Teach Secondary -Issue 15.1

Paging the RESISTANCE To counter the extremist messaging many students are now routinely exposed to online, we can turn to a resource all of us already use daily, suggests Aaron Swan ... A public death is always shocking and unexpected – and yet somehow, never outside the bounds of reality. Such seismic moments can seize the attention of even the most politically disinterested children and teens. If the moment was captured on camera, thenmany will already know all the details, having watched the uncensored footage. Depending on the circumstances and person involved, some may react with a sort of political hysteria adjacent to trauma – or even experience something akin to an identity crisis. The worst political horror to unfold inmy own experience of teaching was the death of George Floyd and its aftermath. Occurring inMay of 2020, its impact stewed in the fallout following the first wave of COVID, when our students were in lockdown, far from the guidance and counsel of their school. By the time they came back to us, we had students who had become traumatised by their unrestricted access to this content. Children who had repeatedly watched four officers detain Floyd, and continue watching as Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck. A victimbegging for air. One struggling child told me they had watched the event maybe a hundred times, but it didn’t take that degree of saturation for the damage to be done in others too. Aconcentration of power The assassination of Charlie Kirk in September of 2025 posed a different set of challenges. Kirk wasn’t a civilian in the wrong place; he was a Far Right influencer, whose death enabled the emergence of a new political narrative framed by clamorous accusations from both the political left and right. Elliot Forhan, a Democratic candidate for Ohio attorney general, stated on social media that “ Charlie Kirk was a champion of tyranny, not democracy .” The Republican Secretary of State, Frank LaRose, has described Democratic speakers as being engaged in ‘demented rhetoric’. Trump himself has repeatedly accused the ‘radical left’ of fostering the kind of rhetoric that led to Kirk’s assassination. Whose voices will carry the most weight in this propaganda war? Those already holding the megaphone? Those with the most social media followers? Those controlling the social media platforms? Thus far, it seems as though the American right-wing has, and will continue to profit most from extremism, thanks to a concentration of power and ownership across the media sector. Algorithmic radicalisation Meanwhile, on this side of the Atlantic, the adoption of nationalist agendas by mainstream parties such as Nigel Farage’s ReformUK, Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and GertWilder’s PVV and others (see tinyurl.com/ ts151-E1) tells us that this isn’t just an American disease, but one that’s spreading globally. England has been here before. The murder of Labour MP Jo Cox in 2016 was a warning that we hadn’t done enough to guard against the risks of online and offline Far Right radicalisation. Today, students are watching more worrying political content than ever – unfiltered, autoplayed and deliberately targeted – that serves to fuel the rise of the radical right. There’s a growing body of research showing how search and social media algorithms can unintentionally (or perhaps sometimes intentionally) amplify extremist ideologies, in a process of ‘algorithmic radicalisation’. It’s a toxin that requires a medicine. Students will come to us for support with this stuff, but for various reasons, the educational orthodoxy compels teachers to shut down such conversations. The official advice is to respond with some variant of ‘This isn’t the right time or place’ , or to ‘Speak to [insert relevant middle management colleague] for support’ . It’s simply too difficult to provide appropriate counsel around such events in the middle of a packed teaching timetable. Students are instead signposted to counselling services (an avenue with long, yet typically unacknowledged lead times) and taught a PSHE curriculum that will occasionally cover such issues. There are also assemblies and community worship services, both of which can provide a space in which to issue reactive messaging informed by pressing current affairs. Cross-curricular resistance As recently pointed out by the Children’s Commissioner, children are often facing delays of sixmonths to receive dedicatedmental health support outside of school (see tinyurl.com/ts151-E2 ). What’s needed is some form of casual, yet structural everyday anti-radicalisation material that’s tied into students’ daily experiences. Fortunately, there already exists a wealth of existing material that’s ripe for countering this very problem, “Books challenge misrepresentations – they can immerse us in experiences of‘otherness’” 68 teachwire.net/secondary