Counter-radicalisation in the classroom E-Book

Francesco Ragazzi

• Herausgeber: Council of Europe
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 147

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Insights from eight grass-roots projects in Council of Europe member states to address the challenges of policies to counter-radicalisation in education This report offers an assessment of the effects of counter-radicalisation policies in the education sector, through the empirical analysis of eight grass-roots projects located in schools across the member states of the Council of Europe (Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Norway and the United Kingdom). It provides a detailed insight into how such policies are experienced in practice. The report covers three main areas. First, it offers an analysis of the legislative and political context that led to the development of counter-radicalisation policies, as well as their contestation. Second, based on qualitative interviews and focus groups with project leaders, students, teachers, educators and school managers, it provides a detailed account of the very heterogeneous type of practices encapsulated by the term “counter-radicalisation”. Finally, it shows that while some practices are in line with principles of human rights education and education for democratic citizenship, others risk undermining fundamental rights and the autonomy of education. The report concludes with some key recommendations to the Council of Europe on how to overcome these challenges.

Leseprobe

COUNTER-RADICALISATION IN THE CLASSROOM

Insights from eight grass-roots projects in Council of Europe member states

Francesco Ragazzi

Associate Professor

Leiden University, Netherlands

Josh Walmsley

PhD candidate

Department of War Studies

King’s College London

Council of Europe

The opinions expressed in this work are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of the Council of Europe

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be translated, reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic (CD-Rom, internet, etc.) or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the Directorate of Communication (F-67075 Strasbourg Cedex or [email protected]).

Cover design: Documents and Publications Production Department (SPDP), Council of Europe

Cover and inside photos: iStockphoto.com unless indicated otherwise

Layout: insécable, Strasbourg

Council of Europe Publishing

F-67075 Strasbourg Cedex

http://book.coe.int

ISBN (epub) 978-92-871-9032-1

© Council of Europe, December 2020

Printed at the Council of Europe

Contents

ACRONYMS

FOREWORD

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

WHAT DO PROJECTS DO?

CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS

CONCLUSIONS

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE

METHODOLOGICAL APPENDIX

REFERENCES

ACRONYMS

ACT: Association for Citizenship Teaching: the NGO leading the Deliberative Classroom project, in several locations, including London

CHD: central help desk: consists of a group of social work professionals who can be reached by telephone; schools and PGCs can contact the CHD about radicalisation or other problematic behaviour

CSHR: Cultural and Spiritual Heritage of the Region: project led by the NDC

CVE: countering violent extremism

EDC: education for democratic citizenship; see also HRE

EU: European Union

GCTF: Global Counterterrorism Forum

HRE: human rights education; see also EDC

IS/ISIS: Islamic State/Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

NDC: Nansen Dialogue Centre, the NGO leading the CSHR project in various locations in Croatia, including Osijek and Dalj

NGO: non-governmental organisation

OSCE: Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe

PGC: pupil guidance centres (centrum voor leerlingenbegeleiding in Dutch): four centres, linked to schools, which aim to guide pupils; PGCs are the contact points for the central help desk in the municipality of Antwerp

PVE: preventing violent extremism

RAN: Radicalisation Awareness Network

RFCDC: Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture

UK: United Kingdom

UN: United Nations

UNESCO: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

Foreword

In response to the terrorist attacks that have shaken the international community, counter-radicalisation policies have entered the core of national and international security agendas and also the agendas of other sectors, including educational, impacting citizenship education in our democratic societies. Teachers entrusted with the primary mission of supporting students in the development of competences enabling them to grow as responsible citizens, have been given a new role in many instances: reporting students with suspicious ideas or behaviour to law-enforcement authorities.

Following on from the Council of Europe publication Students as suspects? (2017), this report investigates how such potential conflicts, which go to the heart of pressing questions about human rights and civil liberties, about social cohesion and democratic culture, play out in practice. Showing how these issues are unfolding in corridors, classrooms and communities across member states, it offers an analysis of eight grass-roots projects that are working with schools to tackle violent radicalisation in local settings in Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Norway and the United Kingdom.

