What Should we Teach Children About The Ideologies of Terrorism?

In the good old Dis-United Kindgom five young Asian men from Bradford have been released by the Court of Appeal after previously being convicted for possessing materials relating to terrorism. No link was ever found between them and recognised terrorist groups, nor did the prosecution establish that any of them had any intention to plan, assist, or commit acts of terrorism. One of the individuals concerned was only a schoolboy at the time of the original prosecutions.
In the same week, our Government has announced plans to expose schoolchildren to five hours' per week of cultural activities and education (a plan many teachers have complained is unrealisable without additional resources and teachers).
So, concluded Nosher and me down on our little allotment, the powers-that-be are worried that children are growing up unable to access the rich cultural heritage that should be theirs by right - but, at the same time, if these same children stray onto internet sites that display material of which the Government disapproves, they are likely to be locked up and convicted of terrorist offences, without a shred of evidence that they are linked to terrorism or have any intention of becoming involved.
Something is going badly wrong in our supposedly enlighted society. The idiots that drafted and voted in these laws should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.
Innocent children are being sacrificed to the stupidity of Government lawyers who draft laws that oppress the innocent, and also to the self-serving hypocrisy of Government MPs who vote the laws onto the Statute Book.
So, as we sat on our venerable deckchairs (salvaged from the Titanic and passed down through Nosher's family as heirlooms) sipping parsnip wine in the glorious afternoon sun (what a wonderful February we've had so far!) we pondered upon the inevitable contradictions involved in trying to raise children to be wise, peaceable, citizens of a free and open society in which you are liable to be arrested and locked up for trying to find out why terrorists kill and maim.
As Nosher pointed out, children are, of course, beset by powerful irrational impulses, they have poor self-control, labile emotions, and are ignorant, credulous and gullible. In addition, they have limited or impaired moral awareness and judgement, and take the slightest hint of personal rejection as a deep, undeserved, wound likely to induce resentment and evoke a desire for revenge. Not so different from many adults, then.
Nonetheless, children are fundamentally different from adults: they are, in the main, more vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation by those seeking to control or abuse them.
All very good reasons, I remarked to Nosher, as to why no society on the planet accords children the same moral and political status as is given to adults.
But here's the rub: suddenly, at age 18 (or 21 if you're an American) these children, irrespective of their educational attainment, emotional maturity or moral development, suddenly become, in law, adults. In theory, they are now fully responsible for their conduct, even if they act in ignorance of the (incredibly complex and recondite) laws we now have imposed upon us by drafters of legislation (and their political masters) whose desire is to display their own mastery of archaic legal jargon, and exercise their own obsession with interfering in our lives, without letting the rest of us in on their little secrets.
But these same young people have almost certainly had access to the most widely-ranging of materials on the internet from a very early age, and have thus most likely been exposed to all sorts of material that might corrupt their sensitive young minds unless those minds are already prepared and motivated to combat such corrupting effects.
And so Nosher and I rapidly found ourselves in total agreement:
The issue that a society such as ours should be addressing, as a matter of public concern is:
How, and to what extent, should our educational system be helping children make sense of the values and messages contained in materials that propound the ideology of terrorism?
They will encounter this material at some point in their lives - surely the moral responsibility of the leaders of a free and open society is to ensure, as far as is humanly possible, that the children of such a society grow up fully aware of the implications of terrorism and its ideologies, but also capable of making the crucial moral distinction between legitimate means of opposing oppression (real or imagined) and methods that are indescriminate and not only break international law but also render the perpetrators violent criminals and thus enemies of civilised societies and outlaws to boot?
This is the debate our society should be conducting, in free and open discussion, and in public.
Yet this is a debate, which, if it is taking place, is not being held in the public eye. Government ministers and their civil servants may debate it, professional academics may debate it - but thus far there has been no public debate on the issue.
Both Nosher and I believe that there should be a public debate, involving all levels of society, and it should start very soon. For unless we, as a society, are able to show the young children of our country that we not only understand the motivation for terrorism, but also that we can show why and how it breaches every moral constraint that characterises a civil society of free and open people, then we cannot subsequently expect children to understand it either.
And, if, as a result, these confused and fascinated children then find themselves exploring the issues for themselves on the internet and we then label them as terrorists, we are compounding our own failure to educate them with our own folly in implementing laws drafted by well-meaning (or perhaps merely cynical) ignoramuses.
The disturbing fact is that, in the case of the Bradford Five, they were convicted under a law that was badly thought through, incompetently drafted, and voted onto the Statute Book by MPs who evidently had not properly considered the implications for the ordinary, free, innocent people of this country and their children.
And remember, folks, these very people that have done all this - our leaders - are the clever guys - or at least they think they are! After all, they're the ones that put themselves forward as being fit and capable to run the country on our behalf.
Perhaps the five hours of cultural education planned for schoolchildren in our society should be delivered initially to Government Ministers, MPs, Government lawyers, judges, barristers and criminal soliticitors, so that they might better understand the difference between a curious and fascinated child and a genuine perpetrator of terrorism.
Then, perhaps, we might see some genuine wisdom from our benighted leaders who, thus far in the 'War on Terror' (recently renamed to some PC nonsense that isn't memorable at all) have distinguished themselves only by shooting and locking up innocent people (on often the flimsiest of suspicions) whilst very few genuine terrorists have been apprehended or convicted.
And so, as Nosher and I watched the red orb of the setting sun slip behind the willow trees, we emptied our glasses of parsnip wine in a toast to all those who labour selflessly bring about genuine freedom and understanding in this benighted land we now call the Dis-United Kingdom.
More from http://www.overthegardenfence.blogspot.com/ soon.

You can find more on issues such as these on my website

http://www.paulssturdee.co.uk/