At 13, I was a self-proclaimed ‘indie
kid’, often to be found in the playground with a guitar and a book of poetry,
spouting soundbites from philosophers that I didn’t fully understand. It felt
important and it enabled me to belong to a ‘tribe’, while at the same time I
could convince myself that I was unique. Looking back I can see that it was all
a normal part of growing up, asserting my own identity, and finding like-minded
people. It was also completely harmless.
Today as an educationalist, a parent,
and a so-called ‘grown-up’, I keep my eyes open with a mix of nostalgia and
curiosity for all the new tribes who will follow in the footsteps of the indie
kids, townies, goths, crusties, and sk8ers that went before them, But I’m not
sure that such tribes really exist anymore.
With the dawn of the social media age,
the internet has broken apart the concept of ‘subculture’ so that everyone can
simultaneously belong to every tribe and no tribe. Borders and boundaries are
tumbling and the idea of identifying yourself in terms of a single music or
fashion counterculture has become more mainstream than the mainstream itself.
Everything seems to be a mash-up, and in that environment sometimes a clear
message can appear especially seductive.
But my nostalgia for my own youth is
increasingly tinged with something else: a worry that some young people today
might not know how to belong to something anymore, or, indeed know where to belong. Whereas youth-focused
subcultures used to put safe, local boundaries around teenagers’ natural need
to rebel, the very essence of ‘belonging’ to something has changed in a world
of 24-hour mobility, globalisation, and social networking. After all, why join
a club when you can contact the entire world?
Today, if young people feel ‘other’,
dispossessed, or different to the people around them, then the Web can offer an
altogether different type of lifeline, one that takes them away from their
immediate worlds, or connects them with radically different ones. Online
platforms, gaming communities, fan groups, and more, may open up new avenues of
friendship, sometimes with strangers in other parts of the world who appear to
share common interests and passions.
Of course, that can be a wonderful
thing, and vulnerable young people may discover a world of support and
understanding rather than harm. But many internet safety specialists tell us
that that the dispersed and amorphous nature of online communities can
sometimes be used to hide very different agendas. Some experts warn that
children are increasingly at risk of being lured towards extreme ideas and
ideological kinships.
So how worried should we really be about
some young people’s frustrations or anger being turned into something that is
genuinely destructive to either themselves or to the people around them?
The ‘radicalisation’ of disaffected
young people often occurs when the immediate mainstream feels alien to them,
while a community elsewhere – with its promise of thousands of like-minded
people – appears to offer easy answers to big questions. The construction of
fundamentalist politics and beliefs sits much more easily at the centre of that
perfect storm of private disaffection and external allure than it does in any
other scenario.
It’s important to emphasise that all
political viewpoints, faiths, and belief systems have their extreme proponents,
and in today’s world of fast news and easy social shares, it’s easy to mistake
the extreme as representing the centre or the majority. Sometimes young people
make that mistake too.
Radicalisation, then, is not the
preserve of any one political or religious movement, or of any one belief
system or community. But the more conservatively fundamentalist that any
viewpoint is, ironically the bigger the change from the status quo it offers,
or demands. No wonder that children and young people (and within that, we know that BAME and looked after children even more so) are often at the
greatest risk from any such message, especially if it is one of hatred of the
people around them.
To say that the fear and prevention of
radicalisation is a political hot potato at the moment is an understatement,
particularly for anyone whose job is to teach and care for young people. It’s a
stark reality that in a very small, but serious, number of cases, the lure of
various ideologies has resulted in people uprooting themselves to follow the
promise of a different life, in some cases fighting for causes that value the
brutal subjugation of dissent. Nobody pretends that our own society is perfect,
but some teenagers’ disaffection makes it easier for others to attach a
hate-filled or violent viewpoint to young people’s commonplace desire for
change.
The Home Office and Ofsted are
particularly keen to roll out the Prevent Agenda, a set of safeguarding duties
that legally oblige education and youth support services to look out for and
report any signs that suggest an individual in their care may be being
‘radicalised’.
In Sussex, where I live, there are some
particular areas of concern with small networks of young people turning openly
to hateful and righteous messages online. Social networks are an unparalleled
tool for spreading a message quickly, but once it is out there is no taking it
back – a lesson that many teenagers are still learning the hard way.
Safeguarding has, and always will be,
paramount to those teaching children and young people, but this environment is
certainly presenting some new challenges. Some education providers – mainly FE
colleges and independent training providers – have already had their inspection grades reduced because their
internal Prevent Agenda strategy has been underdeveloped.
But the government’s new approach to
monitoring and intervention is coupled with another obligation on teachers, and
that is to embed the concept of ‘British values’ into their school curriculum.
According to the Department for Education, these values are: democracy; the
rule of law; individual liberty and mutual respect; and tolerance of those with
different faiths and beliefs.
It’s understandable, therefore, that
some teachers, social workers and parents are finding areas of confusion or
potential conflict between these two sets of obligations. For example: at what
point does monitoring students’ extracurricular behaviour and beliefs, as the
Prevent Agenda implies, encroach on their individual liberty, which the
teaching of British values is designed to protect?
Other questions that teachers find
themselves asking include: when is a radical belief no longer tolerated? How is
that expressed, and by whom? Is the concept of ‘radical’ in itself always a bad
thing? And what makes certain – presumably more moderate – values uniquely
‘British’ – rather than, say, European, Asian, African, or American?
Many teachers and assessors are uneasy
with the implications of viewing ethical conduct in national, rather than
simply ‘human’, terms. For one thing, many long-established ‘British’ values
are missing from the government’s own list – what about fairness, for example?
