The UK has emerged as an influential global player in developing policy to counter violent extremism, and therefore it is important to consider the emerging evidence about the impact of this policy in education. The Prevent duty came into force in the UK in 2015, placing a legal responsibility on schools and teachers to implement anti‐terrorist legislation and prevent young people from being drawn into extremism or radicalisation. This article reviews all of the material based on empirical studies in England involving school teachers and students published between 2015 (when the duty was introduced) and the beginning of 2019 (27 articles and reports in total), to consider the impact of the policy on schools. The key themes emerging from our analysis of this evidence base are related to (1) the ways the policy is interpreted within Islamophobic discourses, (2) the emergence of Britishness as a key feature of fundamental British values and (3) the implications of framing Prevent as a safeguarding issue. We argue that the evidence gives support to those who have been critical of the Prevent duty in schools, and that it seems to be generating a number of unintended and negative side‐effects. However, the evidence also illustrates how teachers have agency in relation to the policy, and may thus be able to enact the policy in ways which reduce some of the most harmful effects.

This paper explores the possibility of a hitherto undiscovered process within brain genes which could be responsible for the making of mental processes. The main proposition of this paper is that a brain gene, in addition to the protein template, might also contain a nonbiological mental template (mental gene) made of preatomic (which also excludes the known heavier constituent particles of the atom) light quantum energy forms, which programmes the brain cells to produce mental processes. Mental genes were added to the human brain genes when the need for a faster and more complex mental system arose both for integrating the growing perceptual, observation, problem solving and execution processes and for planning in terms of the body and its growing needs and not the genes. Apart from the proposed involvement of nonbiological processes in the formation and functioning of mental processes, we are also speculating their involvement, in tandem with the biological processes, in the genetic functioning related to the body. To give some examples, the overall design of the biological body contained in the gene could be existing in terms of a nonbiological process; they could be involved in the process of genetic mutations, signaling processes of non-coding RNA, which regulate protein synthesis and epigenetic inheritance systems in cells. In fact in our view it was probably a nonbiological (pre-atomic light quantum energy process) process which combined with the complex pre-gene organic molecule mix to give birth to the gene itself as a stable process which then went on to make the initial stable cellular structures in evolution.

This paper aims to explore in detail the formation and functioning of the manylayered contemporary human mind by mental genes and the complex and elaborate problems the human mind has created both within and outside of itself due to the logic of its genetic formation. The existing mind of an individual is essentially an unconsciously formed gene-based mental complex whose formation and functioning is largely controlled and dominated by a two-way connection between his mental genes and mental processes. There seem to be two main varieties of mental templates or mental genes in human beings and numerous specific sub-types within each variety. One, which contain the template for lower order mental functions (habits, temperament, basic emotional positions, motivations and agendas, and self-centered intelligence) which we share with animals and other living things. The other which do not contain the template for a specific function but only the template for a higher order mental capability (say of complex reasoning and intellectual processing, and developed sensitivities) unique to human beings and which is concretized through a highly developed and ongoing learning process. The existing gene-based mind of man is an evolved product of the dynamic and interconnected functioning of all the varieties and sub-varieties of mental genes and brain processes, in a many-sided interaction with the environment. In addition, in our view our mental processes and their experiences have a communication process in place with our mental genes (at the nonverbal and unaware level) and the capability to modify them. The primary motivation behind our inquiry is to incrementally replace the existing unintelligent mental software and programme in our mental genes, with an intelligent process/system (for the making of mental processes) not controlled by the genes but by our advanced intellectual and emotional processes so that we can intelligently cope with and find long-term solutions to our problems.

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