Anti-racist teaching on the internet:

Bringing the Britkids to life

Pam Carroll; Chris Gaine; Melanie Stevens

University College Chichester, UK

+44(0)1243 816234/816287

This paper considers what has been learned about anti-racist educational website use since Britkid (the UK ‘sibling’ of the Eurokid group) went on line in 1998. In that time evaluation and development work has been carried out around the UK, noting positive and negative responses from teachers and pupils. The site has been redesigned and re-programmed as a result of this and a series of technical reasons.

The paper presents some evaluation evidence, feedback about teachers’ needs from such a resource, re-design decisions, dilemmas about pedagogy, and a suggested template for future development.

Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University of Lisbon, 11-14 September 2002

For those who are unfamiliar with the resource we are discussing, it is important to summarise something of its key features. What is Britkid, and what is it not?

Origins of the Britkid Project

The UK ‘race’ context

The intention of the site was to provide an anti-racist educational resource for young people who have little first hand contact with minorities. This raises an issue we think bears rehearsing briefly: the UK is not as ‘multi-cultural’ as people think it is.

Before they arrive, visitors to Britain are likely to be aware of British pop music and perhaps aspects of British sport. On arrival, wherever else they go, they are likely to see London, to use public transport (or airports at least) and to use cafes and restaurants; they may watch TV. In all these spheres people who are clearly not of white British ancestry are noticeable. The reasons for their presence in certain kinds of jobs are complex (though catering and transport are simply low paid jobs – see Modood et al, 1997). London itself gives a completely misleading picture. About 40% of Britain’s visible minorities live there, over half of all people with roots in the Caribbean or Bangladesh, and as a result the capital has a markedly ethnically mixed feel to it.

However, the proportion of the total British population from visible ethnic minorities is only about 6%, and if almost half of them live in London simple arithmetic tells us that in much of the rest of the country they will make up less than 1% of the population (Runnymede, 2000).

The implications of this make the issue of ‘race’ in Britain complex. In cultural terms, in terms of people’s conception of Britain and of themselves as British, an assumption of ‘whiteness’ still prevails, even though the media and any travel within Britain shows that this assumption no longer stands up. In terms of experience, a significant proportion of the British population (perhaps more than half) have little or no first hand contact with visible minorities. This does not mean they live in a vacuum, or in ‘ignorance’, it means that they are prey to two sometimes contradictory influences in forming the frame of reference through which they understand ‘race’. One is old and derived from our colonial past: inferior people, strange ways, peculiar languages, poverty, cheap labour (Goulbourne, 1998; Rattansi, 1992). The other is contemporary and peopled with pop stars and footballers as well as criminals, drug dealers, fanatical Muslims, people in poverty and ‘troublesome’ asylum seekers.

Young people’s ideas

There is substantial evidence from our own and others’ work to suggest that many young people in ‘white’ areas grow up in a climate of negative stereotypes about visible minorities. This cluster of ideas held by young people (and of course adults) is not the result of ‘ignorance’ since they are patterned and consistent across different parts of the country. Part of the problem, then, is not that young people believe that they know nothing about minorities, but that they believe they ‘know’ a good deal. The fact that these negative perceptions cannot be checked or confirmed against real people gives them a particular character, which, at worst, makes them stubbornly resistant to change.

Where the perceptions come from is, of course, complex. It is too simple simply to assume that they learn them at home - most parents are neutral, non-committal or simply contradictory and inconsistent, and the source given by 10 year olds for the negative stereotypes and abusive words which they know tends to be slightly older teenagers. We believe, therefore, that there is something in adolescent culture which allows these ideas to circulate, and one of our concerns is that formal schooling does too little to counter them (Gaine, 1995; Troyna and Hatcher, 1992).

These factors need to be considered in countering racism and they make the representation of minorities a key issue. Indeed, in one sense, representations make up a key part of what people ‘know’ and believe about minorities. With something as potentially divisive as ‘race’ this presents particular challenges to educators, not least if they choose to enter the world of contested representations themselves. Determining the best way to counter negativity and to replace stereotyping and scapegoating with empathy and understanding is a considerable educational problem (see Gaine, 2000, for a detailed discussion of this issue in relation to this project).

Racism not culture

One key goal that emerges from all this is that the website was not intended to be about ‘culture’ as such. We do not believe that racism comes from cultural difference. The website does not primarily set out to explain ‘cultures’, it aims to explore and engage with racist beliefs and constructs. (This is not to say that aspects of culture are not examined, but it is to say that it was never a founding principle of the work that ‘if only people understood other “strange” cultures then prejudice would go away’.

Other design considerations

This is some of the context of the Britkid website. In the light of considerable evidence of hostility and the belief in several core myths about ethnic minorities, it was decided to produce a curriculum resource about racism. The resource was intended to be innovative in that it would use the internet, and the target age was established as around 12-13 years old and rigorously adhered to. The target age group was very specific because in our judgement, school resources on racism in the UK have often been either produced by teachers who know how to design curriculum materials but do not know enough about racism, or else produced by academics or activists who do not sufficiently understand classroom dynamics, attention spans and reading ages.

It also needs saying that the dynamics of teaching about ‘race’ and racism are fraught with difficulty. There is not always an obvious part of the curriculum in which to address the issue, and teachers need courage, training and support to do it well. Frequently group dynamics and the authority of the teacher become confused with the objectives, so that what should be a learning experience becomes conflictual. There is a constant dilemma for teachers about what kind of position or stand to take, or whether to attempt ‘neutrality’. There is a great deal of skill involved in engaging both the hearts and minds of young people, or developing a fruitful interaction of the intellect and the emotions. As I think we all know, on the issue of ‘race’ emotions run deep. There is also what we would call the problem of abstraction: there are relatively few first-hand victims of racism to provide individuals and institutions with a motive for change. Allied to this is the real problem of giving a voice to minorities and creating a dialogue.