And for another, there is a clear inference that someone born elsewhere,
including in Europe or the US, will have a completely different set of values.
On the whole, they probably won’t. And there’s another consideration too: the
internet is global.
I’m in no way trying to make or score
any political points here, but these prescriptions do leave themselves open to
question – especially when there are penalties involved for not getting it
‘right’.
Most teachers and parents, when thinking
about the safety of children, are beginning to understand that the internet is
a place like any other. While virtual places may feel more abstract, they are still places where people meet and engage,
where behaviours have consequences, and where the urge to explore is
compelling, even if the risks are great.
We now understand all too well that
vulnerable people can be groomed and influenced without ever meeting the
perpetrator. We also understand that values and ethics and codes of conduct are
as much in play as in the real world,
but can also appear looser and less clear, and be skewed by the anonymity of
participants.
So I suggest that what we have here is a
real opportunity. What this all boils down to is that young people’s
disaffection and/or alienation always has the potential of leading to destructive and hate-fuelled ideas,
thoughts, and actions. Yet, crucially, it always has the potential for the
exact opposite, too. As communities, we need to look for the tipping point at
which frustration can become a drive to build and change for the better, rather
than to forge a need to destroy.
What we have come to call
‘radicalisation’ is seen by those who entice young people towards hate-filled
behaviours as a means to an end; it is not the end itself. And it’s worth
remembering something equally important: the connotations of extreme hate and
barbarism attached to the word ‘radical’ are a recent phenomenon.
We should all work to ensure that
‘radical’ never becomes permanently associated with negative, vicious,
hate-filled, or violent behaviour. Every dictionary definition of radical
speaks of ‘change’, ‘thoroughness’, ‘innovation’, and ‘action’, and there are
countless positive examples of this online. Lots of ‘radical’ thinkers have
changed the world for the better, after all.
For example, every day we see social
media being used to gather signatures on petitions; to raise money for
charities, disadvantaged people, and emergency or disaster relief; to call
public figures to account, and to co-ordinate rallies or support new ideas,
inventions, campaigns, and ventures. This is radical. These too are
‘radicalised’ moments – and ‘radicalised’ people are playing a part in these
moments – and the internet now plays the most crucial part of all in connecting
people and reaching out to others.
As responsible adults, our duty is to do more than shield, monitor, and prevent
vulnerable children from discovering the dark places. We should also encourage
and persuade them to ‘think big’ about what the future could look like. As a
society we need to be having conversations with our children and our students
about what hatred, fear, difference, and extreme behaviours feel like, look
like, and sound like. Disenfranchised? Feeling left out? OK. So what can we do
together to change that and make things better for everyone?
As
I touched on earlier, I get excited about the idea of human values, and the role such discussions could have in getting
children and young people to talk about subjects such as ideology,
globalisation, identity, duty, and social action.
After
all, the internet rarely respects sovereign borders – unless censorship is
involved, as in China – so perhaps there should be a set of taught/discussed
human values that remind us of the faces and the hands behind the machines. We
can hang onto great ideas such as mutual respect and tolerance, but perhaps add
the value that shared spaces should always be used for the common good – and
that innovation, generosity, and goodwill should be rewarded.
When
we’re picking apart the internet with our children and examining the
connections that they’re making, we could do worse than to hang the
conversation on concepts such as peace, truth, right conduct, love, and
non-violence. But what do these actually mean, beyond the clichés and
sentimentalism? Imagine, with the world now so close to us and new ideas so
readily available, how genuinely radical (in the true sense) we could all be.
Whenever
I work with young people – some whom may be very vulnerable through
circumstance or poverty of opportunity – I always get them to stop and think
about who they are: who they actually are and want to be.
Human
beings – even the more solitary ones among us – are relational people, in that
most of us construct images of ourselves in relation to what we think other
people’s perceptions of us might be. For example, others consider me to be
creative, talkative, and pretty ropey at DIY – I know this because different
people tell me so – but does this mean that it’s true? It might not be, but
those perceptions have become part of my identity and have helped form my
behaviours. Online, our identities are more fluid, but still just as
constructed and controlled. The most significant difference is that, as hard as
it might be, we can switch it off! This is especially important when the images
of themselves that some vulnerable young people get from the internet are
negative, thanks to cyber-bullying and other problems related to self-esteem.
The
children and young people who are at the highest risk of radicalisation are
those looking for confirmation of who they are and what their consequential
behaviours must be (possibly because adult influence has not been effective at providing that guidance). As the safest influencers in their lives, it’s our
responsibility to get there first and to find a way to help them work this out.
Let us be the ones to make our children into radical thinkers in the most
tolerant, constructive, and innovative sense. Positive internet communities can
help us do that.
Let’s
reclaim the real meaning of radical: being innovative and thorough, and taking
positive action, not reinforcing hate and violence. Let’s treasure and
celebrate teenage fashion and musical tribes as a means of self-expression,
because the alternatives can be devastating. Let’s keep talking about our
values and our behaviours and what unites us, in both our physical and online
spaces.
The
biggest tool we have against malicious, nihilistic radicals – wherever they may
be in the world – is our human capacity to be bigger, more positive, and more
inclusive radicals than they are.
Interested in joining our Human Values Project? - click here
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Richard Freeman the Director of always possible.
We support education providers, creative organisations, values-led business and charities with project development, organisational cultures, policy, leadership & resilience. Please visit alwayspossible.co.uk to see how we can support you.
This article was originally commissioned for Child Internet Safety magazine and was skillfully edited by Chris Middleton.
