Swann (1985)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages Membership, Contents, Introduction

Part I: Setting the scene
Chapter 1 The nature of society
Chapter 2 Racism: theory and practice
Chapter 3 Achievement and underachievement
Chapter 3 continued

Part II: Education for all
Chapter 4 Ethnic minorities and education: historical perspective
Chapter 5 Multicultural education: further studies
Chapter 5 continued
Chapter 6 'Education for all': a new approach

Part III: Major areas of concern
Chapter 7 Language and language education
Chapter 8 Religion and the role of the school
Chapter 9 Teacher education; employment of ethnic minority teachers
Chapter 9 continued

Part IV: 'Other' ethnic minority groups
Introduction
Chapter 10 Chinese children
Chapter 11 Cypriot children
Chapter 12 Italian children
Chapter 13 Ukranian children
Chapter 14 Vietnamese children
Chapter 15 'Liverpool Blacks'
Chapter 16 Travellers' children
Reflections and conclusions

Part V:
Main conclusions and recommendations

Appendices

Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Education of Children from Ethnic Minority Groups

Chairman: Lord Swann

Cmnd. 9453

London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1985
© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.

Chapter 2 Racism: theory and practice
[pages 9 - 37]

As we said in our interim report:

'Very few people can be said to be entirely without prejudice of one kind or another and in this country, due in part at least to the influence of history, these prejudices may be directed against West Indians and other non-white ethnic minority groups. A well-intentioned and apparently sympathetic person may, as a result of his education, experiences or environment, have negative, patronising or stereotyped views about ethnic minority groups which may subconsciously affect his attitude and behaviour towards members of those groups ... We see such attitudes and behaviour as a form of 'unintentional' racism.

Although genuine misunderstandings can sometimes lead people, both black and white, to believe mistakenly that racism lies behind certain behaviour or situations, we are convinced from the evidence that we have obtained that racism, both intentional and unintentional, has a direct and important bearing on the performance of West Indian children in our schools.

The suggestion that teachers are in any way racist understandably arouses very strong reactions from the profession and is often simply rejected out of hand as entirely unjustified and malicious. Since a profession of nearly half a million people must to a great extent reflect the attitudes of society at large there must inevitably be some teachers who hold explicitly racist views. Such teachers are very much in the minority. We have, however, found some evidence of what we have described as unintentional racism in the behaviour and attitudes of other teachers whom it would be misleading to describe as racist in the commonly accepted sense. They firmly believe that any prejudices they may have can do no harm since they are not translated into any openly discriminatory behaviour. Nevertheless, if their attitudes are influenced in any way by prejudices against ethnic minority groups, this can and does, we believe, have a detrimental effect on all children whom they encounter.'

Extract from our Interim Report West Indian children in our schools.

1. Introduction

The changing climate of the debate

1.1 Since we referred in these terms in our interim report to the role which racism could play in the educational experience of ethnic minority children, we believe that there has been a quite marked shift in opinion, both within the education system and society at large, on the propriety of openly discussing this issue. Views may still differ on the nature of racism, the extent of its influence and how best to overcome its effects. Even those people who would challenge its very existence in this country however now seem to accept it as a concept which justifies full and careful consideration and are willing to consider the possibility that certain attitudes and procedures may work against particular ethnic minority groups in society. Whereas in the early part of our work the mere mention of the word racism, in meetings and discussions with educationists and others, was sometimes sufficient to provoke extreme reactions of anger, distress and defensiveness, more recently we have found a far greater willingness to explore this issue in a balanced and dispassionate manner. The considerable attention devoted by the media to considering racial disadvantage and discrimination in the wake of the disturbances in some inner city areas during 1981, and subsequently Lord Scarman's well-publicised report, (1) have clearly done much in bringing about this new climate of opinion and it seems that in education circles at least our interim report has also contributed to the debate. Since we believe that the key to understanding the concept of racism lies in creating a situation where people are willing and able to examine and appraise attitudes and practices, both their own and other people's, free from preconceived notions of superiority and inferiority, or 'guilt' and 'innocence', we are greatly encouraged by this heightened level of awareness.

Reactions to our interim report

1.2 The conclusions which we drew in our interim report on the issue of racism provoked a good deal of reaction and comment at the time and many people welcomed the fact that we had sought to tackle an issue which they felt had in the past often tended to be overlooked in consideration of the educational needs of ethnic minorities. There was a general indication however, especially in the comments we received from individual heads and teachers, that some people felt that we had not dealt with this complex and difficult issue in sufficient depth and had in some respects therefore failed to present convincing and fully substantiated arguments to justify the conclusions we had reached. Some of our readers felt that we had taken our consideration or racism too far, whilst others felt that we had not gone far enough in considering the wide-ranging influence of racism in all its forms and how this should be challenged. From some of the misunderstandings which arose in discussions about our views on what we termed 'unintentional' racism, it seemed in particular that the distinctions which we had sought to draw between this and the more overt manifestations of 'intentional' racism still remained unclear in some people's minds. The following extracts from responses to our interim report illustrate vividly the wide variety of feelings inspired by our comments on racism:

'This (racism) is a very unhelpful term. Unless you are applying it to the extremes of racial prejudice then it has no real meaning ... suffice it to say the Scarman [report] found no evidence of institutional prejudice in Britain. Moreover in my 21 years in the (teaching) profession, spread across five schools and four authorities, I have not met a single teacher who can be described as prejudiced against his or her pupils on the grounds of race. What I have observed, overwhelmingly, is a goodwill and a tolerance towards all children which has never failed to impress me. The English teaching profession has a very pronounced tendency to perceive children as unique individuals-regardless of the colour of their skins.'

'(We are) appalled that without giving details of the supportive evidence, the Committee felt impelled to say "... racism, both intentional and unintentional, has a direct and important bearing on the performance of West Indian children in our schools". We do not deny, however, that schools contain pupils who are growing up in a prejudiced world, or that some teachers may have formed stereotyped ideas of West Indian children and of their abilities which are insensitive. Despite this the vast majority of teachers are determined to combat the prejudices which children may bring to school from outside and which may reflect society's attitudes.'

'The Interim Report rightly calls attention to racism as one of the significant factors bearing on the "achievement" of "West Indian" children. We would go further and suggest that racism, in various forms, exists in our schools, that it affects the development of all our children, and that one of the school's fundamental tasks is to prepare its pupils to live constructively in a multiracial society ... we ... believe that it is a priority for our schools. We would hope that the Final Report will give an equally central place to an acknowledgement that racism exists and an analysis of how it works and how it affects children (white and black) and teachers. It has become conventional (and the Interim Report echoes this tendency) to speak of most racism as "unintentional". However, we believe this is too innocent a description. Racism in fact has many faces - there is semiconscious racism, rationalised racism, covert racism, and many forms of silent collusion. It is important that teachers and heads understand racism in all its depth and complexity, rather than allow themselves to believe simplistically that all racism in schools is "unintentional".'

Our approach to racism

1.3 In this chapter we seek not only to take up some of the specific points relating to racism which have been made in evidence to us but also to correct some of the misunderstandings which may have arisen from our interim report. Since the issue of racism is clearly so emotive, in an effort to analyse its causes and effects, we begin by looking at the broad concept of prejudice and then move on to consider the ethnic minority dimension of prejudice - racism - and its influence on the educational experience of both ethnic minority and ethnic majority pupils. In so doing, we attempt to set out our view of how the overall climate of racism which exists in Britain today has arisen and the various ways in which this bears on the lives of all members of this society - thus setting the scene for our consideration, later in this report, of the contribution which we believe the education system can and should make to challenging racism and laying the foundations for the kind of genuinely pluralist society which we envisaged in our opening chapter.

2. The concept of prejudice

The mechanism of prejudice

2.1 The concept of prejudice - a preconceived opinion or bias for or against someone or something - is a fact of life in this society. We could all be said to have 'prejudices' in the sense of likes and dislikes and these are inevitably determined to a greater or lesser extent by our own upbringing and experiences, by the climate of opinion at the time, and by the facts or at least the version of them, however tenuous, that we receive from 'influential others', be they family, friend, teacher, church leader or the media. Where prejudice, we believe, often goes beyond simple likes and dislikes however is in the very literal sense that something or, more importantly, someone is being prejudged i.e. evaluated on the basis of assumed characteristics in advance, and, by implication, without adequate information on which to base a rational judgement. Whereas people's straightforward preferences are generally open to reason and thus to change, if these attitudes have become hardened and more deeply ingrained as 'prejudices' they can be seen as no longer open to question or discussion and thus as rigid, immutable and irreversible. (2) Because prejudice in its very nature overlooks the actual qualities or merits of an individual person, it is often directed against, (and, less frequently, in favour of), groups of people who are assumed to share common attributes and behaviour patterns. Prejudice thus requires that one has formed a stereotype of a particular 'group' of people, be they women drivers, trade unionists or 'immigrants', which then allows one to judge a member of this group, and in particular their actions, according to an established set of expectations. This clearly leaves little room for flexibility in forming opinions of people and even if, on closer acquaintance, a member of a particular group is found not to conform to the code of behaviour expected of him or her, this can all to easily be seen simply as an exception to the rule rather than as a reason to question the validity of the established stereotype of their group. There seem thus to be two factors which are essential for prejudices initially to be formed and subsequently maintained and even reinforced - firstly, ignorance, in the literal sense of lack of knowledge on which to base informed opinions and judgements, and, secondly, the existence and promulgation of stereotypes of particular groups of people as conveyed by the major informers of public opinion most notably the media and the education process.

The task for education

2.2 The role of education in relation to prejudice is surely therefore clear - to equip a pupil with knowledge and understanding in place of ignorance and to develop his or her ability to formulate views and attitudes and to assess and judge situations on the basis of this knowledge. In thus encouraging a child to think critically and to make increasingly rational judgements, education should seek to counter any mistaken impressions or inaccurate, hearsay evidence which he or she may have acquired within the family, peer group or, more broadly, from the local community or the media. In seeking to correct misunderstandings, it is however essential that under no circumstances does education become simply a process of indoctrinating (3) a child into one particular way of thinking as the only 'right and proper' view, since in so doing, his or her capacity to make reasoned and rational judgements may, in effect, again be undermined, by simply replacing one stereotype with another. In this respect we would see it as no more desirable or defensible for the education system to seek to create or perpetuate positive prejudices in favour of a particular group than to countenance negative views.

Negative prejudice

2.3 From looking at the many forms of prejudice which exist it is clear that one of the major catalysts in a group becoming subject to prejudice is that its members are seen as in some way outside the mainstream of society and aberrant from an accepted code of behaviour. In many respects this perceived 'strangeness' or 'difference', whilst perhaps an inevitable consequence of ignorance, seems to arouse suspicion, hostility and even fear, as constituting an ill-defined threat to the values and traditions of the majority community. Thus negative prejudice - where the members of a particular group are themselves resented or rejected - seems regrettably to be more commonplace than prejudice of a positive nature.

