Positive thinking

   Carol Vincent, UCL and Myriam Hunter-Henin, UCL Amanda Spielman, head of Ofsted, claims British values are being “actively perverted” by religious extremists. In a recent speech, she suggests extremists are using schools to: Narrow young people’s horizons, isolate and segregate, and in the worst cases to indoctrinate impressionable minds. Spielman’s speech has already come under fire for lack of evidence and has been taken by some as the latest attack on Muslim children in British schools. But what are these “British values” she speaks of? A love of tea drinking? Queuing? Supporting the Queen or the NHS? The government defines “fundamental British values” as democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths. Since 2014, teachers in English schools must promote these British values and their promotion is inspected by Ofsted. The initiative was a response by Michael Gove – then secretary o...

Lee Jarvis, University of East Anglia ; Eylem Atakav, University of East Anglia , and Lee Marsden, University of East Anglia Channel 4’s recent programme My Week as a Muslim , in which a non-Muslim woman lived with a Pakistani family for a week, was a reminder of the ongoing curiosity about Muslim life in British society. The programme was criticised for its use of “brownfacing” as the woman wore dark make-up and a niqab to appear Pakistani – highlighting the resilience of assumptions that British Muslims are non-white or somehow non-British. This abiding curiosity about how Muslims live and what Muslims think frequently stems from enduring concerns around integration. In the past, such concerns were usually couched in the language of multiculturalism or community cohesion, but today they are often centred around the idea of “British values”. While the meaning of the term remains unclear, it saturates public life in areas as diverse as counter-radicalisation policy a...