More student monitoring? Tutors can't be expected to babysit too

An interesting article popped up on the BBC Politics News page last week with the headline “Radicalisation review ‘to urge more student monitoring’” which suggests plans for university and college lecturers to monitor students, especially young men who may fall vulnerable to recruitment tactics by extremists.

I printed off the article and went through it with my trusty tiny highlighter pen and marked up the bits I considered relevant and arguable (student habits die hard) and by the time I’d finished the page was almost completely pink!

The first thing which struck me was the article kept talking about some students being particularly ‘vulnerable’ to predation by these extremists and I thought, hang on, we ARE talking about university age adults here aren’t we? Not five-year-olds being tempted by a stranger in the park with sweets? Call me stupid (hey, I didn’t mean literally!) but is there really a problem with young ‘uns being ‘poached’ by extremists? Maybe I’m just a bit naive; when I was at school I was never offered a cigarette from anyone, never offered drugs, never asked to hang about on street corners and drink cheap alcohol; I somehow managed to completely avoid the groups who did stuff like that so as far as I was concerned it didn’t really happen so is it really that big a problem? Did I just walk round with blinkers on at school?

But then I was quite strong willed and wouldn’t have succumbed to peer pressure anyway, I don’t suppose everyone is like that so there’s bound to be some baa baa sheep among us who’ll just follow the crowd so the need for ‘monitoring’ could be a real issue, although I think this article formalised it rather extremely.

Another thing which struck a nerve with me was the mention of having to monitor any student who is “consistently arguing that attacks on civilians are justified”. Hang on a cotton picking minute there... just because someone’s writing an essay which argues for a controversial or just plain inhumane point doesn’t mean the author necessarily agrees with it. I was a Philosophy student for over two years and more often than not had to argue a point I didn’t agree with in the slightest; granted it’s not the easiest thing to do at first, but after writing dozens of essays you become quite adept at looking at things from a controversial angle. It’s called being the devil’s advocate. I quite enjoy it; it sparks debate. Although it never occurred to me that anyone might think I was becoming an extremist...

The notion of having a uni/college lecturer monitoring students for this sort of threat is ridiculous; it’s like saying these ‘kids’ need babysitting. A doctor friend of mine finished his PhD and began working as a lecturer still as a baby-faced mid-20-something; barely a few years older than some of the students he’d be monitoring if this proposal were acted upon. It’s utterly absurd to expect him to ‘look after’ these students and what’s more, if the system failed and someone did slip into the poacher’s net, would he be held accountable? It’s just another responsibility which shouldn’t be put on the shoulders of teachers and lecturers. We’re talking about students who are old enough to live away from home, smoke, drink, get married, have babies et al, they don’t need a lecturer shadowing their movements just in case they’re weak minded enough to be poached by extremists. They’re big boys and girls; they can look after themselves, and if they can’t, well...  that’s not up to a lecturer who only sees them a couple of times a week to sort out now is it!