The report highlights the challenges encountered by teachers in understanding and implementing their new role and the possible consequences for their students. As spaces where individuals can express themselves freely and learn safely, schools are challenged as soon as a climate of suspicion, fear and self-censorship sets in. Freedom for students to express themselves is key, enabling teachers and fellow students to hear diverse opinions, identify their shortcomings and ultimately leading students to question ideas incompatible with democratic values.

With this in mind, the Council of Europe will continue to encourage the strengthening of democratic citizenship and human rights education through the implementation of the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture in the states parties to the European Cultural Convention in its future activities. The aim is to support teachers to address sensitive and controversial issues, while building a free and safe space for exchanges enabling students to develop autonomous and critical thinking that is respectful of democratic values.

Matjaž Gruden

Director of Democratic Participation

Council of Europe

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to thank several individuals who have been instrumental in the research and the writing of this report. First and foremost, a big thank you to all interviewees listed in alphabetical order at the end of this report for their time and help. The report relies entirely on their insights and willingness to share their experiences. At Leiden University, we are grateful to Maria-Sophie Hehle for her work in preparing the field visits, transcribing and translating some of the interviews and providing important insights for the analysis. Thank you to Esther Bergsma and Remco de Kler for their help in the administration of the project. At the Council of Europe, the report would not have been possible without the support, comments and feedback of Katerina Toura, Michael Remmert and Sjur Bergan. Thanks also to Eva Piu and Gülden Serbest for their assistance in the various meetings in which the report’s preliminary results were presented. Finally, we are indebted to Jacqueline Harvey and Julia Gallagher for their close reading and fruitful suggestions for the final text.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report offers an assessment of the effects of counter-radicalisation policies in the education sector, through the empirical analysis of eight grass-roots projects located in schools across the member states of the Council of Europe (Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Norway and the United Kingdom). It is based on qualitative interviews and focus groups with project leaders, students, teachers, educators and school managers. It provides a detailed insight into how such policies are experienced in practice. The report covers three main areas. Chapter 1 provides background information on the legislative and political context that led to the development of counter-radicalisation policies, as well as their contestation. Chapter 2 shows how the term “counter-radicalisation” covers several types of practices, and describes them in detail. Chapter 3 outlines how these policies challenge the fundamental rights and autonomy of education, as well as how practitioners deal with these challenges. The report draws out the main conclusions from the empirical the data collected from our field study and makes some key recommendations to the Council of Europe.

Introduction

Counter-radicalisation policies, understood broadly as policies aimed at preventing people from engaging in terrorist activities, have become a priority of local, national, regional and international security agendas.1 As enshrined in the Action Plan on the Fight against Violent Extremism and Radicalisation Leading to Terrorism (Council of Europe 2015), the Council of Europe has outlined a set of measures, including for use in education, both to detect radicalisation and to build a more cohesive societal environment so as to prevent its emergence. Such an approach was initially developed in the UK and the Netherlands in the mid-2000s. Since then almost all Council of Europe member states have adopted policies and plans to counter radicalisation.2 However, despite widespread support from governments and some civil society organisations across Europe, these policies have also been criticised for encouraging non-educational interests to encroach into schools. These debates centre on whether counter-radicalisation reconfigures the pedagogical, pastoral and ultimately democratic roles of schools according to a logic of suspicion that is traditionally found among security professionals. Critics argue that this jeopardises the autonomy of the education sector, and erodes the fundamental rights and civil liberties of students who are cast as potential suspects.

