Tuesday 9 March 2010

The Power of Nightmares

I hope to run a story on BBC Radio Cornwall tomorrow morning about the local Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education (SACRE) and its plan to train school teachers how to spot potential suicide bombers in the playground.

It's not every day that the SACRE sits through a presentation from police, complete with slides from MI5 and contact details for Special Branch. The official "threat level" from some unspecified violent religious extremist is currently assessed as "severe."

So the SACRE has agreed to sponsor a special summer conference for 31 schools. Teachers will be helped to identify those traits which might turn some children into terrorists. The £3,500 cost, of course, is peanuts and this is one of those "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenarios - imagine the outcry if the SACRE failed to follow up on government advice and that some years down the road, a Cornish lad (or lass) eventually does something outrageous.

But am I alone in wondering if another civil liberty (that of school children not to be spied upon by the State) hasn't just been lost; or if the tiny handful of Muslim children in Cornish schools might not be just a little bit concerned about what all this might lead to?



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