3. The ethnic minority dimension of prejudice

Ethnic minorities as outsiders

3.1 In view of the elements of prejudice which we have identified, it is perhaps inevitable that ethnic minority groups, who are relative newcomers to this country, should find themselves subject to possibly the most insidious and pernicious form of negative prejudice in our society - racism. Although ethnic minority groups are an integral part of this society and indeed almost all the ethnic minority children in this country are now British-born, from the continual references both in evidence to us and more generally, to ethnic minorities as 'immigrants', and 'foreigners', this seems to be far from generally accepted by the majority community. One of the most vivid illustrations of how even long established ethnic minority communities can find themselves still regarded as 'outsiders' is possibly the situation of the 'black' community in Liverpool (and some other seaports in this country such as Cardiff and Bristol) which, although established over several generations, still suffer from extremes of racial prejudice. The prejudice encountered by members of ethnic minority groups can take a range of different forms and may for example manifest itself as linguistic prejudice - against non-English speakers - or religious prejudice - against those whose religion differs from that of the majority community. In addition, where the members of a particular ethnic minority group share an identifiably different skin colour from the majority community this can of course provide one of the most obvious manifestations of 'difference' which can serve as a basis for irrational prejudice. Negative prejudice against ethnic minority groups can however extend beyond the 'colour divide' and may be experienced, albeit to a lesser extent, by the 'white' ethnic minorities in this country - as we explain, later in this report, in our chapters relating to the Italian, Cypriot and Travelling communities.

3.2 On a broader level we feel it is important to bear in mind that the arrival of sizeable and visible ethnic minority communities, especially in some northern industrial centres, coincided with the decline of long established traditional industries and the consequent rising unemployment. It is perhaps understandable that, in the absence of an effective explanation of the background to these developments both in schools and the media, this coincidence was all too readily seen as 'cause and effect' and the 'newcomers' simply blamed, quite unjustly, for the effects of the recession. In these circumstances, growing competition for housing and jobs has created particular tensions which have undoubtedly exacerbated negative prejudices against ethnic minorities.

Stereotyping of ethnic minorities

3.3 An equally influential factor in the growth of racial prejudice in this country has been the general lack of knowledge amongst the ethnic majority community of ethnic minority communities which in turn has allowed inaccurate stereotypes to flourish. This ignorance extends to virtually every aspect of the background of ethnic minority communities - their countries of origin, the languages they speak and their religious and cultural traditions. We ourselves have now ceased to be surprised when even in multiracial areas and schools, pupils and teachers refer to all non-white ethnic minorities collectively as 'Pakis' and to their language as 'Indian' or 'African', or regard the wearing of a turban or not eating meat as simply matters of personal preference, which can be altered by 'gentle persuasion'. We have encountered in the course of our work a vast range of myths and stereotypes of different ethnic minority groups. The most immediately relevant in our context are clearly those which relate to the expectations which the education system appears to have of ethnic minority pupils, such as 'West Indian children will be good at sports but "not academic"'; 'Asian children will be hard working and well motivated but likely to have unrealistically high career aspirations'; 'Chinese children will be reserved, well behaved, and likely to be "under pressure" at home from having to help in the family business in the evenings.'

3.4 Ethnic minorities also appear to be placed in an 'order of merit' in terms of the groups generally considered most/least desirable to have in a school - teachers, on the one hand, for example, praising Chinese pupils for the lack of trouble they cause and expressing the wish that they could have 'a class full of them', and, on the other hand, explaining that they were 'fortunate' to have only a few West Indian pupils. This situation may be further complicated where stereotypes already exist of particular areas of a town or city which have traditionally been seen as 'depressed' and 'deprived', with all the assumed concomitant educational needs amongst the children, and these stereotypes - which are regrettable in themselves - are simply transferred to recently-established ethnic minority communities living in the same areas, who may in fact have an entirely different set of attitudes and expectations from the local 'white' community.

3.5 Some of the stereotypes of certain ethnic minority groups can be seen as a legacy of history - from the days of the British Empire - and as a consequence of the view of other nations and peoples as in some sense 'inferior', which was until relatively recently promulgated through the curriculum offered by many schools. A striking example of the powerful influence of such stereotypes was the marked difference which we ourselves found between the relative perceptions which some teachers have of the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities. Youngsters from the Greek Cypriot community were generally seen very much in a positive light as enriching the cultural wealth of the classroom whilst those from the Turkish Cypriot community tended to be viewed negatively as potential underachievers and disruptive elements. In discussions with representatives of both communities there was general agreement that the causes for this surprising variation lay firstly in the difference in skin colour - Greek Cypriot children tending to be lighter skinned than their Turkish Cypriot peers, this seemingly being equated, in the minds of some teachers, with greater academic ability - and secondly in the very different historical stereotypes which exist of the Greeks and the Turks - the former being seen as a major influence on the evolution of Western civilisation and culture, and the latter as 'barbarians'.

Influence of the media

3.6 Much of the responsibility for the creation and continuance of stereotypes of ethnic minority youngsters within the education system can we believe be seen to derive from inadequate or even misleading attempts to explain the background of ethnic minorities which may in fact serve to resurrect and perpetuate inaccurate stereotypes. In discussing stereotypes of ethnic minority communities it is impossible not to take account of the pervasive influence of all branches of the media in today's society. A report (4) by a group of teachers in 1983 emphasised the generally negative way in which ethnic minority groups were treated in a range of television programmes and concluded that:

'... there was a distinct under-representation in the selected programmes of the (ethnic minority) groups we studied, with too few positive and realistic images of them made available. There was little suggestion of the part they were playing, or might play, in contemporary society, and such treatment as there was in the selected programmes tended to reinforce stereotypes, or link members of these groups to a problem. In giving insufficient coverage to these groups, television is not only giving a distorted view of the society in which it operates; it is also missing opportunities to provide a richer, more varied coverage of human experience ...'

3.7 A further dimension which we found in our visits to 'all white' areas - which clearly illustrates the irrationality of some aspects of racism - is the confusion which can arise where there are conflicting stereotypes, for example, where youngsters from the majority community may be prejudiced against Asians on the grounds that, on the one hand, 'they all live on Social Security', and on the other, that 'they're all taking our jobs'. Several teachers whom we met felt that such attitudes could only be countered effectively by a balanced and open consideration of the multiracial nature of society today, throughout the school curriculum so that youngsters were led to hold more rational opinions about ethnic minority communities and adopt a more positive view of today's society. We ourselves believe that the education system can and must playa major part in challenging the stereotyping of ethnic minority communities in order to counter the pervasive influence of racism.

4. The roots of racism

Reasons for migration

4.1 Before considering the influence of racism in practice we believe it is important to look at the particular background factors relating to the original migration of different ethnic minorities to this country and the reactions and responses which the emergence of an increasingly complex multiracial society has evoked from both the minority and majority communities. In general terms a clear distinction can be drawn between, on the one hand, those communities where the majority of the original immigrants can be seen as refugees from conflict and internal strife in their own countries, and on the other those who chose to migrate to this country for economic betterment, in some cases actively encouraged by the British government or by British employers. In the case of refugees, the initial reaction of the majority community can be seen as welcoming, arising from a genuine desire to aid a group of people under threat, taking pride in the view of Britain as a traditional haven for those in need. Such sentiments seem however in practice often to have been superficial and short-lived since as soon as the refugees ceased to be perceived as a special case and as 'front page news' and attempted to move from their settlement camps into the wider community they were seen simply as 'just more immigrants' in competition with the majority population for jobs and housing. They thus often became increasingly subject to resentment and even open hostility in the form of racism. This was certainly true for the Vietnamese community (whose situation we discuss in Chapter Fourteen) where the initial wave of public goodwill towards the 'boat people' has now been dissipated to a point where reports of racial harassment and attacks on Vietnamese families have sadly become more frequent.

4.2 For those communities who were actively encouraged to come to this country the situation was to some extent comparable to that of refugees: they were initially welcomed, albeit grudgingly, as meeting an economic need and their presence was not resented as a threat to the indigenous work force since the jobs which they were recruited to take were those at the lower end of the employment market which could not be filled from within the majority community who, at a time of economic growth in the 1960s, had many other more attractive avenues of employment open to them. Little if any thought seems however to have been given to the wider social implications of meeting a short term need in this way and it seems to have been assumed that the ethnic minority workers would be content to remain in the jobs for which they had been recruited thus constituting an artificial economic sub-class at the traditional working class end of the employment spectrum. Such a view took no account of the pressures for upward social mobility and career advancement amongst the ethnic minority workers themselves nor did it foresee the situation of recent years where the British-born children of the original immigrants quite justifiably expect to find the whole range of career opportunities open to them and are certainly not content merely to 'follow in their father's footsteps'. In the face of such aspirations the majority community seem not only to resent moves by these ethnic minority groups to advance beyond their 'prescribed place' in this society but more recently, with rising unemployment, have come to resist and actively challenge their employment even in the areas of work for which they were originally recruited. It is almost as though having made use of workers who were prepared to work for lower wages and in worse conditions than indigenous workers at a time of apparent prosperity, the time has now come for them to 'go back where they came from' since their services are no longer needed and they are seen as competing for jobs against indigenous workers. The cycle of racism once again is thus brought to bear on ethnic minority groups who originally met with some acceptance here.

Expectations of this country

4.3 As important, if not more so than the question of how ethnic minority groups were viewed when they came to this country is the variety of expectations which the group themselves had of their likely reception here. Whilst recognising the risks inherent in ascribing views, expectations and aspirations to ethnic minority groups as though they were homogeneous entities, it is possible to discern a variation in how different groups have perceived their position in this country, according to the circumstances of their arrival here. In the case of refugees, two particular factors have clearly been influential - firstly, the option of returning to their countries of origin has generally speaking been unavailable and so they have a particularly strong will to succeed here, and secondly, having found 'sanctuary' here, their will to succeed is tempered somewhat by a wish to conform to society as it is and not therefore to seek to bring about any changes. (Such attitudes are of course less likely to be held by the children of the original refugees who may feel more secure in living in this country as a right rather than as a matter of 'privilege'). On the other hand, those immigrants who came here for economic betterment and to enhance the prospects for their children, came on the understanding that they had every right to come to this country and, once they and their families were established here, they would not only be entitled to full equality of opportunity in terms of housing, jobs and education but would also be in a position to seek changes in existing systems and procedures where these took no account of their presence here. When ethnic minority groups actually encounter racism in our society it is clear therefore that, whilst those who have come here as refugees may simply accept this as the price to be paid for being allowed to remain in this country, many will not only be disillusioned and resentful of such a denial of their place here but likely in reaction to become alienated from a society which they see as rejecting them.

