I would like to think (and I believe/hope the majority would too) that teachers would actively challenge prejudice immediately they come across it. For those of us living in societies where discrimination is outlawed we should have confidence in clearly shining a light on what is unacceptable. I would encourage teachers to remember this is not your personal morality but the outworking of a strong legal position. This is what many of us are doing in work regularly – stating that something is unacceptable and, if necessary, exploring with an individual or group why that is. I understand kids are often picking up on their influences and are testing. The challenge isn’t a punishment but clear boundary setting and an opportunity for meaningful exploration and learning. I’d suggest preparing for just such an incident so as to be ready to make something positive of it when it inevitably arises.

I agree we shouldn’t ban hateful and prejudiced content, though we should probably minimise the chance of it getting houseroom. But when (not if) it does surface we should be ready to show it for what it is. We can protect others by helping them get to that point of understanding too.

I was thrilled to learn of my 9 year old niece responding to a much older person’s comment the other day, “A black person could have been really hurt by what you said”. A teacher is most likely the person responsible for that fantastic insight and the confidence to share it.

In the UK, I understand that “Section 28″ severely knocked the confidence of teachers and teaching establishments to challenge unacceptable comments and behaviour. That’s gone and the legal uncertainty with it. Actively supporting respect, diversity and equality is the right thing to do. Your actions in the classroom and mine in the workplace will help ensure we achieve unassailable confidence in the rightness of anti-discriminatory teaching/leadership.

You say:
I’m not entirely sure how comfortable, and indeed capable I would be of dealing with this, on the fly, in the classroom.

I am not surprised you don’t know. It is very hard I think – but one thing is for sure, you can’t ignore these issues for long. And you will probably develop over time. a range of strategies. But forewarned is forearmed!!

I thank you for reminding me of the stupidity of banning stuff … it is ridiculous – anyhow students always find ways round banning. I think the thing is, we have to get the teaching done in a consistent and fair way and not let the existance of this stuff surprise us. There is LOADS of it on YouTube – and if you just browse and wander – rather than searching specifically for stuff that you are interested in … it is amazing how often it crops up.

As a YouTube issue, is this enough to block YouTube in schools? Do these small – are they small? – drawbacks to such a fantastic site, that has such potential in the classroom a reason for wholesale banning of the site, and others like it? Perhaps we should be taking an attitude where YouTube is blocked for students, available for staff and then on request we could whitelist certain views that are related to our classroom work. I still believe that by preventing students access to certain areas of the web is a failure to educate to them, and that we need to teach them to use the web responsibly and as you put it so well yourself earlier in the year, we need to give them the tools to be able to work our what is trustworthy, and what should be regarded with caution.

There are a lot of questions in this comment that I don’t have the answers to, but I’m now thinking about them – thanks!