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UPFRONT
Remembering Anthony, rejecting racism
Over 200 people gathered at the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool on 23 October to remember the promising and tragically short life of Anthony Walker.
The young man, killed in a racist attack in 2005 in Merseyside, was celebrated in the third annual Anthony Walker Memorial Lecture. Participants heard a range of views on the significance of Anthony’s life and death and the realities of race equality in Britain today.
Anthony’s mother Gee Walker delivered the lecture at this year’s event. Having recently visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, she remarked on the continued existence of a myth of racial superiority. Rob Berkeley, director of the Runnymede Trust, responded to her remarks.
The lecture was jointly organised by the NUT and the Anthony Walker Memorial Foundation and this year was held outside London for the first time. Entertainment was provided by the Young People’s Choir from Greenbank primary school and the Sense of Sound Choir.
LGBT time
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) teachers from across England and Wales attended the union’s 16th annual LGBT teachers’ conference at Hamilton House on 10 October.
Among the highlights were workshops on: international solidarity work on LGBT issues; transgender and gender identities; and the No Outsiders project, which challenges homophobia in primary schools. Keynote speaker Johann Hari, journalist with The Independent, participated in a lively discussion with delegates on the propriety of BBC’s Question Time providing a forum to the BNP.
General secretary Christine Blower emphasised the importance of LGBT members identifying themselves as such with the union so that they will be eligible to vote in the 2012-14 election of a constituency seat designated for LGBT members on the NUT‘s executive.
The conference debated and carried two motions. One, on the need to accelerate efforts both inside and outside the trade union movement against homophobia and transphobia in schools, was prioritised to go to the union’s national annual conference in 2010.
Learning to lead, leading to learn
‘Successful leaders are forever learning’ was the theme of the NUT’s 10th annual leadership convention, held at Hamilton House on 15 October.
Sir Jim Rose, who recently led the government-funded independent review of primary education, gave a presentation on primary and secondary issues arising from his ‘Rose Report’. He bemoaned the current overload in the primary curriculum, and the government’s failure to link the reviews of early years, primary and secondary education. He pointed out, however, that schools are now 60 per cent better off, in terms of resources, than in 1998.
Other speakers looked at raising achievement among white working class students and the Millennium Goal of universal primary education.
Promoting peace on World Teachers’ Day
On 5 October the NUT held an evening reception at Hamilton House to celebrate World Teachers’ Day 2009.
NUT president Martin Reed and experts and practitioners from the UK and abroad came together to speak on the theme of Teachers: The Voice for Peace. The theme recognised the crucial role of teachers in developing young people who can contribute to and foster peaceful communities and societies, locally and globally.
Dennis Sinyolo, senior education coordinator at Education International, spoke about the increasing attacks on teachers in schools across the globe, largely motivated by ideological, ethnic and religious differences. Julie Greer, headteacher at Cherbourg primary school in Hampshire, shared her extensive experience of teaching peace through the UN Charter on the Rights of the Child, and talked about the importance of building children’s understanding of resilience, resolution and restoration. Telling stories of an Aids sufferer in Durban, South Africa, and the British National Party in Yorkshire, Audrey Osler, visiting professor at Leeds university, highlighted the importance of peace education so that people have a backdrop against which to assess their actions and the actions of others.
Martin stressed the importance of peace education in today’s world, where conflict, war, violence, terrorism and racism surround us, and where our actions are more interconnected than ever before. He recognised the innovative peace education work undertaken at some schools, but said that peace education still relied heavily on the drive of individual schools and teachers. We must strive for intentional, sustained and systematic education for peace, he insisted.
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