Should banter be banned in schools?

Along with ‘political correctness gone mad’ one all-to-often-heard phrase is ‘you can’t say anything nowadays’. When and how can banter give risk to a legal claim, and what should schools do to police that risk? 

To someone initiating it, ‘banter’, or ‘chaff’ as the Victorians called it, consists of insults meant to show that we are all part of the gang. However, it can be received in a very different way by people when such remarks act as a bitter reminder of difference; of childhood insults; of friction, and worse, in public places and of malicious or irresponsible comments by populist politicians and the popular press. It is for that reason that the definition of racial harassment is  ‘unwanted conduct related to race which has the purpose or effect of violating an individual's dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for that individual.’

Something may be meant in fun but it may have a devastating effect. The crucial point is legal action can be taken no matter what the intent of the harasser was.

Confronted with a culture of banter, school leaders have two duties. As employers they must protect members of staff in an increasingly diverse workforce, and protect the institution from potential legal claims. But they also must be seeking to create a community which models behaviour that does not violate any individual's dignity or create an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. 

Training, with carefully developed scenarios and honest discussion, can help to create a culture of mutual respect, even under pressure, where all staff are aware of the possible damage that reckless banter can cause among the staff body itself and even more so among the school’s young people, without imposing an entirely unrealistic regime which may cause resentment and will probably fail to achieve its intentions.