How U.S. Schools Can Avoid Britain’s Problems with Radicalization Screening

10.11.15

How U.S. Schools Can Avoid Britain’s Problems with Radicalization Screening: [theintercept.com] In a statement issued yesterday, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), one of the organizations that had been invited to screen the program last month, praised its suspension, saying that it had “improperly characterized American Muslims as a suspect community,” and would have contributed to “bullying, bias, and religious profiling” of Muslim students if implemented in the classroom.

The idea of profiling students and young people as possible future extremists is not new. This February, The Intercept published internal government documents revealing that the National Counterterrorism Center developed questionnaires, described in a May 2014 document, to allow teachers and social service workers to rate the extent to which children, families, or entire communities might be at risk for “radicalization.”