Combating racism in primary education

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Racism and all forms of aggression in schools are a growing concern. In order to reduce and mitigate the wave of aggression and hate speech, professionals from Italy, Greece, Portugal and Norway have created, with the support of the European Union’s Erasmus+ Program, a research and training program called “Applying behavior analysis to prevent and combat racism in elementary school”.

It started in September 2019 and until August 2022 will be coordinated by the Department of Psychology at Panteion University, Athens – with 5 partners: OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway, the Greek Ministry of Education delegation from the region of Attica, Greece and 3 NGOs, OXFAM from Italy, Action Aid Hellas from Greece and 4Change from Portugal.

The project is a response to the racism-based violence that remains common in most EU member states – in various forms: verbal abuse, discrimination, graffiti, harassment, vandalism, physical assault or even murder. According to the FRA (2019), ethnic and religious minorities across the EU continue to face racism, discrimination, physical and verbal violence and exclusion despite the existence of legal instruments that offer protection against racism and other forms of intolerance.

According to the evidence, this situation is reflected in education and racism in classrooms is a persistent problem. Existing interventions to prevent and combat racism in schools are based on punishment, which is ineffective according to the behavioral analysis applied. Teachers are confronted with racism in the classroom without having the necessary knowledge and experience to deal effectively with these incidents.

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