In first lets be clear with these concepts. Prejudice is an opinion or attitude about a group of people that is based upon lack of understanding or incorrect information. Discrimination is when a person is treated unfairly because of their personal characteristic such as race , religion or special education need.Everyone who is working in school must be aware of ways that children and young people can experience prejudice and discrimination.Unfortunately these day everyone can suffer prejudice or discrimination based on any reason, for example skin colour, hair colour, religion, social background, culture, sexual orientation,gender, race, disability, accent or just how she/he looks like. Prejudice and labelling often lead to discrimination. Discrimination happens when children or young people do not recieve equality of opportunity. For example in school boys can be labelled as ‘naughty’, and girls ‘chatty’, older children in high school ‘cube’.
More and more times student from abroad can suffer discrimination because of their religion and sometimes just because their accent. My personal experience is feeling discrimination because of my accent.Staff need to be aware of ways that children and young people experience discrimination. It is not easy to spot but our responsibility to help children to understand differences between people.