Anyone familiar with the Internet is aware that despite the hype, in fact much of it is boring - pages of dull text which might as well be read on a piece of paper. Clearly we had to do better than that. We set out to use the potential of computers to allow users to explore issues of racism themselves, with an authoritative, patient and non-judgemental ‘teacher’ or guide, and the first hand ‘voices’ of ethnic minorities. With computer-based material, dialogue of a kind is possible, without the risks of negative classroom dynamics, the site potentially combining the privacy sometimes required for sensitive self-directed enquiry, an opportunity for users to reflect and discuss, and space for the authentic voices of those affected by racism. The style and tone of the website was intended to be engaging, memorable, and challenging, and while being explicitly anti-racist, it was intended to guide, inform and stimulate rather than preach.

A brief tour

The central part of the site is a group of nine invented characters, young teenagers who in the course of conversations and observations in various locations around their imaginary town, explore and rehearse various facets of racism and various facets of growing up in an ethnically diverse society. Users choose to be ‘with’ one of the characters, each of whom represents something of Britain’s ethnic diversity. The user then has the option of going to their character’s home and reading something of their home life and family. They can then ‘accompany’ their character to four or five venues in the imaginary town they all live in, where they ‘witness’ conversations and arguments between them and their friends and occasionally other people. Overall, in one way or another, they explore assumptions and attitudes about ‘race’, biological myths around sport and music, immigration control, religion, employment, housing, marriage and relationships, harassment, racist jokes, relationships with the police, food, language and cultural maintenance. At the end of each brief encounter there is a quiz or a similar option, where the user’s response and understanding of the issue under discussion is explored. Various media and sports personalities contributed interviews and pictures for the site, and these are accessed when users persist with the site and answer questions thoughtfully. In addition to this series of pathways, there are reference pages which can be accessed for further information, so, for instance, an argument about the police is backed up with a reference page about crime figures, a discussion about what white people in general think about minorities is backed up with real survey data.

As an educational tool, this website works like a CD Rom in that it contains a fixed content, does not depend upon links to other sites, and does not exploit some advantages of the internet at all. This ‘boundary’ was fixed so that teachers can feel safe with it: the Internet is a vast territory where young people may meet, by accident or design, material and individuals which teachers would not want them to meet. In its relatively early days as a school medium, teachers are likely to feel safer with a website if it has boundaries beyond which pupils need not go, and if it is sufficiently big to engage them for some time. It is nevertheless internet-based rather than being on a CD Rom for four reasons. Firstly, it is international and thus provides a learning tool about the UK accessible from anywhere in the world. Secondly, the site is free to anyone with internet access. Thirdly, the site can be accessed in and out of school hours, there are no networking and copying problems or related issues for school budgets or organisational systems. Fourthly, it can all be modified without a major marketing exercise to re-distribute revisions.

The site’s use in practice
Teachers and computers

Some of the above is based upon assumptions: assumptions about computers, assumptions about the way teachers will use them, assumptions about learning. During the past two years we have to differing degrees been introducing the Britkid website to teachers and pupils in secondary schools, and have been particularly struck by their responses to using of the site and to computers generally. There have been several aspects to these observations.

In 1986, when computer technology was much less accessible to schools, and few teachers had the necessary expertise to use them, Cuban began to query how practical and realistic it was to expect this medium to be used in the classroom (Cuban, 1986). Fourteen years later, Becker questioned whether Cuban’s doubts about computer use could still be justified when he asked,

…have computers become more compatible with the conditions of teaching? Have their richer capabilities made them more relevant to teaching objectives? Do they now constitute resources with potential for significantly changing and improving the nature of school learning? Have teachers themselves become more skilled and knowledgeable about using computer software and hardware with their students? Or is Cuban right even today: are computers really a mismatch with the requirements and conditions of teaching? (Becker, 2000).

Becker went on to ask,

Are teachers using computers with their students? Which teachers are doing so? What are their teaching objectives for students’ computer use? How are those objectives met by using computers? Do certain approaches to using computers have an impact on students and on their teaching in general? What types of teachers are making these changes, and what conditions permit this to happen? (ibid)

We will try to address some of Becker’s questions in terms of the general use of computers, and some with more specific regard to use of the Britkid website.

While introducing schools to Britkid, three observations have been fundamental and appear to underpin the whole ‘technology’ ethos in classrooms at the present time, preventing the more fluid, relaxed and confident application of this medium in teaching. The first observation has been that funding for the wider use of computers in schools is still an issue, although this is improving, and during the two years we have been visiting schools, the refrain has often been that they have ‘cleared the necessary spaces, and are waiting for the hardware to arrive’. The second is that teachers’ preoccupation with what Ball (2000) has termed ‘performativity’, is fairly seriously hampering the time that teachers feel they have available to make use of this relatively new medium in the face of the demands that are put upon them due to the constraints of what they regard as a highly prescriptive curriculum. Thirdly, many teachers appear to lack the training, and subsequently the confidence, to use computers in the classroom, and often feel (sometimes quite rightly) that their students know more about the medium than they do themselves. A combination of these factors often results in teachers regarding the use of computers as something ‘separate’ from their subject teaching activity, and not ‘integrated’ into their practice, (although new initiatives based around an integrated curriculum of ‘citizenship’ have included the use of computer technology as part of the brief in the hope that this will broaden the use of computers by both teachers and students across the curriculum).