For requesting to be transferred to another discussion group because unable to understand the Urdu being spoken in the one in which she had been placed, all its others members being Asian and, with one exception, unable to speak English, a fourteen year old pupil at a school in Worsely, Greater Manchester, was, according to a report in the Daily Mail, placed under arrest and held in a police cell for several hours, after being photographed and finger-printed by the police, who then released her without charge.
Given the incident took place during a GCSE science class, the only consolation to be gained from this sorry incident lies in the knowledge that the girl had not missed much by being unable to participate in the class discussion. The new syllabus for science introduced last month has been comprehensively rubbished by experts as lacking in substance.
Still, this kind of over-the-top reaction by school and police should give us all cause for concern. However indelicately the girl may have made her request, and there is no reason to think it was, and whatever she may later have said to other teachers about the matter, to adopt such a heavy-handed approach to incidents of this kind is not, I repeat NOT, the way in which the cause of better race relations will be advanced in this country.
The local education authority responsible for the school in question was last year involved in the unsuccessful prosecution of a ten-year old pupil for having likened several fellow Asian pupils to Bin Laden and for calling them ‘Pakis’ during a playground tiff.
Haven’t the police and CPS got any better way of using their time and resources than by cracking down on children in this way? Apparently not, given that last week Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair announced that Muslims who had publicly called for the Pope's assassination for insulting Mohammed were not guilty of any offence and would not face prosecution.