The myth of an alternative

4.4 With certain groups, perhaps particularly the European minorities such as the Italians (see Chapter Twelve) and the Hong Kong Chinese (see Chapter Ten), their close links with their countries of origin are evidenced by an established pattern of regular visits to see relatives and also a tradition of some children travelling 'home' for part of their education or subsequently to work. Such direct links inevitably serve to reinforce a sense of identity at the individual level and also to heighten the community's awareness of its roots and thus to enhance its sense of self esteem. Of even greater importance however is the point made to us repeatedly by representatives of these ethnic minority groups that retaining such close ties with their countries of origin cushions them in a sense against the harsher realities of life in this country especially the influence of racism, and provides them with an alternative view of themselves and their futures - for example British-born Italian and Chinese youngsters have explained to us that if they are unable to find employment in this country they feel they could always consider seeking their fortunes in their family's countries of origin. The fact that in reality 'return' might be prevented by the immigration rules of the countries of origin, that employment may be no easier to find there and that 'returning' to live in a country may be very different from simply visiting it on holiday, in no way seems to undermine what could be described as the 'myth of an alternative' which to a certain extent can offset or at least distance them from the direct influence of racism.

The myth of return

4.5 With some ethnic minority communities, especially some Asian groups, the sense of having an alternative to life in this country has tended to be taken further and constitutes what has been described as a 'myth of return' - many of the original immigrants believed that after a period of work in this country they would return to their countries of origin. Much of the evidence which we have received has suggested that this myth of return may also have helped to sustain these first immigrants in the face of some of the worst manifestations of overt racism. Since the original immigrants have now however become established here, have been joined by their families and their children have actually been born here, there seems to have been a weakening of this myth although it still seems to provide a fall back position when faced with extremes of racism.

The myth of belonging

4.6 Within the West Indian community ties with the home country seem to be less close than for other ethnic minority groups, despite an undoubted nostalgia for the West Indies amongst the original immigrants and a certain amount of actual return by older immigrants on their retirement. From the evidence we have received it seems that the major reason for this apparent difference in outlook is the extent to which the majority of West Indians originally came to this country believing that they were already British, since, unlike many other immigrants, they spoke English, they were Christian, and they had been brought up in an English style education system which through its curriculum, examinations and teaching methods had imbued them with the British culture and way of life. They therefore came assuming not only that they would be welcomed on equal terms as coming home to the 'mother country' but that their social integration within British society would be a matter of course. On arrival they found their initial 'welcome' at best grudging or even openly hostile and it is hardly surprising that they found the experience traumatic in the extreme. This 'myth of belonging' and the impact of seeing it in effect punctured by the experience of racism has been described graphically in the following terms by a West Indian mother (5):

'Many of us came here with a myth in our minds, the myth of belonging. We have also raised our children to believe that they belong in these societies and cultures (simply because they were born here) only to find that as they grew older, they were seen in the eyes of the host community as a new nation of intruders. Our children are then faced with great traumatic and psychological problems, since they are made to feel that they do not belong here, also they feel that because they were not born in the West Indies they do not belong there either ...'

4.7 In contrast, it seems that many of the original immigrants from other ethnic minority communities, whilst not being prepared for the degree of antagonism they would face in this country, were not perhaps looking for the same degree of social integration as were West Indians. The major reasons for this difference in outlook can we believe be traced back to the fact that, as we have observed, many of the members of these groups did not necessarily see their long term futures in this country. These communities were also characterised by strong cultural and, more importantly religious traditions which necessitated a degree of separateness, and the existence of strong community ties both here and with the countries of origin, which, combined with a strong extended family system, tended to encourage a sense of self sufficiency and to discourage the development of contacts with the wider community. Members of these groups, unlike West Indians, were more likely to live and work within their own communities and they were therefore in a sense sheltered from the full effects of racism. As the economic situation in this country has worsened, however, the capacity of these communities to remain self contained in this way has been increasingly undermined - for example more Chinese youngsters are now having to enter the mainstream employment market as the traditional Chinese catering trade has come under pressure - and there are increasing numbers of British born youngsters who see themselves as part of the wider community and are not content to see their futures exclusively within the confines of their ethnic community. In recent years communities such as these have come more directly under pressure from racism and in many respects have found themselves subject to some of the worst manifestations of overt racism in the form of harassment and racial attacks. This situation is increasingly leading youngsters from the whole range of ethnic minority groups to share the West Indian community's sense of frustration and scepticism that any meaningful progress will ever be made in combating and overcoming racism in all its forms.

5. Racism in practice

Research

5.1 Having considered the origins and roots of racism we now turn to racism in practice and in particular the bearing which it may have on the education of ethnic minority pupils. As the authors of the NFER reviews of research point out, comparatively little research has in fact been carried out on teachers' attitudes towards ethnic minority pupils or on the more controversial question of the extent to which a teacher's expectations of a pupil can directly affect that pupil's achievement or behaviour. They were nevertheless able to cite a number of studies, albeit some rather limited in scale, which have been undertaken on the existence of teacher stereotypes, in both Britain and the United States, going back as far as Rosenthal and Jacobson's famous study in 1968 Pygmalion in the classroom. The other main research studies identified by the NFER can be summarised as follows:

• Townsend and Brittan's survey (1972) (6) reported that a majority of the secondary heads involved commented favourably on the manners, courtesy, keenness to learn and industrious application of the Indian and Pakistani pupils.

• Brittan's study (1976) (7) revealed a high degree of consensus of opinion concerning the academic and social behaviour of pupils of West Indian origin, with more than two-thirds of the teachers in the sample indicating unfavourable opinions of West Indians.

• Stewart's study (1978) (8) showed the teachers interviewed as having a positive stereotype of the Asian pupil as industrious, responsible, keen to learn and having none of the behaviour problems associated with West Indian pupils.

• Tomlinson's study (1979) (9) showed that the heads interviewed were more likely to respond at length about West Indian pupils and to have generalised views about them than in the case of Asian pupils. The heads expressed strong feelings that the learning process was slower for West Indian pupils, that they lacked long term concentration and that they would tend to underachieve and be remedial.

5.2 The paucity of research data in this field seems to result not from any lack of interest on the part of the research community although race-related issues have often in the past been regarded as the preserve of sociological rather than educational researchers but rather from the daunting problems of attempting to investigate whether teachers' attitudes towards ethnic minority pupils may, however unintentionally, be influenced by racism. Also, as the authors of the second NFER review of research have explained:

'Apart from the difficulties of obtaining permission to carry out research into prejudice it is quite likely that an awareness on the part of those being researched of the nature of the research will distort findings. There is, moreover, the question of criteria of judgement of prejudice, especially when this is not tested by some supposedly calibrated measuring instrument, but depends, as much anecdotal evidence of racism must do, on the perceptions of the observer.'

'... redressed the balance of previous research by shifting the focus from the child who has been seen at the centre of the 'problem' of his 'underachievement' and the consequent emphasis placed on his inter-ethnic attitudes, with the corresponding lack of stress on studies of teachers, ethnocentricism, because of professional sensitivity, to a proper consideration of the relationships which obtain between teachers and pupils.'

'... the tendency to consider the characteristics and attributes of ethnic groups other than one's own to be inferior.'

'children of different ethnic origins, taught in the same multiethnic class by the same teacher, are likely to receive widely different educational experiences.'

5.4 In our interim report we explained that we believed there to be two rather different forms which racism could take in our society on the one hand, overt and intentional racism, and on the other, covert and unintentional racism. We stressed that in the educational context it was the latter - unintentional racism - which caused us the greatest concern. From the further work we have done since the preparation of our interim report we find ourselves all the more convinced of the major role which the particular expectations and attitudes which many teachers have, not only of West Indian pupils but indeed of pupils from the whole range of ethnic minority groups, can and do play in the educational experience and perhaps the academic achievement of these pupils. We believe that if teachers allow themselves to be influenced by, and even to perpetuate, stereotypes of different ethnic minority groups, their ability to educate an individual pupil from such a group according to his or her actual 'age, aptitude and ability' may, however unwittingly, be undermined and it can become all too easy to ascribe the pupil's behaviour or performance to the assumed stereotype rather than to exercise professional judgement. As we have already indicated, research findings and our own evidence have indicated that the stereotypes teachers tend to have of West Indian children are often related directly to a particular, and generally negative, expectation of academic performance. By contrast, although there seems to be a more generally positive educational stereotype of Asian pupils, they may be subject to racism in more direct and overt ways. The fear or indeed the actual experience of racial harassment and attack may also have an indirect bearing on the motivation and achievement of an Asian pupil. Racism, both intentional and unintentional, can we believe also influence negatively the educational experience of pupils from other ethnic minority groups as we discuss later in this report. A Chinese pupil for example, who is sitting at the back of the class, not taking an active part in the lesson, may be seen simply as conforming to the stereotype of his group - as 'reserved and well behaved' - rather than this behaviour being interpreted, as it would be with an indigenous pupil, as showing that he or she might be in difficulties with the work and therefore need some extra attention and encouragement.

'Colour blindness'

5.5 As we explained in the section on racism in our interim report:

'... many of the teachers to whom we spoke on our visits were at pains to assert that they deliberately made no distinction between 'black' pupils and others: they were 'colour-blind'. In this way, they claimed to fulfil the first duty of a teacher which they saw as regarding all pupils equally, as having particular strengths and weaknesses, and individual educational needs.'

'It is interesting to record that the reaction of teachers ... was to aver that all pupils in the school were treated alike and to deny that any distinction is made between their cultural differences. Sadly, this initial reaction, if perpetuated, could deny the school the opportunity of developing potentially rich cultural resources. In such an event there would be a real danger that, through a determination not to discriminate ("discriminate" in the sense of recognising differences), the school would in time become culturally impoverished.'

'God is colour-blind', I once saw on a wayside pulpit in Liverpool. But as is the habit of such religious graffiti, it was wrong. The God who made the rainbow and who made the whole kaleidoscope of creation, culminating in men and women of such rich variety - it is not He who is colour-blind but we who find life easier to cope with if we treat it as monochrome.'

5.6 In recent years there has been a growing tendency to suggest that racism is in some way unique to the 'white' majority and to this country. On the latter point, we believe that racism cannot be seen as a uniquely British phenomenon in view of the interracial prejudices which clearly exist in other countries, for example in America (against Blacks), in France (against North Africans) and in West Germany (against Turkish Guest Workers). We also believe that to describe racism simply as a 'white' problem is similarly misconceived. Feelings of negative prejudice against ethnic groups other than one's own can be found both within and between minority communities as well as between minority and majority groups, although this in no way of course excuses or justifies the attitudes of some members of the majority community in this country towards ethnic minorities. In the course of our own work we have come across a number of instances of racist attitudes between ethnic minority groups, for example the attitudes of Chinese and Vietnamese pupils towards 'black' children, the animosity of certain Asian groups towards other ethnic minority communities, conflicts between African and West Indian pupils and instances of West Indian youngsters becoming involved alongside their white school fellows in actual racial attacks on Asians. It has been suggested to use that such prejudices as exist within and between ethnic minority groups are not truly comparable with prejudices between the majority and minority communities since even if members of a particular ethnic minority group are prejudiced against another group they are extremely unlikely to be in a position to put their prejudice into practice in such a way as to have a detrimental effect on members of the other group. Since, on straightforward numerical grounds alone, it is only the 'white' majority which has the power to give expression to its prejudices by using its inherent dominance of all walks of life to deny opportunity and access to other minority communities, 'white racism' is considered to be the only area to be tackled. We firmly believe however that all forms of prejudice against groups of people on racial grounds are wrong - as Lord Scarman put it in his report:

'Pride in being Black is one thing, but black racialism is no more acceptable than white. A vigorous rejection of discriminatory and racialist views is as important among black people as among white if social harmony is to be ensured.'