While debates in academia and civil society have offered several versions of what educational responses to “radicalisation” should look like, we still lack an ­evidence-based understanding of what has actually been happening in the meantime. It has largely been taken for granted in the normative discussions on educational autonomy, and the securitised, racialised politics of counter-radicalisation. Little attention has been paid to the extensive, diverse array of strategies, organisations and networks that constitute the counter-radicalisation sector, and the composite norms, practices and expertise that move between them across local, national and transnational boundaries. This report sets out to draw attention to them through the analysis of eight projects: The Deliberative Classroom (UK), Dembra (Norway), Cultural and Spiritual Heritage of the Region (Croatia), CleaR (Germany), Resilience (UK), Derad Theatre Therapy (Hungary), Dropout Prevention Network (Hungary) and Embrace Differences (Bosnia and Herzegovina).

What do projects do?

What do grass-roots projects designed to counter radicalisation do in practice? What kind of activities and programmes are offered to students and educators as part of these to bring counter-radicalisation into the education sector? While we might expect these projects to engage in similar practices, there is actually a very broad diversity of practices linked to the multiple traditions from which they originate and for many other reasons. Our research shows that there is a fundamental difference between awareness-raising programmes and casework programmes.

Awareness-raising programmes are aimed at a broad audience and follow the path of citizenship and human rights education. They offer a diverse array of activities, including in-school workshops, role play and alternative narratives through ­extra-curricular sessions, such as anonymous group sessions, field trips and summer schools. They use experiential methods and participation to establish a normative framework both within and outside the classroom. While the official aim of the projects is to prevent radicalisation, the projects work at different complementary levels to foster social cohesion, anti-racism and anti-discrimination and to encourage individuals’ democratic and intercultural competence.

Casework programmes are more related to social work, and possibly police work. They belong to a different category of interventions, based on the contested idea that radicalisation can be “spotted”, and are linked to processes of detection, risk assessment, referrals and interventions. As such, they share many features with social programmes aimed at tackling bullying, gang violence and drug use. Our field visits showed that in counter-radicalisation programmes assessing risk, sharing information internally and externally, and interfacing with law enforcement varied greatly according to the national legal environment and the design of the specific projects. Issues of trust, confidentiality and the professional autonomy of the education sector arise at different steps of the process. This means that programmes differ greatly in their objectives, their practice and their relation to law enforcement, so that any assessment of the challenges that arise from them must consider these fundamental distinctions.

Challenges and solutions

Counter-radicalisation programmes in schools both face and pose challenges at the grass-roots level. We found that the two main areas in which problems tended to arise were concern about the protection of fundamental rights, and about the autonomy of education. In addition to discussing these challenges, this report also highlights their effects as they featured in the experiences of the students, teachers and counter-radicalisation practitioners we interviewed.

Among the most salient challenges posed by counter-radicalisation programmes are those that threaten or place a strain on fundamental rights. Several universally ­recognised fundamental rights have been at the centre of concerns about ­counter-radicalisation in schools, as highlighted in Students as suspects? (Ragazzi 2017). These include freedom of expression; freedom of thought, conscience and religion; the right to education; the right to preserve one’s identity; the right to freedom from discrimination; and the right to respect for one’s private and family life. Ragazzi’s report also highlighted that the right to a fair trial may be affected where intelligence collected in schools is used to justify administrative and judicial measures.

Our interviews with educators and other professionals revealed concerns that ­counter-radicalisation can place a strain on the professional autonomy of the education sector. These concerns, like those about fundamental rights, appeared predominantly in relation to casework, specifically in relation to detection and referral. They were therefore also more prevalent in northern European countries, where such approaches are more established. The strain on educational autonomy is principally caused by two interwoven factors. First, in countries dominated by a police-led reporting culture, there is a higher chance of front-line educators mishandling cases. Indeed, the imperative for early detection and reporting is often prioritised over careful consideration by educational practitioners who have been tasked with assessing the extent to which a student is “at risk” of radicalisation, rather than of more traditional welfare problems to which police involvement is not the answer traditionally. Second, against this backdrop, educators often confront the reality that the consequences of their decisions to refer a student will probably never be fully known to them, as information tends to flow one way, from school to the police, without feedback on individual cases. In some cases, this takes place in a climate where stories of the unfair treatment of the most vulnerable groups at the hands of the police are well known. This makes it very difficult for education practitioners, who usually prioritise the welfare of their students, to be confident that their choices are aligned with their professional and personal values. As a result, in such instances, there is a risk that educational autonomy becomes subordinate to external interests, namely those of security. Other significant challenges include conflicts between practitioners and high-ranking officials within the education sector, which disconnect front-line practices of resilience building from their intended purpose.

