Bear Bating

Much as I would like to be someone completely different, I start the new term in a familiar state. Unable and unwilling to play nicely with the other children.

Last week I failed the Prevent programme for the fourth time. Online mandatory training for public sector workers about the UK’s anti-radicalisation strategy is not apparently within the realm of my expertise. At 4pm on a Friday I open that urgent email from the development team informing me that I was now in danger of a formal process unless I complete. I login to EasyLearn (It’s Simple!) and realise I’ve erased from conscious record my previous attempts to pass this module. There were three sections that apparently had awoken something primitive and unaccommodating in me. 

The first activity gives you the option of clicking onto twelve individual portrait photos, depending on whether you think they could be terrorists. Big sigh as we’re introduced to the power of our unconscious bias presumably in the belief that if we could just be conscious of our deep rooted prejudices we’d decide to be nice to the kids who are a bit different from us. As a bonafide outcast thanks to being a twin, wearing dressing up every day to a rural primary school and being a bit too smart for the comfort of authority my experience is that it’s actually an invitation to violence but hey ho, happy to get on the learning train. 

There are pictures of two young men of South East Asian heritage and one of Osama bin Laden. The rest are white people. I skipped this section three times because I just couldn’t. Mentally I ached but turns out that the Prevent algorithm won’t let you complete the module unless you click on all of them. Hey kids, all twelve were found guilty of radicalism. Even the white women. Exclamation mark. 

The second activity is to identify the signs of potential radicalisation. One of the indicators of radicalisation according to the Prevent Programme is ‘Expression of feelings of anger, grievance and injustice’.  I am unable to tick that box thinking surely everyone is angry right? Local elections combined with deepening crony capitalism and I’m routinely having to stand six foot away from people I care about to save them the bile and spittle.  There’s no box for that.

A dark moment descends as my cursor hovers over the box that I am unable to tick for the fourth time because its not what I believe. Is the Prevent Algorithm in the sky watching my hesitation? What standard does it apply to this user’s data, what calculation does it make as a result? That I don’t understand the question or I’m sinking into an angry alienation? Or on my journey towards radicalisation minus the question mark.  I’m drowning in dystopian dread that I’ve been gamed by an algorithm. So I tick and feel sick.

The third activity I failed is the one where you identify what in UK law constitutes a hate crime. I’m just going to say this in case, like me, you dropped the equalities legislative reform ball this year because of, well, being worn out by inequalities. Despite judicial review in 2021/22 misogyny is not a hate crime in the UK. Apparently it would be ‘counter-productive’.

Counter-productive because it would blow our pretty little minds to know how much we are hated and for us to feel something about that? Counter-productive to have a police service forced by law to take crimes against women seriously? Views and vocabularies that have not been aired since Sunday lunch in the 1970s rage through my head. And for that reason I would suggest a health warning for the Prevent programme as it brought me the closest to having a stroke since teaching my son to ride a bike. 

I tick the mandatory boxes to complete and comply while feeling that a part of me has died as my internal terrorist, the part of me that wants to destroy anything that does not share my exact DNA, emerges into clear conscious view. 

Overriding the fact that I’m an actual educator who knows what actual education looks like, I email my personal development officer to inform them I am now fully compliant. I thought about mentioning my problem with misogyny not being a hate crime and the pedagogical limitations of unconscious bias training but stopped myself in case the anger with which I tap the keyboard is registering as radical intent by the Prevent algorithm. I resist the urge to pour coffee down the back of my computer and wander off into the South West forests with a chainsaw and tinned food. 

But Lord, what to do with my unbridled consciousness of all that grievance?

At the end of this long Friday I had the luck to talk to two women I admire about our research into data visualisation and digital therapy. One of these goddesses told us that this week she was made to go on a Leadership and Wellbeing course taught by a 12 year old expert on self-care. The other beatific creature had just got off the phone with the police after being harassed by a conservative councillor as a result of her local election campaigning for the labour party which involved calling him out on his pure, undiluted lying in his election campaign materials. His response to being presented with actual facts, published in the public domain, was to take a picture of her child and lie about her on facebook. This led to a local misogynist stalking her. Apparently there’s no law against it. Yup, got that. 

Those of us with the dubious privilege of lived experience face the double penalty of having to push back against control whether algorithmic or state led because we can’t pretend we’re OK with it. Not woke, just awake, we find ourselves unable to go quietly. 

Inevitably radicalised by the sheer bear-bating unfairness of it all.