Higher Education minister Bill Rammell is expected to announce that all children from the ages of 11-16 will have compulsory teaching of “Core British Values”.  The aim of this is to promote the history of freedom of speech, democracy, civic responsibility and fairness. Before we start to expose the fallacies of the government argument in the interest of a balanced debate it is only fair to portray the objectives they think they will accomplish.

Mr Rammel recently stated that “If we get a proper modern sense of identity it will tackle extremism”. The government initiative is for all students regardless of colour, creed or religion. However, it is evident from the comments made by the Education Secretary and by the media headlines on “teaching Muslims our values” that the main focus is on Muslims. As he also stated that “When we look at what happened with the bombings last July, when people are prepared to kill themselves in order to kill others I think education can play a role”.  The government actually believes that this type of education would have prevented the 52 deaths that took place on 7/7. The government hopes to accomplish a more cohesive and tolerant society with this initiative.

Firstly it is important to emphasize that the history of freedom, democracy and fairness are not only British values but are also Islamic values and you could argue that these should be universal values that were founded by Islam. Does the invasion of other countries and imposing our values and version of democracy constitute a core British value? Then we all feel guilty about the mess we have created by causing a civil war. Or are British core values an over indulgence in alcohol and food? Or vulgarity, promiscuity and failure to complain to authoritative figures? Or is it that we are such a beacon of human rights that we considering scraping the Human Rights Act and are currently imprisoning people without charge?

If you really look at this issue it is clear that this is a knee-jerk reaction to the 7/7 bombings. It could be suggested that this measure is a smoke screen to hide the fact that the Parliamentary Committee’s report on the 7/7 did not blame external factors. The bombings did not occur due to a lack of “British values” but was due to our foreign policy in Iraq, Afghanistan and the acceptance of the slow genocide of Palestinians which leaves Muslims disillusioned. In no way can we condone the actions of the 7/7 bombers but the underlying cause was not a lack of British value training but a deep seated anger of Muslims. Muslims feel divorced from the political system and feel that they cannot make a difference; this is what needs to be changed.

The education of democracy and freedom of speech is imperative for children to learn from the ages of 11-16. Rather than selling this as British values we should market this initiative as democracy and accountability studies. Students should be taught that they should hold our representatives accountable. The power of democracy is not on a constitution paper such as the Bill of Rights but it is realising the power of the masses. In fact we would even go one step further and make mosques teach the role of democracy and the effect that Muslims in United Kingdom can have on foreign affairs using peaceful constitulaional methods.

This school teaching of Britishness is actually a precursor to the more controversial announcement which is that the government is set to begin a review of how Islam is taught in our universities. The objective is to prevent a narrow interpretation of Islam and thereby preventing fundamentalism. Some would say that the mere suggestion of suppressing diverse views no mater how radical is itself anti-British. If extreme views are to be controlled within the public domain then surely the BNP should have sanctions on their party political broadcasts and public literature. We are so far away from what we aspire to and hold dear that this will be another temporary plaster on a gushing wound.

---