5.7 Reference to the role of power in racism leads us directly on to a dimension of the influence of racism within our society - what has generally come to be referred to as 'institutional' racism. As with so many other terms within our field of interest, we believe that this term is used by different people to cover a range of circumstances and, being thus ill-defined, discussion of the extent of its influence and indeed even its existence is often both confused and confusing. We see institutional racism as describing the way in which a range of long established systems, practices and procedures, both within education and the wider society, which were originally conceived and devised to meet the needs and aspirations of a relatively homogeneous society, can now be seen not only to fail to take account of the multiracial nature of Britain today but may also ignore or even actively work against the interests of ethnic minority communities. The kind of practices about which we are concerned include many which, whilst clearly originally well-intentioned and in no way racist in intent, can now be seen as racist in effect, in depriving members of ethnic minority groups of equality of access to the full range of opportunities which the majority community can take for granted or denying their right to have a say in the future of the society of which they are an integral part. These include, for example, the provision of separate language centres for children whose first language is not English (see Chapter Seven), and the arrangements for the appointment of members to governing bodies of schools and other institutions which take no account of the changed and changing nature of the local population. Institutional racism can thus we believe be seen as visibly demonstrating the extent to which our society has continued to define itself according to criteria prescribed to meet the needs of a homogeneous whole, and which inevitably does not recognise and therefore cannot take account of the far more complex network of aims and aspirations present in Britain today.

5.8 We believe that institutional racism is just as much a cause for concern as the prejudiced attitudes which some individuals may hold since the establishment, in this way, of racism within the 'system' itself can serve to reinforce, to magnify and to perpetuate such attitudes even where individual attitudes may be open to change. It is, for example, harder to convince individuals of the damaging effects which their actions may have on particular groups of children if they can argue that they are simply 'following the normal procedure' and therefore cannot in any way be said to be prejudiced against a particular group. A complex inter-relationship thus exists between individual attitudes and the influence of institutionalised practices and procedures. It is undeniably true that both long established practices and procedures which are seen as following the traditional 'way things are done here', and the conventional policy making processes and power structures of institutions can all too often override individual attitudes, which may be submerged in simply 'running the system'. Similarly however it must be recognised that institutionalised forms are themselves in no small measure sustained by attitudes. The extent to which changing the attitudes of individuals can directly influence the way in which established procedures, systems and institutions function is thus difficult to assess and some people have argued that change can only be brought about through legislation or the revision of traditional 'rules and regulations' which in turn requires individuals to appraise and where necessary revise their behaviour accordingly. Whilst a realisation amongst the staff of an institution that the policies which they are following may work against some members of our society may lead them to question and even actively challenge and seek to change the rules which govern their institution, in order to effect change in a more rapid and direct way it may nevertheless be necessary to prescribe institutional change from the 'top' downwards in order to complement and foster any such shift in grass roots opinion. We believe that institutional change of this kind and changing individual attitudes are of equal importance and have complementary roles to play in achieving the overall shift in emphasis and outlook which we believe to be essential in relation to today's multiracial society.

5.9 Within the education system, power is of course exercised at many different levels from the Secretary of State to the major national academic institutions and the individual teacher or parent. It is important to recognise therefore that, in overcoming institutional racism, different approaches and emphases may be more appropriate than others for different types of educational institution. For example in a primary school, with fewer staff and and more informal ethos and flexible style of work, the emphasis might best be on encouraging individual teachers to review their own attitudes and practices and thus to effect any necessary changes themselves. In a large secondary school, however, with its compartmentalised curricular organisation and its clearly defined tiers of responsibility, in a local education authority with its complex bureaucracy or a university with its long established traditions, a more determined effort may need to be made to revise and restructure the actual systems in order for there to be any hope of the policies pursued offering true equality of opportunity.

Climate of racism

5.10 In considering the influence which racism whether intentional or unintentional can have on the education process we feel that it is essential to recognise the very direct and acute bearing which the general 'climate' of racism in this country has on what takes place in the school classroom. By this we mean the way in which the confidence of ethnic minority groups to see themselves as an integral part of our society and thus as having equal claim to shaping their own futures within it, has been undermined and to some extent lost entirely. The extent of racial disadvantage in this country has of course been well documented in a number of studies of recent years - for example the Policy Studies Institute's seminal studies on Racial Disadvantage (11) surveyed the position of ethnic minority groups in fields such as housing, social services and employment. The continuing influence of racism in the employment field has also been documented in the report Half a chance (12) and the influence of racism in relation to housing in a multiracial area in a report (13) published last year - both by the Commission for Racial Equality. There are two other aspects of the pressures to which ethnic minority communities find themselves subject, which have been raised repeatedly with us by parents and young people, particularly from the Asian community, and which have undoubtedly contributed greatly to the overall climate of racism: the fear of radical harassment and attack, and the uncertainty created by the policies of successive governments on immigration and nationality. On the latter issue we believe that it is deplorable that children who have been born in this country or whose families have chosen to make their homes here should be made to feel that they are not accepted in their own right and have no role to play in the future of this country.

Immigration and nationality

Those ethnic minority groups who have more recently settled here, now, through no fault of their own, find their position questioned and indeed in their eyes under threat and their very peace of mind disrupted by the prevailing climate of uncertainty. (We review the development of government policies in relation to immigration and nationality in Chapter Four, see paragraphs 3.3.18 to 3.3.21.)

Racial attacks

5.11 A considerable amount of attention has been devoted over recent years to the issue of racial attacks culminating in the publication, in 1981, of a report by a Home Office Study Group investigating this situation. (14) The Group offered the following vivid portrait of the situation which they found:

'The views expressed by ethnic minority representatives about racial attacks reflected a general feeling of fear and apprehension for the future. In all the places we visited, we were given accounts of racial violence, abuse and harassment ... Assaults, jostling in the streets, abusive remarks, broken windows, slogans daubed on walls - these were among the less serious kinds of racial harassment which many members of the ethnic minorities (particularly Asians) experience, sometimes on repeated occasions. The fact that they are interleaved with far more serious racially-motivated offences (murders, serious assaults, systematic attacks by gangs on people's homes at night) increases the feeling of fear experienced by the ethnic minorities. It was clear to us that the Asian community widely believes that is is the object of a campaign of unremitting racial harassment which it fears will grow worse in the future. In many places we were told that Asian families were too frightened to leave their homes at night or to visit the main shopping centre in town at weekends when gangs of young skinheads regularly congregate. Even in places where comparatively few racial incidents have occurred, the awareness of what is happening in other parts of the country induces a widespread apprehension that the climate locally is likely to deteriorate and that more serious incidents are likely in the future. In some places there was a sense of uncomplaining acceptance among some Asians to manifestations of racial violence: the problem was thought to be so widespread that they regarded it as little more than an unwelcome feature of contemporary British life.'

The Study Group drew three main conclusions from their investigations:

'(there was) a significantly high number of racially motivated attacks on persons and property by one ethnic group on another ... compared with white people, both blacks and Asians suffer disproportionately from racially motivated attacks, and the Asians worst of all ... the absolute number of racial attacks appears to have increased.'

'... a matter of fact not of opinion.'

5.12 The Home Office Study Group also raised an issue to which we have already referred (see paragraph 3.6 and Annex A to this Chapter) - the role of the media - as follows:

'The Study Group were also persuaded that the media - newspapers and broadcasting - played a powerful role in shaping people's perceptions of the problem. This is particularly true of reports in many local newspapers which appear to sensationalise apparently racial incidents. But it is also true nationally since, as close-knit communities, ethnic minorities are very conscious of what happens elsewhere in the country. Attacks on Asians in one place can cause great concern in Asian communities elsewhere; similarly the response of the police in one area can directly affect the ethnic minority view of the local police several hundred miles away. A single television interview with a prominent public figure who puts forward a view which appears hostile to the ethnic minority communities can, in its impact, be out of proportion to its significance, and can unreasonably create the impression that that view is held by the authorities generally.'

Whilst it refers primarily to the situation of the Asian community, the above quotation draws attention to the relationship between the police and ethnic minority communities generally. This is an issue which has and continues to be an area of public concern and debate in relation particularly to the West Indian community, and was of course central to the Scarman report. Here again the essential element seems to us to be not so much the actual facts of the situation, although there is considerable evidence in some cases to justify communities' concerns, but equally the wide gulf in trust and understanding which exists between ethnic minority communities and 'establishment figures' which is itself symptomatic of the overall climate of racism which we believe exists.

Interracial tension

5.13 We believe that this climate of racism can impinge on an individual school in a range of different ways. The impact of racism on ethnic minority pupils may be particularly strong when they are present in relatively small numbers in schools and are thus less able to be mutually supportive in the face of racial abuse. This point was brought out in the following terms in evidence we received from a Community Relations Council:

'Direct Racism is tragically too common in this area. Rarely a week passes without at least one case being reported to this Council ... it is no exaggeration to state that for some young Asian people particularly, being racially harassed is a way of life. This ranges from direct violence upon the person to verbal abuse and threats. They are daily confronted with racist graffiti in and out of school premises, which remain for months and, in some cases, years. The situation for those pupils in schools with 1-5 per cent black students is unenviable. Their isolation makes them particularly vulnerable ... The unwillingness of schools to tackle the issues, the graffiti remaining unchallenged, the insistence of some teaching staff on regarding the attacks as 'part of the rough and tumble of youngsters round here' and that 'boys will be boys' all encourage a climate where racism is acceptable.'

This broader and immediate impact of racism on schools is illustrated by the following extract from a report prepared by the head of a multiracial school we visited where the influence of 'National Front style extremists' was particularly pronounced:

'We have over the past 7/8 months had an increase in tension 'from the outside.' Examples of this are:

a. invasion of a summer leavers' disco by outsiders, some ex-pupils. It was not quite clear how far this had racial overtones. It led to 'gate' trouble after school on several days thereafter.

b. intruders (youths, some ex-pupils) coming on to the premises during the school day. Again it is not clear how far there are racial overtones.

c. at least 3 instances of unprovoked attacks by 'outsiders' on coloured pupils who were members of official school visits to places in the Borough.

d. one serious attack by 'outsiders' on coloured pupils playing table tennis in a school hall just after school.

e. many instances of 'outsiders' congregating at the gate at about the end of afternoon school with definite anti-coloured actions, some physical. On at least one occasion this involved youths armed with sticks.

f. several attacks on coloured youngsters outside the school after normal school hours.'

