No room for hate
How classrooms can counter hate speech in the age of social media
I have completed my Masters in Paediatric Dentistry but, since Indian degrees aren’t recognised abroad, should I consider a doctorate? Abdul he denition of the word ‘classroom’ has evolved signicantly over the last few years. Today’s classroom could be in a posh private school, an underfunded government college, an overcrowded coaching class, or even in the comfort of home. Wherever it is, a classroom must steer clear of divisive issues and forge a new path toward nation-building. However, ‘steer clear” should not mean the suppression of discussion. Instead, it should be about exploring the broader concepts so that the students may be resourceful enough to decide for themselves.
Hate speech is clearly one such area where a classroom needs to be proactive enough to dispel misconceptions, especially those going easily viral in the ongoing digital age. With total access to social media, many popular, but largely incorrect, themes enter mainstream thinking. Classrooms need to be bold enough to take on these misconceptions and dismantle them, using not emotion alone but indeed hard data. As a teacher, one of the areas in which I lay maximum emphasis is the source of information. Whatever a student’s views on a topic, they must be backed by reliable
Tdata from some reputable or o¦cial source. Unfortunately, youngsters and adults often fall for crowdpleasing mentions on social media.
While a lot of misinformation exists across social media outlets, none is as deadly as those that promote hate speech. Such hate speech can be categorised as derogatory and often downright inaccurate remarks about any religious, linguistic, tribal, caste, or even gender group. Sometimes, it could be a combination of these or intersecting points. A lot of potential hate can be countered by providing effective examples of people who ‘look like us’ and have done well abroad. These could be examples of people like Ajay Banga, Sundar Pichai, or Satya Nadella, who have all risen to the top due to diversity in cultures being embraced. This, in a way, forces us to look around us and embrace diversity of opinion, ethnicity, religion, class around us as well.
Tackle ignorance
An unfortunate method that a lot of the educated class often takes to solve some of the issues around us is simply not talking about it, as if ignorance will lead to any inherent hate disappearing altogether. On the contrary, ignorance leads to a lack of empathy and a failure to recognise one’s privilege.
The best example of this in our society is caste. In many educated families, this is barely spoken of as if the non-mention will remove the concept altogether. That is where classrooms come into the picture. Teachers need to be bold enough to discuss caste in a way that students come to know of it, yet choose not to discriminate.
A skill that teachers need to learn at work constantly is diplomacy. Many of these complex topics must be navigated covering all facts and gures yet ensuring that stakeholders do not take o¤ence. Stakeholders could be the pupils, their parents, the school authorities, and society in general.
Fortunately, despite much provocation on social media, the Indian youth is still essentially an advocate of peace. Youngsters are far more likely to engage with Taylor Swift or Virat Kohli than with any rabble-rousing hate preacher. Classrooms must leverage this inherent goodness by providing the students guidance on what constitutes appropriate content to engage versus what does not.