FAR-right and populist movements are turning some Scottish schools into “battlegrounds of blame and violence”, the incoming president of a teaching union will say today.
David Anderson will tell the NASUWT Scotland conference that racist, misogynistic and anti-immigrant rhetoric is trickling into schools with increasing numbers of teachers subjected to hateful abuse online.
He will say this has been fuelled by the rise of social media, with teachers now facing more aggressive parents and pupils.
A motion on tackling the far-right is due to be debated at the conference which calls for pupils to be taught about the dangers of hate speech from primary school onwards to challenge the spread of prejudice-based abuse.
Nearly two-thirds of teachers in Scotland who responded to the union’s recent behaviour in schools survey feel that social media negatively impacts pupil behaviour.
Anderson is expected to say: “We see the changes in broader society manifested in the classroom conduct of pupils and that of their parents and carers.
“Abusive rhetoric by politicians is trickling down and facilitating increasingly abusive and hateful speech in social media, which in turn seems to be spurring rapid increases in the frequency of bias-motivated incidents of harassment, threats, and violence, including rampant surges in hate crimes.
A total of 5% of female teachers in Scotland who responded to the survey reported experiencing sexual abuse from pupils, compared to 2% of male teachers.
Female respondents reported sexism and misogyny as among the types of abuse they receive from pupils.
Anderson will also call for trade unions to campaign hard to challenge prejudice and hatred in the face of national and global threats to hard-won progress on equality.
“Education is often perceived as a threat by the extreme right. Internationally, we see the closure of departments of education and the removal of programmes to promote equality within society,” he will say.
“In the USA it’s called DEI, Diversity Equality Inclusion - that’s in the NASUWT DNA.
“We must protect and call out any attempt to water down or attack these principles. Trade unions like ours must remain vigilant to the hatred of far-right politics, both here at home in the UK, across Europe and internationally.
“The threat of far-right populism sought to destroy the union movement and unions had to work together to resist and campaign against it. The malignant tentacles of hate are spreading throughout our near neighbours in Europe as well as globally.
“Trade unions need to campaign hard to fight the threat.”
