P035. Evaluating risk and resilience through Britain's Prevent counter-terrorism in schools strategy and school securitization policy in the USA

• In Event: Poster Session & Ice Cream Social

Abstract

In the UK, Prevention of terrorism guidance for schools was first published 2014 and accompanies the requirement for schools to implement Fundamental British Values (FBV). There has been abundant criticism from academics, policymakers, educators and students across the country who question the unequal application of Prevent in schools targeting primarily Muslim students, the hampering of freedom of speech, and whether this strategy has driven young people to discuss radical ideas outside of the classroom. But more than just a flawed strategy – these discourses/policies on school/societal security have been used as a form of social control to shape ways of acting and being. This project aims to show this by comparing discourses of radicalization and school security in the UK and the US. The US has seen a rise of policy debate and research on the radicalization from the Christian right and incel culture which are seen as contributors and risk factors for the epidemic of mass shootings in American schools. Despite this most affecting white teenage boys, securitization efforts in US education disproportionately affects public schools in urban areas with high concentrations of Black and Brown students who are portrayed – against mass shooting statistics – as most at risk of developing the kind of violent tendencies that leads to gun violence in schools.

This project carries out a critical race theory analysis of risk and resilience to violence in schoolchildren in the UK and USA using the lens of the Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory. I also use Critical Discourse Analysis to ask: (i) how does an exploration of discourses of the development of violence in youth show how education policy is used as a tool of social and educational control? (ii)how does a comparative lens help us better understand policy as a tool of social control.

Author

• Mel Yeung, Teachers College, Columbia University