Like many of you, I watched police bodycam footage released last week of 18-year-old student Henry Nowak being handcuffed and arrested as he lay dying from stab wounds inflicted by an attacker who falsely claimed to have been racially abused.
I am sure that you will have felt the same as me – sickened, horrified and, above all, deeply saddened by the death of this young man and the scarcely imaginable sense of loss felt by his family.
You will also have seen the allegations made by Reform UK leader Nigel Farage of “two-tier policing” and his utterly irresponsible suggestion that people should respond with “pure cold rage”.
And you will have seen how protests in Southampton turned into violent disorder in which 11 police officers and a police dog were injured.
I am sure that many of us share the sense that we are increasingly witnessing the fracturing of a society which felt – not too many years ago – as though it was heading towards a more harmonious future.
There are clearly serious questions which must be answered about exactly how a young man who lay dying came to be treated as an offender rather than the victim.
But the way in which this issue has been seized upon to stoke division follows an all-too-familiar pattern.
The complexities of the tragic events in Israel and Palestine over the past three years have sometimes felt reduced to a shouting match in our country between people with deeply polarised views.
Incidents of both antisemitic and anti-Muslim hatred are reported to have increased.
And last summer we saw an obnoxious campaign to hoist the Union Flag and St George’s Cross from lampposts under the claim that this was merely a statement of patriotism. I am sure it will not have felt so benign to people from ethnic minorities who suddenly felt unsafe in their communities.
In making these points, I am aware that people on the extremes of these debates will see such sentiments as evidence of the type of liberal-thinking they despise.
But I think, more than ever, that we need to stand up for that thinking.
In our schools and colleges, we promote the “fundamental British values” of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance for those with different faiths and beliefs.
I am not overkeen on the phrase “British” values as I don’t think they are distinctly British. They’re the values to which any civilised society should aspire.
And we also teach other important things which help children and young people to navigate these divisive times. We encourage them to think critically – not just accepting the splenetic nonsense they may read on social media, but to question facts and seek other viewpoints.
We promote respectful discussion, where people can hold different views without tearing each other apart.
We introduce them to a world of knowledge across the arts, the humanities, the sciences, which help to root their thinking in the learning which underpins rational discussion.
And we teach them to look beyond the differences in ethnicity and religious faith and to treat one another as human beings, as friends.
Indeed, schools and colleges are the places where people come together. They are the places which champion cohesion. We should be very proud of that fact.
I don’t pretend that any of this is easy, nor that education alone can solve the divisions in our society. But I do think that our young people have never needed us more than they do right now. We have to be the antidote to the age of rage.
- Pepe Di’Iasio is the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders. Read his previous articles for SecEd via www.sec-ed.co.uk/authors/pepe-di-iasio