5.14 A disturbing picture of the way in which a school may appear to be entirely oblivious to the impact of racism on the day to day experiences of an ethnic minority pupil is portrayed in the following extract from an essay written for us by an Asian fifth former:

'... I attended a middle school where approximately 90 per cent of the pupils were white. The results of this situation were terrifying. The group of black children were bussed to the school and then isolated from their neighbourhood. At home they were again isolated from any school contacts. During the four years I spent in that school, not one person attended any after-school activities for fear of walking through the neighbourhood where about ninety-two per cent of the population were white. It would be literally true to say that there was a physical barrier between our homes and our school and the only way in or out was on the coach. At school the situation was the same. The Asians were constantly in fear of being attacked by the several gangs of white boys. As we ran towards the staff room a teacher would come out and disperse the white gang, throw us back into the playground and then walk back in as if nothing had happened. The teachers had no idea of what we were experiencing.'

If in the face of such forms of racism, or indeed in the face of ignorance and inaccurate statements about ethnic minorities, the school seeks simply to remain neutral and uninvolved we would see this as not only a failure in terms of its educational responsibilities but also as in effect condoning and thereby encouraging the persistence of such occurrences. Certainly it is difficult for ethnic minority communities to have full confidence and trust in an institution which they see as simply ignoring or dismissing what is in fact an ever present and all pervasive shadow over their everyday lives.

Racist name-calling

5.15 One particular manifestation of racism within schools on which we have received a considerable amount of evidence is racist name-calling. Some teachers have argued that this is no different from the normal name-calling in which even young children may indulge and which is entirely harmless both in intent and long-term effect. On the other hand many ethnic minority representatives, including some older ethnic minority pupils, have stressed to us the very damaging effects which they believe being subject to racist abuse can have on the self-image and motivation of an ethnic minority pupil - as one Asian mother put it to us:

'These remarks can be very traumatic and hurtful to young children who often come home very upset by this. One tries to forget it and hope it will die down, but all too often the same thing recurs. School authorities try to play it down so as to keep the school atmosphere calm. However, this does not resolve the hurt that registers very forcefully in a young child's mind'.

'All-white' schools

5.16 Whilst most people would accept that there may be a degree of interracial tension between groups in schools with substantial ethnic minority populations, it might generally be felt that racist attitudes and behaviour would be less common in schools with few or no ethnic minority pupils. As we go on to discuss later in this report we believe this is regrettably far from the case - see for example the findings of the study carried out in 'all-white' schools - detailed in Chapter Five - which illustrates very clearly the points which we have made in this chapter about the pervasive influence of racism which, through ignorance and ill-informed stereotyping and the negative influence of the media, has a quite definite effect on the attitudes of youngsters in these areas. Even though the opportunities for these attitudes being put into practice may be limited, as we have already pointed out the very existence of such attitudes, with, in most cases, little real attempt being made by schools either to challenge or counteract them, can of itself contribute to the overall climate of racism.

6. Conclusion

6.1 We believe that racism is an insidious evil which, for the sake of the future unity and stability of our society, must be countered. A clear distinction can be drawn between what can be seen as 'individual' racism and the broader and more pervasive 'climate' of racism and within that the way institutions and established practices and procedures may serve to reinforce, perpetuate and extend this. Racism, in all these forms, however needs to be tackled, we believe, in the interests of our community as a whole, since it damages not only the groups seen and treated as in some way inferior or manipulable, but also the more powerful groups in that it feeds them with a totally false sense of superiority and thus distorts their understanding of themselves and the world around them. All members of a racist society suffer from feelings of fear and insecurity and, as we have seen, it takes little to fan the flames of suspicion and mistrust into open hatred and violence.

6.2 We believe that for schools to allow racist attitudes to persist unchecked in fact constitutes a fundamental mis-education for their pupils. All youngsters need to be provided with the necessary knowledge and the ability for reasoned and rational thought and judgement. Whilst schools may not therefore be able to lead change directly they should be capable of leading to change by creating an overall unity of purpose which will encompass the concept that to be British you do not have to have a white skin nor to have family origins only in this country.

6.3 We are convinced that the policies we put forward in this report will, if put into practice, mark a major change in the way in which ethnic minorities are perceived and perceive themselves in relation to the education system. Much of what we recommend will require a fundamental shift in attitude and, as we acknowledged in our interim report, which also focused on the need for attitude change, this will involve expenditure in 'psychological' terms over and above the direct financial outlay needed. Quite apart from any specific recommendations which we offer, we sincerely hope that a full and careful reading of this report as a whole will contribute to a greater understanding of the issues involved in considering an education appropriate to today's multiracial society and which will help to lay the foundations for a genuinely pluralist society in the future.

Footnotes

(1) 'The Brixton Disorders' - Report of an Inquiry by the Rt. Hon. the Lord Scarman OBE. Cmnd 8427. HMSO. November 1981.

(2) As explained by Professor Michael Banton in his book 'White and coloured': 'the word 'prejudice' is derived from the Latin 'praejudicium', which meant a precedent, a judgement based on previous decisions and experiences. In English the word carne to mean a prejudgement and it is still sometimes understood in this sense, though it will be clear upon reflection that this is not its normal meaning, for prejudgements are necessary in almost everything we do, whereas no one could claim the same for prejudices. Prejudgements become prejudices only if they are not subject to modification in the light of new experience. One of the major characteristics of prejudice is this mental rigidity which the prejudiced individual maintains by twisting new information to accord with his stereotyped preconceptions.'

(3) By the term 'indoctrination' we have in mind what IA Snook ('Indoctrination and education' (1972) described as: '(suggesting) that someone is taking advantage of a privileged role to influence those under his charge in a manner which is likely to distort their ability to assess the evidence on its own merits.'

(4) 'Popular TV and school children' The report of a group of teachers. DES. April 1983.

(5) Extract from a letter published in The Caribbean Times 8 April 1983.

(6) 'Organisation in multiracial schools' HER Townsend and EM Brittan. NFER. 1972.

(7) 'Multiracial education - teacher opinion on aspects of school life', E M Brittan Educ Research 18.3. 1976.

(8) 'The role of ethnicity in teachers' accounts of their interaction with pupils in multicultural classrooms,' OF Stewart. Unpublished MSc. University of Aston. 1978.

(9) 'Decision making in Special Education ESN(M) with some reference to children of immigrant parentage.' S Tomlinson. Unpublished PhD thesis. University of Warwick. 1979.

(10) 'Teachers' influence on the self concept of pupils of different ethnic origins'. PA Green. Unpublished PhD thesis. 1983.

(11) 'Racial Discrimination in England,' WW Daniel. Penguin 1968; 'Racial Disadvantage in Britain.' David J Smith. Penguin 1977; 'Black and White Britain,' Colin Brown. PSI 1984.

(12) 'A report on job discrimination against young blacks in Nottingham.' CRE November 1980.

(13) 'Race and Council Housing in Hackney - Report of a Formal Investigation into the allocation of housing in the London Borough of Hackney.' CRE January 1984.

(14) 'Racial attacks' - Report of a Home Office Study. November 1981.

Annex A: The role of the media
A background paper by Dr GK Verma
[pages 38 - 45]

The use of the broad term 'the media' in this paper applies to both the press and broadcasting.

The question is often asked as to the extent to which the media foster, reinforce or counteract attitudes in the field of race relations. This is a complex question to which the literature offers no conclusive answers. At one level it can be shown, for example, that the views of most American adults about Russia are derived from newspapers, radio and television (Mackinnon and Centers, 1958). But from which sources are the views of the mass media derived? From government sources or from the people themselves? The process of cause and effect is extremely difficult to unravel.

Some studies in America have shown that the mass media may influence racialist attitudes (or reinforce and thus strengthen existing attitudes) on relatively non-controversial issues (Colfax and Steinberg, 1972; Johnson et al 1971). It is probably fair to say that the less controversial the issue, and the more there is some consensus in society in that issue, the more likely if is that the mass media will support, and reinforce such racial attitudes. Again, cause and effect are interwoven.

Rose and his associates (1969), reviewing race relations in Britain, commented that:

'The role of the press and of the broadcasting authorities ... can be crucial. In the last five years immigration and race relations have rivalled almost any other subject except natural disasters for prominence in newspapers and on television. They have an irresistible appeal for news and features editors and for those who produce discussion programmes. They bulk largely in the cockpit of the correspondence columns, especially in local newspapers. Whenever a politician speaks on the subject he knows that he will almost certainly be reported; some do not even trouble to speak: they pick up the telephone and dictate a statement to the Press Association'.

A number of writers have stressed that the press has no desire or impetus to engage in campaigning on issues which do not reflect the interests of, or the wishes of, their readers. Newspapers are entrepreneurial institutions which depend for their survival on the goodwill of their readers and advertisers. Writing about American communities Breed (1964) suggests that the press maintains socio-cultural consensus and therefore protects the existing power and class structure. Other studies support this view (Olien et aI, 1968). Similarly, opinions prevail that television is biased in favour of the existing power structure of society.

There is also evidence that the press can foster and support alarmist views about ethnic minorities. In such situations the press is again probably merely reflecting the views of dominant power groups. Examples of this kind of effect were given to the International Seminar on the Press in Davao City, Philippines, in April 1969. A number of papers were presented which indicated that partial, emotive or inaccurate reports had helped to make existing racial tensions worse. Evidence was given on American riots, on Malay-Chinese riots in Kuala Lumpur, on Sinhalese-Tamil riots in Ceylon and on Hindu-Moslem conflicts in India. (A minor skirmish took place outside a Hindu temple in Ahmedabad. The next day Indian language newspapers carried headlines with emotive content such as 'Fanatics attack Jagannath temple'. Other newspapers also inflated the incident.)

A detailed content analysis of press and television reporting of a British demonstration against the Vietnam war has been made by Halloran and his colleagues (1970). A large but overwhelmingly peaceful demonstration in London in October 1968 was treated by the press in terms of a basic issue - that of violence and threat to public order. This treatment served to distort news, since all events were analysed and reported to the extent which they fitted the media's conceptual framework of this issue.

A study by Hartmann and Husband (1970) argues that the British mass media, including television, handle race relations material in a way that both perpetuates negative perceptions of blacks and also defines the race relations situation as one of inter-group conflict. A test of a hypothesis about the possible effect of the media on the attitudes of 208 teenagers was made by comparing attitudes of youngsters with varying degrees of contact with New Commonwealth immigrants. Significantly more youngsters in low contact areas cited media sources for their information about black people than those in high contact areas, where information was more likely to be based on personal contact. Moreover, teenagers who cited conflict themes (when questioned about their knowledge of black people in Britain) were significantly more likely to cite the media as a source of information. Conflict themes were much more often mentioned by young people in low contact areas. There is an obvious inference from these findings that teenagers who rely on the mass media for their information about New Commonwealth people have to some extent internalised the image of New Commonwealth people presented to them by these media.

