The importance of teaching British values in schools

terence patrick hewett

English Parliament. Then we will sort this country out.

Span Ows

"The question that we need to grapple with is why was an educated young Muslim woman like Roshonara Choudhry swayed by this kind of guff."

Indeed. Look for the male. Clever, smart young women with a future becomes murderous loony...there is one reason, her "boyfriend" convinced her. Cherche l'homme....

Sally Chatterjee

Britain is a liberal democracy but that does not mean it is perfect. There are injustices in Iraq caused by the British, revelations of which we have seen this week. We cut deals with opaque regimes in Libya and Saudi Arabia. All too often our liberalism is drowned by crude oil.

Peter From Maidstone

Do you really think that even to a small extent the causes of Islamic terrorism and hate are driven by a lack of citizenship classes? We do not need the state teaching values, we do need the state doing its job of protecting our English society from those who wish to destroy it. But the political and media class don't want to do that, they would rather act as though the Islamic intent to dominate England and make us all dhimmis is in fact OUR fault. It is not. Islam is incompatible with liberal democracy. This is the real issue. It cannot be made compatible. It is a religion of the sword and of absolutist theocracy.

Fergus Pickering

Because she was a devout muslim. Now give me a hard question.

Nicholas

But according to David Osler at Liberal Conspiracy it is British Society that "alienated" the woman - he doesn't say how.

"If British society has alienated a layer of Muslim youth to that degree – and it appears to have done exactly that – there will be other Roshonara Choudhrys out there even now."

Somehow I don't think it is because he thinks "British values" have been insufficiently taught but rather that it is somehow proactively responsible for radicalising these people. Ironic perhaps that one of the main undermining forces against "British values" have been the 13 years of New Labour social and moral engineering, probably supported at the time by Mr Osler.

But, anyway, both pieces presume that evil can be negotiated or reasoned away. Sometimes it just can't.

sinosimon

Yeah, right. The Reform Act is going to win over promises of eternal paradise every time....the reality is there is no escape from this for generations. we , thanks to immigration policies that made no effort to ensure we were letting in people with similar values have a fifth column of potential martyrs in our midst with no means of getting rid. You can make all the usual noises about not all muslims etc etc, which empirically are true. Most are normal, peaceful people who just want to get on with their lives in quiet enjoyment....the problem is, with 3 million here, just what percentage are amenable to swivel eyed rants about murdering in the name of God? The lady in the news this week was a well educated, highly intelligent student with no apparent links in the real world to the loony fringe of Islaam. A few mouse clicks and evil videos later and she's off on jihad.
As to how many of her co-religionists might be tempted to try the same this survey from 2006 makes chilling reading
http://www.icmresearch.co.uk/pdfs/2006_february_sunday_telegraph_muslims_poll.pdf

13% of uk muslims think it is right to exercise violence against those deemed by their religiosu leaders to have 'insulted' islam. Do the maths.
A couple of 45 minute lessons on the glories of secular liberalism will make no difference whatsoever to those having poison poured into their ears in their mosques or through their pc screens. The IRA called the troubles the long war. it was a saturday night punch up compared to what we face now and for the forseeable future.

In2minds

What to do? For example some 'educated' people think the EU is wonderful. Our universities are awash with Islamic radicals so I say education might not be the answer. Fewer graduates perhaps, go for quality and not quantity?

Mike

Nationalist indoctrination rather than religious indoctrination?

Anyway, who can agree on what 'British' values are? Are we to just pick out our more shining examples as 'British', and the bad as anomolies whereas for foreigners we pick out the bad and brand the good as anomolies?

This woman is an example of someone not British enough, if she were somehow more 'British' she wouldn't have done it? Was Guy Fawkes also not British?

eyesee

We need to stand up for ourselves too. Deport and imprison those who threaten the safety of this country and its decent people. I love the recognition of how stupid their 'supporters' are; a link to a supermarket website where you can buy knives!

Stuart Seacole Smith

I just love multiculturalism!

Every day, in every way, I feel a little bit stronger and more enriched as a person. Every day, in every way....

Barry Bilge

"To teach everyone, through the education system, about how we became the liberal democratic society we are today."

What are parents for?

DavidDP

Prior to falling under the influence of the Islamist, reports suggested this girl was moderate and hard working. Her parents appear to be decent hard working people. These are already British values. So the idea that "teach British values" is the answer is pat and ill-informed.

