You might have the current furore about a teaching pack distributed (and since withdrawn) by Teachernet, which encouraged pupils to think about the London bombings of 2005 from the point of view of the terrorists.

The pack was developed in West Yorkshire, where many of the bombers lived, and so you can see the logic of trying to ‘see things from the other side’. In most cases this would be laudable, but in the case of radicalised Islamic terrorists, even their families agree that they were mentally deranged. Putting across ‘their point of view’ is no more justified that encouraging a perspective from the point of view of Ian Brady, a notorious child killer.

You can’t rationalise the motives of a mad-man: that is extremist relativism.

Actually, we were nearly as incensed by the price DCSF were charging – £200 for the lesson pack! We’ve got some more wholesome ways of teaching the Diversity and Communities strand, as well as a range over 50 other files for Citizenship teaching. On our site, £200 would buy you the entire syllabus worth of content, not just a controversial lesson!

This entry was posted on Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 11:06 am and is filed under Teaching Ideas, UK teaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.