A detailed content analysis of the treatment of race over the period 1963 to 1970 in four British national newspapers - The Times, The Guardian, Daily Express and Daily Mirror - was undertaken by Hartmann and Husband (1974). The researchers found that the four papers proved to be similar in the kind of subject matter they carried. The kinds of news concerning race relations which these four papers thought was worth printing, and the amount of space they gave to different kinds of material turned out to be very similar indeed. The amount of race related material appearing in the press increased over the period of analysis. According to the researchers, this was due entirely to an increase in material about the British situation, for which there was nearly twice as much in the second half of the period as in the first. This indicates that with the increased number of Blacks press attention to race relations increased. It is difficult to explain the increasing attention in terms of 'more black people make more black news'. It is interesting to point out that issues of black people's housing, education and employment did not receive increased attention by the press. Rather the emphasis was on salient questions such as immigration, inter-group hostility, the relationships between white and black, the views of Enoch Powell and so on. The researchers analysed the material and found that 39 per cent was signalled as race related by words such as race, colour, immigrant, Negroes in the headlines; 10 per cent of headings contained words like murder, kill, shoot or burn; 12 per cent included words like hate, crisis, row, clash and threat, showing conflict and disagreement; 6 per cent of headlines contained restrictive words like stop, curb, out, ban and bar.

Rex (1970 and 1972) argues that the mass media, including the press, reinforce existing cultural stereotypes about ethnic minorities. Thus 'stories' which represent blacks and Asians as stupid or unclean are seized upon and exaggerated, while events which represent minorities in ways contrary to popular stereotypes are played down. The same process has operated in the treatment by American mass media of minorities (Ehrlich, 1973).

Influence of the press on attitudes

The literature shows that there may be three complementary models which can account for the connections between mass media and racial attitudes and actions, First, the primary influence of the press is to act as a support for opinions which already exist in the general population probably in a semi-articulated way. The press operates to articulate, legitimise and support the opinions held by the large majority of their readers. Second, the press conforms to its own stereotype of how news in the particular field should be handled (a number of studies provide evidence for this view - e.g. Halloran et al, Hartmann and Husband). This conception may distort news of events and is likely to be a negative one.

The third model is one in which the press plays a role in supporting or initiating social movement. ' The massive anxiety in the host community over the entry of British Asians is an example.

In our empirical studies we were concerned with aspects of the first model. The hypotheses derived from this model are:

a. The press can most easily influence attitudes in race relations by influencing attitudes in the direction in which they are already well advanced. For example, if the majority of the population hold racially prejudiced attitudes, the press can be successful in making people more prejudiced, but it is unlikely to be able to make people less prejudiced.

b. Press attitudes to specific issues reflect the underlying attitudes of the public; press attitudes serve to reinforce and strengthen public attitudes in this sphere, and increase their intensity.

Racial attitudes and the press

It is true, of course, that attitudes and ways of communicating are affected to a great extent by what is seen, heard, read and assimilated from the individual's environment. Young children in particular are more susceptible to these outside factors. Unfortunately, the impression of non-western cultures portrayed by the media is often unfavourable. Our experience based on interviews with children suggests that the negative description by the media of ethnic minorities contributes to the low self-esteem of the minority-culture child. Such children and their parents may also obtain a view of British life as a permissive society, In such circumstances children overestimate the degree of 'freedom' enjoyed by their contemporaries, and this stiffens the resolve of their parents to adhere to their standards and expectations. Thus, inter-generational conflict is heightened.

Data from a random sample survey of 2,490 individuals living in five English boroughs with an average proportion of black people (Lambeth, Ealing, Wolverhampton, Nottingham, Bradford) have been analysed to indicate the prevalence of prejudiced attitudes, the kinds of sources which those sampled use for information on race relations and the extent to which prejudiced people say that they obtain information about race relations from the press. The results showed that nearly half of the population sampled manifested a marked degree of prejudice, and only 14 per cent of the population sampled did not manifest prejudiced attitudes (Bagley, 1970).

The researcher posed the following questions: to what extent do the members of the population sampled use the press as a source of information about black people; to what extent are individuals using various sources of information prejudiced, and to what extent are various institutions, including mass media, seen as favourable to black people?

Analysis of the data showed that the large majority of respondents obtained their information from more than one source. The most frequently cited source of information was 'personal contact' with black people (54 per cent). 34 per cent of the respondents said that they used the press as a source of such information. The tabulation of the percentage of those prejudiced against sources of information suggested that significantly fewer of those who got information about black people from personal contact or from the radio were prejudiced than the remainder of the individuals in the sample. The number of respondents who obtained their information from the press alone was small (n=127). 70 of these individuals (55 per cent) had prejudiced scores above the median level.

The conclusions drawn by the researcher are that a third of the population in the areas surveyed obtained information about New Commonwealth people from the press; 46 per cent of those individuals were prejudiced. This percentage is close to the prejudice in the population as a whole. However, individuals who rely on the press alone as a source of information are significantly more prejudiced than the rest of the population. This does not, of course, logically imply any causal link between readership of the press and prejudice. Both the local and the national press are seen as holding favourable attitudes to black people by a little under 40 per cent of respondents. Some 14 per cent see the local and national press as being hostile to black people.

Bagley (1973) conducted an analysis of the content of all reports in the provincial press in Britain published in the first four months of 1968. It was in the middle of this period that Powell's first major speech on race was made, and he attempted to assess the impact of this on newspapers' attitudes in race relations by comparing three periods - before the Powell speech, immediately after the Powell speech and some months after the speech.

By utilising rigorous methods of analysis the researcher classified 2,235 reports on race relations which appeared in some 200 British provincial newspapers in January, February, March and April 1968. The selection of material was made by the staff of a press cuttings agency.

The main issues in race relations which occupied the press during the four months were; in January, the problems of illegal entry; in February, the entry of East African Asians, and the government bill to restrict their entry; the announcement of the forthcoming Race Relations Act; Wolverhampton's ban on turbaned Sikhs on their corporation buses; the black power movement, and Powell's first major speech on immigration. In March the press were concerned mainly with the passage of the Race Relations Act, and the establishment of community relations officers, while in April the main issues were the debate on the Race Relations Bill, and Powell's second major speech on 20 April 1968.

The classification of the press cuttings indicated that the most hostile area was crime, and the next most hostile area was those reports which concerned Powell's speeches. The areas where the press reports were least hostile were concerned with the personal activities of immigrants, employment, housing and education.

Letters to the editor were markedly more hostile than either editorials or articles written by regular contributors. The majority of the letters (64 per cent) were either critical of, or hostile to, blacks and Asians. Letters on the general area of race relations were definitely more favourable than letters on the Kenyan Asian issue.

A classification of individual newspapers indicated that the most unfavourable or hostile newspapers (to black immigrants) were the Preston Lancashire Evening Post, the Portsmouth Evening News, the Oldham Chronicle, the Manchester Evening News, the South London Press, the Coventry Evening Telegraph and the Middlesbrough Evening Gazette. The papers with the highest proportion of 'favourable' reports were the Darlington Northern Echo (50 per cent) and the Kensington Post (52 per cent).

It is interesting to mention that the amount of negative items reported in the press increased quite markedly from January to February as the number of press reports on race relations increased. The researcher concluded that the reason for this increase could be attributed to the press reactions in February to Powell's first major speech on 9 February, and the actions and debates resulting from it. The level of hostility to coloured people was largely maintained in press reports of November of the same year.

One important way in which the provincial press conveys opinion in the race relations field is by printing readers' letters. The bulk of these letters - both those received and those printed were hostile to coloured immigrants.

An interesting example of how the press can create race relations 'news' out of nothing has been provided by reports in national newspapers about the action of the Race Relations Board (Race Relations Bulletin, 1970). In April 1970, Gentleshaw and Cannock Wood Women's Institute entered a local talent competition and chose to sing an old fashioned song called 'Ten Little Nigger Boys'. However they had second thoughts, believing that the title might offend some people, so changed the words to 'Ten Little Golliwogs' instead. The day afterwards a journalist rang the chairman of the West Midlands branch of the Race Relations Board and asked his personal view on the substitution. The spokesman said he thought either words would offend some people. Next day, the Daily Telegraph ran a story under the headline, 'Race Board ban Women's Institute's Ten Little Nigger Boys'. The Leicester Mercury headline declared, 'Race Relations Board rebuke of some Women's Institute Singers'. The Birmingham Post carried the opinion of a politician that 'the decision was pettifogging interference with ordinary pleasures of decent people'.

The Race Relations Board itself had no power to ban anything, and it had no formal complaint about the song whatever, nor had it contacted any of the parties involved. The initiative in the case, and the distortion involved, was entirely journalistic. Indeed, a week later, the President of the Woman's Institute involved wrote to the Birmingham Post that 'The Race Relations Board did not in any way interfere with our singing "Ten Little Nigger Boys". They did not even know about it then'.

The chairman of the Race Relations Board commented on this matter that a period of positive neglect by the mass media of the more lurid aspects of race relations would be helpful.

The brief review of the literature suggests that the press may have a profound effect in the sphere of race relations. The influence that it has had has been largely negative, and has been related to the propensity of populations to be unfavourable or negative to ethnic minorities. The press in so far as it has been innovative has acted as a support or catalyst of existing propensities in the community. In particular, the press has frequently served to maintain socio-cultural integration. The model examined concerning the connection of race relations and the British press is one in which the press initially reflects opinion of leaders in the race relations field to the degree to which such individuals have large and popular support. Since the press, both national and local, depend for their survival on the goodwill of readers and advertisers, it is unlikely that they will pursue an editorial policy in the field of race relations which is too far removed from the will of the majority.

Overall, the recent effects of the press on race relations have not been liberal (as the earlier influence of the press in this field was not liberal), and its effects have also not been benign.

Race and the press in Britain - a developing pattern

The phenomenon of the 'racialist letter' to the local press has fluctuated according to the salience of particular issues (Priestley, 1972). It is also possible that as editors and editorial policy changes, some of the newspapers identified as hostile to coloured immigrants in 1968 will become less hostile (and vice versa). Following editorial changes, the South London Press, for example, became less hostile in its attacks on black and Asian settlers in South London. Nevertheless, it continued to publish a variety of readers' letters, including ones expressing great hostility as regards matters affecting race relations. The National Front, for example, gave a special award to a member for a letter published in the South London Press (Wall, 1976).