Holly

Maybe this well educated,intelligent woman wasn't that educated & intelligent after all.

Santorum

She also used "theyworkforyou". My own view is that religious belief is at the heart of the problem. Islam is particulalrly prone to drive this type of lunacy in the 21st century. But all religions have very dark sides. We're lucky in the west that secular values have diluted a lot of the madness. This process needs to continue. So if by "British values" Charles Moore means tolerance and secularism, i agree with him. He probably doesn't though

Anne Wotana Kaye 1

Funny, when I went to school we learned the 3 Rs, art, music, PT, RE, History, Geography, French, Domestic Science or Carpentry, plus other laguages which were optional. Yet, we never had lessoms in British Values, and surprise, none of my ex-school mates became terrorists, joined the Mau Mau,IRA or became Islamic FundaMentalists.

finchy

Roshonara Choudry stabbed Stephen Timms because she is a nutcase. Nutcases, educated or not, tend to copy other nutcases from a similar background to them. So Muslim nutcases like to blow themselves up and/or attack democratic institutions. White Anglo-Saxon male nutcases tend to buy guns and shoot people at random before shooting themselves etc.

I don't think teaching "British values" is a very British thing to do. My preference would be to have British history taught more thoroughly, i.e. not just World War 2 and the Tudors. Part of this more thorough curriculum should include an rational evaluation of all forms of government. Education is about giving students the means to suss stuff out for themselves; not brainwashing them with "British values".

Rhoda Klapp

There are always those people. Bader-Meinhoff, Red Brigade, IRA, whayever. There's a kind of young person who goes overboard for a cause. Doesn't have to be a logical cause, just need a little element of underdog, and a grievance. Of course a blood and thunder religion of peace will probably make it easier. But you can't fix it by trying to ameliorate the grievance, they will always find a way to keep it going, once it is their life's work. You probably can't fix it with education either. Some people just take things too far. We can even see the bitter tribalism between the political parties right here on this blog. Stupid, when the parties are pretty much indistinguishable, but every day, lies, exaggeration, name-calling, distortions and aggressive talk, right here in river city.

On another tack, nobody ever mentions the west's real threat to Islam. Not bombs or laws, but the eeffect of exposure to western life on their children. Fun, fashion, freedom and fornication. How many are seduced by them compared to the number who go extremist? How are they working on second and third generations?

Tarka the Rotter

Well said Anne... well said. If you want to do something about radical Islam, look to the madrassahs...not British primary schools QED

Verity

Everyone likes to be told they're the best. A lot people like having someone to look down on.

People from such a patently inferior, unchanging society are especially vulnerable, I would think, to assurances that the alien society they are so eager to live in is worthless and not a patch on evacuating their bowels in the sand dunes, travelling on foot and transporting goods on the back of a camel. And at night having the entertainment of looking up at the stars all night and checking out the ever-changing, ever-exciting phases of the moon.

No wonder they're seething with fury. That's why they shouldn't admitted.

In this instance, I also agree with Rhoda Klapp who says there are always people of this type. I would add the adjective "needy". Think of that American veil-wearing human pancake, Rachel Corrie, who threw herself under a bulldozer on the West Bank.

Edward

What 'values' can a relativist society teach a devout Muslim? You can't replace something with nothing.

Peter From Maidstone

Verity, there may indeed always be 'needy' people but at present it seems that there is a disproportionate number of Muslims who are willing to use violence to achieve their ends. I am not aware of the Revolutionary Quaker Front, or the Baptist Army of Death, or the United Methodist Fist of Wesley, but there appear to be countless groups within Islam which promote and intend violence, and as has been said, even in the UK they are passively and not so passively supported by 150,000 other Muslims. It may be that such groups attract the needy, but there is clearly something else at work.

Commondog

There is only one set of values upheld above all others by Muslims.

British values are tolerated only in as much as they can be seen to be on the wane and, as each demographic year goes by, are drifting off to the periphery. Witness the pathos of a set of values which has to insist and attempt to restate itself rather than exist as a given.

Already, this 'higher' set of values makes its mark, in the process of gradual displacement. At some future point, they will be the new 'British Values' due to the lumpen fact that they will be observed and adhered to by most of the people alive in Britain.

