‘Schools have legal duty to promote anti-racism’
THE row about the use of an ‘offensive caricature of the Prophet Mohammed in a lesson at Batley Grammar School’ has been mentioned in your pages twice in the last few days.
May 5 edition features Stephen Evans, of the National Secular Society, who expresses anxiety about ‘the freedom to teach and freedom of expression.’
I am an atheist, a former teacher, an NEU member and a campaigner against racism and Islamophobia. I do not support privileges for any religion, and I do believe teachers’ rights should be valued and protected. However, I also think that the best interests of all of us are best served by religious toleration and equality, yet we live in a society where there is a dangerous history of prejudice and discrimination against Islam and Muslims.
Stand Up to Racism issued a statement on March 25 which remains relevant: “Details of what happened at Batley Grammar School are yet to fully emerge. In educating students we must be clear – insulting the Prophet Mohammed is not freedom of speech, it is racist abuse and exploitation towards a minority community. Such racism and Islamophobia can lead to violent attacks on the ground. Schools have a legal duty to promote anti-racism and the values of multiculturalism.”
How many lives lost?
FAR and away the majority of Covidrelated deaths happened outside of hospital.
When it became clear that PM Boris Johnson’s reluctance to introduce lockdown and restrict international travel to limit infections coming from abroad was allowing the disease to run unchecked – placing the NHS in serious danger of being over-run – the government issued ‘guidelines’ to clinicians triaging patients.
The two main ones were age and frailty – would they benefit from treatment? – forcing doctors to play God, rather than take up bed space.
If you remove treatment from a patient and that patient dies, you have in effect killed that patient. On the other hand, if you withhold treatment from the start and they die, they simply died and the ones who failed the critique, were sent – highly infected – home. Some to care homes and some to their own homes, where they received a degree of care but it was palliative – they were simply sent home to die. The government could see what was happening around the world and yet made no preparations to deal with something on this scale.
The question is instead of doing it his way, choosing not to listen to the evidence, how many lives could have been saved?
To the Martins (No surname, no address,
of this world, I’m not surprised that you don’t want us to know who you are.
If I was in your shoes, mate, I wouldn’t either.