A detailed analysis of the role of the mass media in fostering and supporting attitudes during the arrival of British Asian refugees from Uganda in 1972 has been made by Humphry arid Ward (1974). From the inception of the 'crisis' in August 1972: 'Newspapers carried pages of letters of protest which voiced people's fear of a fundamental change in British society which they thought the coming of the Asians would cause'.

The Daily Express was particularly active in a campaign of 'feeding people's fears' with stories of villages and towns which would shortly be overrun with Asians. By September, both the Daily Express and the Daily Telegraph were conducting vigorous campaigns, with the Express using 'large cartoons featuring Asians which at other times would have been considered an offence to good taste'.

Peter Harland, editor of the Bradford Telegraph and Argus has commented:

'It would be a mistake however to assume that, because the media's attention has passed on to such new excitements as inflation and kidnapping, racialism has disappeared altogether. It is merely latent. There is no evidence that the prejudice freely expressed in 1972-73 has evaporated miraculously. Its strength then was shown vividly by Derek Humphrey and Michael Ward in their 1974 Penguin Special - Passports and Politics. Perhaps because they chose to concentrate on one particular area - Basildon in Essex - their book was criticised as being both exaggerated and untypical. But everything that Humphrey and Ward found in Basildon, I experienced, and more, at the same time in Bradford, although Bradford was not an area designated to receive more than a handful of Ugandan Asians' (Harland, 1976).

A leading television broadcaster (Gillard, 1975) has claimed that the role of television in maintaining national spirit and morale in times of crisis and difficulty is crucial. He may be right. The role of television clearly stands above that of other forms of mass media. Hartmann and Husband (1974) found that for the children and adolescents they interviewed, television was undoubtedly the most important source of information about the world. They argue that the important effect of the mass media is not that watching television makes us more violent or permissive or racist, but that the media throw some features into sharp relief, obliterate others, select and limit the issues which are worthy of consideration or recall. The mass media do not determine attitudes, but they do structure and select information we may use on which to base decisions about what attitude is appropriate. For the mass of people, of course, this process is hardly rational or conscious. Attitudes themselves are ill-formed and may be focused by the images and attitudes of the mass media. It is possible, too, as Halloran and his colleagues have argued (1974) that television and other news media serve to support already formed prejudiced opinions, in that adults and children who are already prejudiced recall more readily news items and programmes whose content is racial. The same programme can also mean different things to different observers. The influence of television programmes may be both subtle and indirect.

Television becomes important as children grow older. In a study of 11 national and cultural groups Lambert and Klineberg (1967) found that six year old children report a primary dependence on their parents for attitudes about other ethnic groups. Children of ten and older, however, report a greater dependence on television and reading materials. What this implies is that children can learn racial concepts, and racial terms of abuse which they would otherwise have been ignorant of. A case in point is the influence of the TV series 'Love Thy Neighbour' which portrays a white bigot who heaps racial abuse upon his neighbour. The programme is meant to be funny. The Area Round-Up Column of 'Race Today' reported in May 1973 that a primary school headteacher in Fife, Scotland, said 'that children in his school had made a coloured worker's life a misery, calling him names like 'coon' and 'Sambo', having picked them up from the programme 'Love Thy Neighbour'. A Thames TV spokesman said that all the evidence they had showed that people were overwhelmingly in favour of the programme both as entertainment and as good race relations - 'by using humour it takes the heat out of the colour question'. It could be said that the programme created a 'colour question' in Fife and in other areas where there are very few coloured immigrants.

Carlin (1975) has noted that, 'Racial clowning is the classic defence against humiliation and physical attack ... there is the Latin American clown, who is always smiling; there is, as Conor Cruise O'Brien again has pointed out, the Irish clown, who is always drunk; there is the Asian clown, the Babu; there is the Negro clown - we know him well. There is - or was - a Jewish clown. All racial clowns are sooner or later celebrated on the musical comedy stage'. These clowns are celebrated too, on our TV screens, and serve to reinforce the stereotypes of the majority. In recent years television's treatment of other cultures concerns the Arabs. Characters are either wealthy stumblebums in situation comedies or unprincipled terrorists in so-called dramas.

Both BBC and ITV continue to show a variety of old films, which portray Africans and American Indians as untrustworthy savages, fit peoples for subjugation and civilisation by the white man. A new genre of TV programmes has appeared on British screens in recent years - specially produced fictional programmes for TV which have been made in America in a new era of apparent racial enlightenment. A detailed content analysis of these programmes has been made by a group of American researchers (Donagher et al, 1975). A number of programmes analysed have been shown on British TV. The formal roles assigned to the characters varied considerably. Males, both white and black, were represented as professionals or semi-professionals e.g. educators, policemen, firemen, detectives, ranchers. Females of both races were portrayed as teachers, secretaries and housewives, whereas white females also took on such roles as nurses, counsellors, detectives and newspaper owners. Formal role-status, say the researchers, was not completely equitable but represented a substantial movement toward equality compared to role assignment during the earlier years of television. Citing research which shows that children's positive and negative attitudes toward their own and other races can be influenced by the specific ways in which racial characters are portrayed on television, Donagher et al conclude that the new wave of television dramas may have served to transmit a new wave of stereotypes, but these stereotypes are still ones of black inferiority.

Current statistics show that children spend a great deal of time watching television. A piece of research was conducted to ascertain the effects of a television series specifically designed to influence racial attitudes (Kemelfield, 1972). Kemelfield evaluated the effects of programmes transmitted in schools TV service for 9 to 12 year olds on the lives of children in other cultures. The programmes were shown to two groups of children, one in an area of immigrant settlement, and one in an area without immigrants. In general, the programme was well received, and also effective in achieving its aims of 'encouraging appreciation and tolerance of people of different creeds and races now living in Britain'. For example, of the subjects in the low contact area, 39 per cent thought that 'Pakistanis are usually as clean as English people', before seeing the programme, compared with 75 per cent of those questioned after seeing it. There was one exception to these results, in white children in one school in an area of high immigrant settlement, where 28 per cent of pupils were, in fact from Pakistan. Here, all the children's pre-programme knowledge was generally greater, but their post-programme answers suggested that in certain areas they were reacting to their own knowledge of their Pakistani peers rather than to the programme content. After viewing the programme, white pupils in this high contact school appeared to be more sensitive to the possibilities of culture clashes (e.g. over different diets) with Pakistani children. Clearly the effects of television are complex as are the effects of teaching about race relations in schools (Verma and MacDonald, 1971; Verma and Bagley, 1973; Verma and Bagley, 1979; Stenhouse, Verma and Wild, 1982), but TV programmes can have, in certain circumstances, a considerable influence on attitudes. If programmes transmitted by school television can affect attitudes in positive ways, it seems probable that programmes transmitted at other times can also affect attitudes. Unfortunately, there is not as much research on the issues as would be desirable.

References

Bagley, C. (1970d): 'Social Structure and Prejudice in Fiv. [sic] London Institute of Race Relations

Bagley, C. (1973b): 'Race Relations and the British press: an empirical study'. Race, 15,60-89

Bagley, C and Verma, G. K. (1979): 'Racial Prejudice, the Individual and Society'. Farnborough: Saxon House

Breed, W. (1964): 'Mass communication and socio-cultural integration' in L. Dexter and D. White (eds) 'People, Society and Mass Communications'. New York; The Free Press

Carlin, M (1975): 'Clowns for all races'. New Society, January 9, 75-6

Cofax, J. and Sternberg, S. (1972): 'The perpetuation of racial stereotypes: blacks in mass circulation magazine advertisements'. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36, 8-18

Donagher, P., Paulos, R., Leibert, R. and Davidson, E. (1975): 'Race, sex and social example: an analysis of character portrayals on interracial television entertainment'. Psychological Reports, 37 ,1023-34

Ehrlich, H. (1973): 'The Social Psychology of Prejudice'. New York: Wiley

Gillard, F. (1975): Quoted in The Times, 19 September 1975

Halloran, J., Elliott, P. and Murdock G. (1970): 'Demonstrations and Communication. A Case Study'. London: Penguin Books

Halloran, J., Hartmann, P. and Husband, C. (1974): 'Mass media and social attitudes'. SSRC Newsletter, 23, 18

Harland, P. (1976): 'The media and race relations today'. New Community, 4, 435-60

Hartmann, P. and Husband, C. (1970): 'The mass media and racial conflict'. Race, 12,267-82

Hartmann, P., and Husband, C. (1974): 'Racism and the Mass Media'. London: Davis-Poynter

Humphry, D. and Ward, M. (1974): 'Passports and Politics'. London: Penguin Books

Johnson, P., Sears, D. and McConahay, J. (1971): 'Black invisibility, the press and the Los Angeles Riot'. American Journal of Sociology, 76, 698-721

Kemelfield, G. (1972): 'The evaluation of schools' broadcasting: piloting a new approach'. New Society, June 1,472-73

MacKinnon, W. and Centers, R. (1958): 'Social-psychological factors in public orientation toward an out-group'. American Journal of Sociology, 63, 415-19

Olien, C. et al (1968) 'The Community editor's power and the reporting conflict'. Journalism Quarterly, 45, 243-52

Race Relations Bulletin (1970): 'Frivolity and the Race Relations Act'. Race Relations Bulletin (London) May

Rex, J. (1970): 'Race Relations in Sociological Theory'. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson

Rex, J. (1972): 'Nature versus nurture: the significance of the revived debate'. In W. Richardson and D. Spears (eds) 'Race, Culture and Intelligence'. London: Penguin Books

Rose, J. and others (1969): 'Colour and Citisenship'. London: Oxford University Press.

Stenhouse, L., Verma, G. K. and Wild, R. (1982) 'Teaching About Race Relations: Problems and Effects'. London: Routledge

Verma, G. K. and Bagley, C. (1973): 'Changing racial attitudes'. International Journal of Psychology, 8, 55-8

Verma, G. K. and Bagley, C. (1979): 'The evaluation of three strategies in teaching about race relations'. In G. K. Verma and C. Bagley (eds) 'Race, Education and Identity'. London: Macmillan

Verma, G. K. and MacDonald, B. (1971): 'Teaching race in schools: some effects on the attitudinal and sociometric patterns of adolescents'. Race, 13, No.2

Wall, M. (1976): 'Caution or credibility'. New Community, 4, 463-64

Annex B: Multi-ethnic teaching and the pupils' self-concepts
A paper by Peter A Green
[pages 46 - 56]

The sudden influx of immigrants during the nineteen-fifties and nineteen-sixties introduced into Britain a whole generation of Commonwealth citisens who tended to settle in a limited number of large towns and cities where they found accommodation available only in severely restricted areas with the consequence that schools serving those areas had to admit large numbers of immigrant children who then formed a substantial proportion of the pupils in anyone school. Very little was known about educating immigrant minorities (1) (in some schools they were majorities) alongside indigenous children for whom the educational system was developed and even as late as 1969 Vernon, commenting about immigrant children wrote, 'it is widely recognised that children of school age have considerable difficulties in adjusting to the unfamiliar conditions of English schooling' (2). Understandably teachers were concerned with immediate problems and researchers responded with a number of important studies (3,4). However, these problems were generally interpreted as being solely related to, and centred upon, the immigrant pupil's weaknesses, inabilities and failures which resulted in children of Asian and of West Indian origins being seen as the cause of the difficulties confronting the teacher in the multi-ethnic classroom. Black children were expected to fit into white schools and educational difficulties were almost invariably identified as immigrant problems.