Practitioners respond to these challenges in many different ways. Some of our participants highlighted the importance of transparency in the referral process, as a means of re-establishing control over the decisions they make. Others observed that, where schools are unable to reconcile opening up free debate with formal demands to be “alert” to detecting radicalisation, such as in England and Wales, third-party actors such as non-governmental organisations (NGOs) can offer alternative approaches. Finally, our interviews foregrounded several instances of front-line practitioners, often with the help of third-party actors, mobilising their agency to relocate prevention in a pedagogical context. Amid claims that counter-radicalisation securitises education, these accounts show that front-line practitioners in even the most regulated policy contexts can always wrest back control of their practice in line with their professional ethics.

Conclusions

On the basis of the results presented above, and picking up where the report Students as suspects? (Ragazzi 2017) left off, this report offers the following conclusions.

First, counter-radicalisation policies can be conceived as “a solution in search of a problem”. Our field visits showed once again that there are very few cases of students who are involved in or at risk of being involved in terrorist organisations. The image of schools, in particular schools located in disenfranchised or Muslim-majority neighbourhoods of European cities, as potential incubators of terrorism is largely a myth. Problems of “radicalisation” are numerically marginal in comparison to the usual, regular issues faced by schools. However, schools face pressures both from above and from below to do “something”, as public policies on radicalisation have undermined the confidence of many educators in their ability to respond to traditional pedagogic challenges when these are reframed in terms of “radicalisation”. The discourse of radicalisation generates in part its own reality.

Second, as a result of the contradictory national and international dynamics of counter-radicalisation in the education sector, it has been impossible to formulate a single critique of policies or projects labelled as “counter-radicalisation”: the range of practices is too broad. In our field visits, we were able to divide practices into two broad categories: (1) projects aimed broadly at raising awareness around key societal issues such as nationalism, racism and discrimination; and (2) projects aimed at dealing with individual cases which are deemed to be in need of special attention. The first category, of awareness-raising projects, is generally in line with the principles and philosophy of education for democratic citizenship (EDC) and human rights education (HRE), and the core values of the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC).3 Such projects generally emanate from NGOs that are themselves at the core of the conversation on citizenship education. The second category of projects, which we refer to as “casework based”, poses a different set of ethical and political questions. Contrary to the common critique, front-line professionals from NGOs or the public sector are generally very aware of the ethical dilemmas they have to navigate. Each of these steps presents an ethical risk and presents the risk of conflicting with the fundamental rights and principles of EDC, HRE and the RFCDC.

Third, it was clear from our interviews with students, educational staff and project practitioners that, as criticisms of them have long claimed, counter-radicalisation measures in schools create conditions in which students’ fundamental rights may be threatened. These might be as a result of several often related factors, including confusion on the terminology of extremism and radicalisation, the difficulty of putting vague concepts into practice in real life, and the unintended consequences of referral processes, which follow from the ethical ambiguity that confronts educators attempting to do so. Furthermore, casework-based projects often give rise to grass-roots struggles as educators attempt to reconcile prevention approaches with their pedagogical and welfare-based priorities, which are often at odds with the security-oriented interests of law enforcement. Awareness-raising projects, by contrast, offer a vital means through which front-line practitioners in schools can reassert their educational autonomy by relocating prevention in a pedagogical context and explicitly challenging the negative effects of counter-radicalisation.

Recommendations

To address the issues raised throughout this report, we make the following recommendations to the Council of Europe.

How can the demand for counter-radicalisation policies be met while preserving the principles of human rights, education for democratic citizenship and human rights education?

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