telford & Wrekin Slough East Sussex North Tyneside Milton Keynes Nottingham City Dudley Plymouth Bedford Worcestershire Medway

Class Verbal/ Name Calling

class Physical violence

Total Incidents

Resulting in exclusion

183 217 219 220 166 171 138 95 104 222 117 136 126 94 93 37 110 113 163 131 93 78 25

131 71 80 75 115 61 117 138 160 22 117 97 66 112 143 44 116 81 43 66 63 51 60

106 2 79

8 12 1 1 1 0

20 34 8 19 18 35 46 3 9 54 21

9 8

4 18 39 42 24 36 2

159 291 257 116 86 180 259 226 240 235 233 223 78 193 226 199 219 186 182 158

4 17 10 3 4 4 10 8 3 1 3 12 0 8 0 24 8 5 4 1 5

4 11

314 312 299 295 281 275 273 272 264 260 253 251 249 248 246 242 238 236 233 230 226 223 218 208 207 205 192 191 187 187 185

Secondary

Primary

Nursery

Special

Middle

LEA Birmingham Leeds Hertfordshire Kent Suffolk Surrey Manchester Derby Hampshire Oxfordshire Essex Buckinghamshire Coventry Northamptonshire Cambridgeshire Barnet Bristol Lancashire Norfolk Leicestershire Staffordshire Newham Doncaster Sheffield Hull Wiltshire Thurrock

949 670 646 482 231 295 304 169 205 217 227 191 179 214 201 206

518 502 337 408 380 250 164 182 214 151 116 182 132 122 116 68

22

1 4 0 2

127 79 25 28 7 75 38 40 2 9

2 3 1 9

12 76 10 51 4 49 47

Other

PRU

634 836 543 320 397 324 272

57 30 9 6 11 19

83 95 27

1607 1248 39 1098 8 3 941 636 605 598 581 573 504 475 428 419 410 406 386 383 373 363 361 358 347 345 338 335 326 321

Total Incidents

Resulting in exclusion

Racist Incidents Reported to LEAs by Schools in 200809 (England & Wales = 174 LEAs 152 Eng/22 Wales)
Other

Resulting in Police involvement

PRU

Appendix

34

Appendix

35

Resulting in Police involvement

Resulting in Police involvement 3 1 3

Class Verbal/ Name Calling

class Physical violence

Total Incidents

Class Verbal/ Name Calling

class Physical violence

LEA Derbyshire Nottinghamshire West Sussex North Lincolnshire Peterborough Wigan Salford Tameside Middlesbrough Reading Southampton Swindon Solihull Dorset Stockport Kirklees Greenwich Merton Stockton-on-Tees Bexley East Riding Hackney Croydon Kingston Upon Thames Rotherham Lambeth Stoke Warrington Lincolnshire Westminster

LEA Sandwell Barnsley Bromley Liverpool South Gloucestershire Sefton Bury Northumberland Barking & Dagenham Cornwall Trafford Warwickshire Blackpool Wolverhampton Wokingham Newport North East Lincolnshire Wakefield Blackburn with Darwen Hillingdon Shropshire Wirral Gateshead Wandsworth Lewisham Southwark Bath & N East Somerset

114 83 112 100 111 71 104 101 82 58 56 84 96 72 71 87 69 99 64 56 39 76

64 86 47 65 51 32 9 46 59 65 55 44 37 58 55 35 59 11 51 42 68 23

15 10

2 2

5 16 36 8 12 1 31 4 6 5 7 9 2 1

13 5 42 8 3 1 6 2

143 150 154 153 123 146 132 60 144 126 55 126 142 69 99

0 3 4 1 9 4 3 3 1 5 0 6 1 0 0

1 3

183 180 180 178 174 172 170 162 161 159 155 153 143 142 142 141 137 136 131 129 128 122 116 115 110 110 109 109 102 101

46 47 70 32 52 38 10 53 59 57 45 37 35 43 33 28 30 29

48 49 19 20 40 53 43 31 23 25 33 36 37 13 34 31 25 23

33

1 2 1 1 8 8 1

4 1

1 1 7 40 16 1

81 50 88 83 69 50 78 69 56 67

7 0 8 3 3 4 0 5 4 0

16 18

99 98 98 96 93 91 88 87 86 85 84 83 82 82 80 78 73 73 72 71 67 67 63 63 62 61 54

Total Incidents

Resulting in exclusion

Resulting in exclusion

Secondary

Secondary

Primary

Nursery

Special

Primary

Nursery

Special

Middle

Middle

Other

Other

PRU

PRU

Appendix

36

Appendix

37

Resulting in Police involvement

Resulting in Police involvement 1

Class Verbal/ Name Calling

class Physical violence

Total Incidents

Class Verbal/ Name Calling

class Physical violence

LEA Bournemouth Herefordshire Knowsley Newcastle Sunderland Bracknell Forest Darlington Gloucestershire York Halton Isle of White St Helens Redcar & Cleveland Devon South Tyneside Torbay West Berks Bridgend Waltham Forest Pembrokeshire Poole Conwy North Somerset Kensington & Chelsea Neath Port Talbot Haringey Rutland Richmond upon Thames

LEA Tofaen Caerphilly Harrow Merthyr Tydfil Powys Gwynedd Monmouthshire Vale of Glamorgan Hartlepool Total

29 35 3 7 27 12 0 8 2

20 10 7 19 9 13 4 8

20

2 2

58 49

2 3 1

14 39 10

60 54 53 50 47 46 44 39 39 36 35 33 28 27 26 26 26 23 21 20 18 13 12 11 10 84 8 7

1 2

3 2

287

1 40

867

38

2 566

3 9895

1 347

1 1 3 307

11112 7611

77 29586

Total Incidents 7 6 6 5 4 3 3 3 2

Resulting in exclusion

Resulting in exclusion

Secondary

Secondary

Primary

Nursery

Special

Primary

Nursery

Special

Middle

Middle

Other

Other

PRU

PRU

Appendix

38

Appendix

39

Appendix

40

Appendix

41

Appendix

42

Appendix

43

Appendix

44

Appendix

45

Appendix

46

Appendix

47

Appendix

48

Appendix

49

Appendix

50

A Manifesto Club Report Leave Those Kids Alone: How official hatespeech regulation interferes in school life Published by The Manifesto Club August 2011 Author: Adrian Hart Editor: Sarah Boyes Design: Tom Mower

The Manifesto Club campaigns against the hyper-regulation of everyday life. We support free movement across borders, free expression and free association. We challenge booze bans, photo bans, vetting and speech codes all new ways in which the state regulates everyday life on the streets, in workplaces and in our private lives. Our rapidly growing membership hails from all political traditions and none, and from all corners of the world. To join this group of free thinkers and campaigners, see: manifestoclub.com