The rapidly imposed changes threatened established educational practices and in their train induced feelings of insecurity (5) which tended to accentuate the significance of the white teacher's attitude towards black children of West Indian or Asian origin. The relationship between pupils and their teacher in the multi-ethnic classroom emerged as a major factor since 'any successful classroom has to be based upon a dialogue between students and teachers' (6) and because 'in many respects a child is taught what he is by being told what his actions 'mean', by their 'effect' on the others' (7). This awareness, once assimilated into the child's concept of himself, is likely to become an influential element in learning (8) and may be a significant factor in low levels of academic achievement. In the research on which this paper is based (9) the self-concept was viewed as a mental image established as a result of the knowledge the child has of himself and which is subject to modification through further learning. The malleable nature of the self-concept is widely recognised (e.g. 10,11) and such flexibility surrounding the relatively stable core of the self (12) places a formidable burden of responsibility upon the professional shoulders of the schoolteacher especially when 'the school is second only to the home in determining an individual's attitudes of self-acceptance and self-rejection' (13). As a learned structure it follows that, to some extent, it is taught by those people who are dominant in the life of the child. Few people can be more dominant than the child's teacher who, with an aura of authority, projects appraisals based on personally selected criteria which will be affected by the white teacher's attitude towards the black child and towards the educational task in which they are mutually engaged. Despite the development of new strategies in recent years the processes of education and social control in the classroom are still orally dominated by the teacher and the language of interaction becomes a means of appraisal by the teacher and a guide for self-evaluation by the child for as Laing points out 'identity is reached and sustained two-dimensionally, it requires recognition of oneself by others as well as the simple recognition one accords oneself' (14). In the course of this interaction the child himself will engage in making comparative appraisals comparing his own skills, attributes and performance with those of his peers and assessing his degree of success or failure. Davidson and Lang(15) showed that during the primary school years there is a positive correlation between the child's self-concept and the child's perception of his teacher's feelings towards him. Other studies clearly indicate that the perception of behaviour surrounding a child is interpreted and internalised to become part of the child's evaluation of himself (16,17) so whilst still in its very formative state the self is partially a product of formal education and as a learned structure becomes 'a condition of subsequent learning' (18). In America Rubovits and Maehr observed in their research that 'in general, black students were treated less positively than whites' (19) and 'were given less attention, ignored more, praised less and criticised more' (20). The interaction which takes place in the multi-ethnic classroom between the teacher and individual boys and girls of European, Asian and West Indian origins is, therefore, likely to be influential in the development of the self-concept, which itself has been consistently shown to be associated with the child's level of academic achievement (21).

The behaviour of the teacher in the multi-ethnic classroom, unless it is modified to produce a spurious behavioural pattern for some particular reason, is likely to reflect those attitudes which are stimulated by ethnic factors and because an attitude predisposes 'one to respond in some preferential manner' (22) the level of the teachers' ethnocentrism assumes considerable significance. By ethnocentrism we mean the tendency to consider the characteristics and attributes of ethnic groups other than one's own to be inferior. As it is derived from a basis of the individual's knowledge, or assumed knowledge, it tends to avoid the more emotive and active connotations associated with notions such as racial prejudice and racism which are usually based on predominantly negative and subjective beliefs. As a major influence on the behaviour a teacher exhibits in the multi-ethnic classroom it may be an influential factor in reaching the numerous professional decisions required of a teacher during the course of a working day. There have been few investigations in British schools into either the extent or the effect of ethnocentrism amongst teachers. Thus the present lack of objective evidence from empirical studies enforces a heavy reliance upon subjective comment from a number of observers of the multi-ethnic scene who, themselves, will not be completely immune from the effects of the phenomenon. The importance of classroom atmosphere is referred to by Davey when he asks, 'If self-esteem is dependent on the appraisal of others will not the prejudice of the dominant group enter into the stigmatised group member's perception of himself?' (23). What comes through quite clearly from a number of studies is that the quality of contact is likely to be an influential factor in the development of the child's self-concept especially in a multi-ethnic classroom dominated by the authority of a white teacher (24).

Any manifestation of the teacher's ethnocentrism in the multi-ethnic classroom takes place in the context of professional activity so the teacher's attitude towards that activity ought not to be disregarded. Goldman comments that 'the attitudes of teachers and educational administrators are important formative influences on how the ethnically different child generates his self-image' (25) and from the American scene Yamamoto expresses a similar view when writing about the teacher's role in the nurture of the-self-concept in children of Primary School age (26). Following the work of Oliver (27) the research reported here distinguishes the presence in the sample of toughminded/tenderminded, idealistic/naturalistic and conservative/radical attitudes towards education.

The toughminded/tenderminded dimension is sensitive to practical as against theoretical viewpoints indicating the teacher's attitude towards the methods used to achieve educational objectives; the idealistic/naturalistic dimension distinguishes the advocates of teacher-controlled education exercising an instilling function from those preferring child-centred education exercising a guiding function (28); and the conservative/radical dimension shows the teacher's attitude towards conservation or change in education. The different types of attitudes teachers have towards some fundamental aspects of teaching and learning are likely to influence their style of teaching and the type of teacher/pupil relationship which is encouraged. Additionally teachers carry into the multi-ethnic class their own degree of ethnocentrism which will find accentuated or diminished expression within the context of their teaching. The activity which takes place in the form of interaction is likely to influence the development of the child's self-concept as a learner which, in turn, may have a bearing on the level of scholastic achievement.

To study the influence which teachers may have on the development of the self-concept of pupils of different ethnic origins the research investigated whether teachers' gender, their ethnocentrism and the types of attitudes they have towards education are associated with the use they make of different modes of teaching and whether that teaching is correlated to the child's level of self-concept. The sample consisted of seventy full-time qualified teachers and their 1,814 pupils in three middle and three junior coeducational schools drawn from two local education authority areas. The teachers, twenty-eight male and forty-two female white British nationals, were predominantly in their twenties and thirties with 43 per cent of the sample having had five or more years experience of teaching in multi-ethnic schools. Of the pupil sample those of European origin comprised 28 per cent boys and 24 per cent girls; of Asian origin 12 per cent boys and 13 per cent girls and of West Indian origin 12 per cent boys and 11 per cent girls. Two schools served the central districts of their authority's area with the children living in older type privately owned property. Away from the central districts two schools had catchment areas which included modern council and owner-occupied housing in roughly equal proportions. The remaining two schools were situated in older council estates with mainly poor housing conditions. The field work for the study was carried out during the latter half of the school year so that teachers and children had been in lengthy contract with each other by the time the data was collected.

To assess and record the classroom interaction the ten-category schedule devised by Flanders (29) was used distinguishing the acceptance of the pupils' feelings (Category 1), praise and encouragement (C2), the acceptance or use of pupils' ideas (C3), the teacher asking questions (C4), direct teaching of a didactic type (C5), the teacher's directions (C6), the teacher's criticism or justification of authority (C7), pupil talk in response to the teacher (C8), pupil initiatory talk (C9) and silence during teaching sequences (C10). The system of recording the interaction enabled the amount of time spent by the teacher in using anyone category with the class as a whole or with individual boys and girls of each ethnic group to be calculated for each class for a complete day*. To measure the extent to which ethnocentrism was present in the sample of teachers a revised form of 'A British Ethnocentrism Scale' (30) was used and this revealed four main groups of teachers whose levels of ethnocentrism were significantly different. The two extreme groups, with twelve teachers in each, were designated as highly intolerant and highly tolerant teachers. The teachers' attitudes towards education were measured by the 'Survey of Opinions about Education' (31) which showed women teachers in the sample to be predominantly idealistic-toughminded-radicals whilst men teachers were idealistic-radicals with a tendency towards tendermindedness. Translating these theoretical constructs into a description of the probable behaviour of teachers in the multi-ethnic classroom we would expect both men and women in the sample to accept changes in education whilst seeking, from all children, a high level of performance emphasising the importance of subject matter. The main difference between men and women teachers in the sample is most likely to be evident in the manner in which they accept the changes and strive for excellence. Women are likely to be more authoritarian establishing a fairly inflexible classroom routine in contrast to men teachers who will tend to allow children a greater degree of freedom imposing their ideas less frequently than women teachers in a more relaxed classroom atmosphere. The level of the children's self-concepts were measured by three scales orally administered in the absence of their teacher: a modified form of the Bledsoe Self-Concept Scale (32), a modified form of the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (33) and the Waetjen Self-Concept as a Learner Scale (34).

*The expected frequency of any teaching mode was calculated according to the percentage number of children of each ethnic group being taught. Thus girls of Asian origin, who constituted 12.96 per cent of the children taught by male teachers, would be expected to receive 12.96 per cent of the total time given to any mode of teaching during individual teaching. The difference between observed and expected frequency provides a measure of the excess or deficit teaching in relation to boys and girls of each ethnic group.

Before focusing on the detail of multi-ethnic classroom interaction the general pattern of the teaching observed is described by the use of four indices. The first of these, the teacher response ratio, is an index corresponding to the teacher's tendency to react positively to the ideas and feelings expressed by the children. The second index, the teacher question ratio, illustrates the tendency of a teacher to emphasise questioning in preference to direct teaching of the didactic type. Thirdly, a pupil initiation ratio illustrates pupil's initiatory talk as a proportion of all talking and, lastly, the teacher authority ratio is an index representing that proportion of the teacher's direct teaching activity used for giving directions, criticising and justifying his authority. Relating these indices to the types of attitudes the teachers held about education shows that both tough and tenderminded teachers responded more positively to the ideas and feelings expressed by girls than they did to those of boys in each ethnic group. Both groups of teachers tended to respond more negatively to the contributions made by boys of West Indian origin than they did to those made by any other children. The responses of both groups of teachers, whilst similar in pattern are, nevertheless, at different levels: tenderminded teachers reacted more positively with boys and girls of Asian and of West Indian origins than their toughminded colleagues who responded more positively with boys and girls of European origin. The teacher question ratio shows that all teachers, irrespective of whether they held tough or tenderminded attitudes towards their task, spent a higher proportion of time asking questions of children of Asian and of West Indian origins than they did with children of European origin. In other words, the teaching of children of European origin, especially boys, tended to emphasise direct teaching in preference to questioning. With the exception of girls of Asian origin all black children received a higher proportion of questioning from tough minded teachers than from those holding tenderminded attitudes. Whereas girls spent most of their talking-time responding to these questions, boys, taught by toughminded teachers, when compared with