1.+Intolerance+&+discrimination

Learning objectives
 * To be able to apply the abstract concept of 'racial discrimination' to real-life scenarios.
 * To identify when 'racial discrimination' has taken place in any given real-life situation.

Activities 1. Using the cards from this file [|Different degrees of racism - card sort.docx] get the students to work in pairs and arrange the cards in a continuum line. One end of the line should be for the most extreme example of racism and the other end of the line should be for a card that describes something that is not racism. Other cards will fall somewhere in the middle.

2. The pupils could then be encouraged to think about types of racial discrimination that may be encountered in different areas of life, for example: 3. Following on from the activity above, the pupils could be asked to come up with definitions of 'racial discrimination'. Having completed this general task, the pupils can consider the equal opportunities policies of the school to explore how the policy related to the examples of racial discrimination they had previously talked about.
 * in school;
 * in the words and/or pictures within books;
 * in advertising copy and/or images;
 * in social situations;
 * in people's everyday speech.

4. The pupils could then split into five groups: each one allocated a case-study example of racial discrimination. These incidents are: For all the examples, the teacher asked each group how the protagonists (or other people relevant to the example) should act. After feedback, the teacher emphasised that everyone has a right to be treated with respect, regardless of ethnic origin. The pupils were reminded that they have a responsibility to speak out against injustice: it was stressed that to remain silent could be seen as condoning unjust attitudes and behaviour.
 * a young Asian male who was told a job had been filled when it hadn't;
 * a young Irish girl who is the butt of Irish jokes;
 * racist comments being shouted by a crowd at a football match;
 * a female student facing the hostility of her parents to her boyfriend of mixed heritage;
 * a group of young African-Caribbean youths being blamed for vandalism.