By Ayesha Begum, Senior Editor
At the beginning of this year, the BBC released a news report that showed that exclusions for racism in primary schools in England has increased by more than 40%. But does such punishment actually work?
At the beginning of this year, the BBC released a news report that showed that exclusions for racism in primary schools in England has increased by more than 40%. The news headline itself was very provocative with people’s initial thoughts entailing that of confusion due to the inflation of hatred among children that do not know any better and don’t understand abstract concepts such as race and ethnicity.
The assumption that many would make is that these attitudes and behaviours have been taught by prejudiced and biased parents and the reply many would make to this would be that parents should not be influencing their child’s viewpoint of the world and that there is a stark difference between nature and nurture when it comes to acts of discrimination.
However, something that is overlooked is the actual punishment in itself. Who evaluated the situation and decided that exclusion would be the best route to take in remedying this ‘fault’?
The way I see it, punishment only enforces these discriminatory attitudes - instead of being told that what these primary school children have said and done is wrong and is something that leads to social conflict and division, these pupils are essentially being given the message, unknowingly, that these actions are not appropriate ‘in the open’ because they will face consequences.
Individuals in wider society that act the same way these children that have faced exclusion have only appeared to be sorry due to the fact that they were called out on it and were reprimanded, not due to the fact that they actually took the time and effort to reflect on their actions and concluded that such attitudes and views are rooted from unnecessary hatred with the assistance of higher figures of authority.
Some will only say a half hearted sorry so that they can get out of what they said with as little backlash as possible and others may not even say sorry at all, still blinded by prejudice and hostility, not being taught that hate is not the way forward at all, only being punished without any full explanation as to why such behaviours are not acceptable.
Forms of false remorse can be seen both in real life and online; for instance, Hasan Patel, a 17 year old British-Muslim-Indian Labour member and activist born and brought up in London received an influx of racial, xenophobic and islamaphobic abuse on Twitter shortly after the results of the 2019 General Election. Hasan Patel posted screenshots of some of the comments he received, alongside the username of the users. One user lost their jobs due to their attitudes and comments and only then did they seek Patel’s forgiveness. They did not reflect on their actions and understand where the root of such hatred begins and attempt to rectify their perspective. It was only after they faced consequences that impacted them directly that they apologised, not because of the desire to fix their mistakes.
Another example as to why punishment is ineffective and can, perhaps, make things worse can be demonstrated when considering the prison sentences convicted criminals receive. During the campaigning period of the 2019 General Election, there was a terror attack in London and party leaders and members were questioned on their opinions on this and how they would overcome such issues if they were elected.
The smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn was evidently growing momentum at this point; an interview Corbyn gave in regards to this issue was manipulated and presented to the general public as the words of a ‘terrorist sympathiser’. What the general public fail to do is look outside the box and look beyond the assumption of the theory that the longer the prison sentence the better and focus more on issues raised in this very article.
The way I interpreted what Corbyn said about not all convicted terrorists having to serve a full sentence is that, essentially, it doesn’t matter how long or short the sentence actually is if the criminals are not being ‘taught’ why what they did was wrong and how they can change and move on. In fact, a key point that sensationalist headlines failed to miss about the interview is that Corbyn himself mentioned rehabilitation and actually focussed on how the prison service works in achieving this, if they even do attempt to re-establish an appropriate relationship between the criminals and wider society in the first place.
The ineffective methods towards dealing with these issues completely invalidate the experience of those who are subjected to this kind of antipathy. Whether it be an extended prison sentence or a day in the school’s ‘isolation’, these individuals are being shown that it is completely fine to think the way they do, they just have to make sure that they do it in private and not in public and feign remorse in order to overcome punishments. They will continue to be justified on the basis of ‘free speech’ and ‘friendly banter’, not rejected on the basis of discrimination and prejudice.
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