A takeover will then have been completed under the aegis of multiculturalism, of diversity and of handling change; and articles such as this one, will be looked upon in retrospect, as the death-twitches of a civilisation which had not yet realised its fate, or could not admit to it.

Edward Sutherland

Perhaps we could make a start by getting the Muslim minority in this country to study the lessons to be learned from the Gunpowder Plot. As most indigenous Brits should know, this occurred as a result of a small group of Catholics, driven to despair by religious persecution in their own country, conceiving the crazy plan of blowing up King James I, the Lords and Commons in one mighty conflagration,in the utterly misconceived belief that this somehow would improve their position. The result: 250 years and more of suspicion, hate, ostracism, discrimination and, at times, outright persecution for all Catholics- and mark you, these people weren't immigrants but native-born Britons who'd had the misfortune to end up on the losing side of the English Reformation. Thank goodness, Muslims do not face such terrible tribulations. All the more reason, then, for them to learn from the lessons of English history and respect our laws and democratic institutions. If some of them elect not to do so, then in all conscience they should depart for countries more in tune with their beliefs.

Anne Wotana Kaye 1

Rhodda Klapp:
On another tack, nobody ever mentions the west's real threat to Islam. Not bombs or laws, but the eeffect of exposure to western life on their children. Fun, fashion, freedom and fornication. How many are seduced by them compared to the number who go extremist? How are they working on second and third generations?
================================
Very well it seems. From just exploiting their own womenfolk, today's tabloids show the gang (which they call asian, rather than Pakistans) who abused and traded in 13-15 year old 'white bitches', their term for the host country's girls. From mutilating and busing their own daughters, forcing them to marry blood cousins to keep funds in the family, covering their faces, which hides bruises and is not prescribed in the Koran, it's a small step to raping and selling vulnerable 13 year old English girls, whose mothers are the products of a Britain which ha sold out to the barbarians at the gate.

Neil Turner

Sharia is here...

I think there are probably two kinds of Muslim: those so called Islamists who hate our way of life, and use extreme measures to kill us; and those who won't kill you, but won't do much to stand in the way of the Islamists

I grant that there may possibly be a third type, who seek peaceful co-existence, but they would be very much in the minority

The British way of life is very much under and existential threat, yet our politicians and the MSM choose the path of appeasement

Cynic

I was never taught "British values" when I was at school, but then I wasn't indoctrinated with multiculturalism so there was no need; British values permeated every part of society when I was growing up. No amount of lessons in school will counteract religious indoctrination in a faith which is intrinsically inimical to British values and the Western lifestyle.

dilys

I wouldn't mind pointers to my MP's surgery. He has become invisible in the constituency. Where are you Paul Uppal?

JohnBUK

You don't get it do you? For British people of all other religious and non-religious persuasions our ultimate allegiance is to our country. For centuries when we felt endangered our countrymen and women gave their lives in it's protection.
It would appear that Muslims' first allegiance is to their religion. It's who they say they are. For some their blind faith encourages them to put any semblance of logic aside and act from pure emotion.
"Teaching British values" won't even pierce the "noise".
The Trojan horse is here to stay. Only existing moderate Muslims can stop this (why would jihadists listen to infidels?) and on current form the odds don't look too good.

Dimoto

Can you really not see how pathetic it is to blame our ills on the "Islamic barbarians breaking down the gates" ?

Did some nutty mullah teach our kids all about the delights of "reality TV", binge drinking, benefit subsistence, "happy slapping", teenage suicide pacts, ritual cyber bullying, gang mobbing of their elders etc etc ?
Unhappily, those are the British "values" and freedoms shared by a large proportion of the next generation.

Obsessing about the Muslim lunatic fringe - displacement activity.

AY

Dimoto - "..blame our ills on Islamic.." ??

There wasn't a single word about that - but still there is a question how to prevent bringing more Muslim ills on top of ours.

Fergus Pickering

What ARE British values, James, my old son? Ven the filthy froggies don't routinely put out contracts on their politicians. In fact only muslims do this.

michael

-and the most popular choice for a boys name in England is ? .............. Mohammed.

(South China Daily)

Simone

Dimoto:
"Can you really not see how pathetic it is to blame our ills on the "Islamic barbarians breaking down the gates"?"

Sounds about right to me, I'm afraid.

The problems you mention about binge-drinking and reality TV are nothing compared to the radicalization of Muslim youth.