Decolonising the curriculum

And emotional maturity and amygdala.

If boys were as diligent as girls, they’d do a lot better at school. To make a massive generalisation.

But it is a huge issue with boys’ socialisation, not their ‘learning style’.

noblegiraffe and yet boys struggle far more? In terms of expulsions in the UK 81% of expulsions are male while 84% of black expulsions are male. No eugenics it comes down to boys being failed by the school system. If its not teaching methods why are 64% of university students female?

Boys and girls both learn best when there is explicit instruction, practised thoroughly and revisited regularly.

There are differences in socialised behaviour in the classroom, that’s not the same thing.

There are also differences in development stages, especially in primary, but again that’s not the same thing.

Are they up to date ? A lot of learning science is debunked almost as soon as it is declared.

Saying black people learn differently sounds dangerously close to eugenics to me...

noblegiraffe do you have anything to show that? I just googled it out of interest and can't find anything other than than countless studies to support that boys and girls learn differently.

I agree there needs to be more diversity in the curriculum in relation to race AND class (and of course the two are not mutually exclusive). 'Whataboutery' is not helpful here people just because one may be concerned about decolonising history, does not mean they can't be concerned about white working class boys too. From my experience when people study inequality in education they try to challenge all forms of inequality and look at all concerns.

OP you may be interested to know that there is some really good work being done in this area e.g

www.younghistoriansproject.org

Lots of brilliant research I know of being undertaken regarding white working class males.

The problem is getting the government to listen and act on these findings

Pretty sure that’s bollocks. Boys don’t learn differently to girls.

Rather than the subject matter can it be that black children learn differently to others. I have read a few articles recently that claim that the reason boys are failing in school is due to teaching methods being tailored towards girls so is it the same thing?

It's an interesting question as to whether this is an issue only for the humanities. As a mathmo myself I've always had the view that the maths and science side is not affected by these issues, but that view is not universal at all.

www.nationalreview.com/2017/10/math-racist-university-illinois-professor/

My initial reaction to this story was Bol**s, but I started to wonder about it. There are interesting books on African, Egyptian... maths which are worth folding in to discussions when appropriate. There was also that infamous "Men of Mathematics" poster which irked me every time I saw it.

One of the first books dd read in secondary was a Benjamin Zephaniah one. (The other book she read was Skellig. I think ds read one of his at school too called Terror Kid. (I remember they both enjoyed them (well as much as ds ever enjoys reading anything).

I used to think (still do) that our primary school reading resources were very geared towards white middle class kids. Horrid Henry for example - How would the majority of 1st gen immigrant kids in DC's primary school class respond to jokes about overdosing on TV junk food and tomato ketchup and The boringness of Books!? The default ethnicity of almost every children's book hero/heroine is white . . But I can also see that consciously including books about black boys and their issues is not necessarily the answer to disengagement (although books about Black Sporting (and other) Heroes might be!)
The immigrant families I know are at pains to acquire as much British " Cultural Capital" as they can. They already know more than they want to about issues immigrants face.

I don;t know piggy. Dh doesn't teach GCSE music now but I do have two children doing and done AQA syllabus and a couple of friends who are Heads of Music.

The two most popular specs seem to be AQA and Edexel. AQA have a choice of set works which they study in more detail. Clock Symphone is compulsory then there is a choice of various other genres (Beatles is popular but the other choices are Santana and Copeland. Howver for the listening paper students will be given extracts from and must be familiar with all four styesAreas of Study of Western Classical (oratorio, symphony, romantic piano & requiem, Popular Music (Broadway, rock, film/gaming & 90's-present pop), Traditional Music (Blues, African/Carribbean, Contemporary Latin & British folk) & Modern Western Music since 1910.

For Edexel students have to study eight four set works, one from each of the areas of study of Western Classical, Vocal Music, Stage & Screen & Fusion. The Fusion set works are Afro Celt Sound System & Esperanza Spalding.

GCSE History is a huge syllabus and the school chooses which 4 modules the pupils sit. DD did China 1900 to now, Russia 1918 to about 1980, American Civil Rights 1950s/1960 and Medicine from all around the world from Big Bang to now. The size and scope of the modules is ridiculous. Civil Rights was by far the easiest because it's more contained and relatively straightforward but it was the least favourite of the History teacher who loves Russia and China. She also would have preferred Germany post war to Medicine but it wasn't allowed by the exam board.
I think children need to be taught about the Peasant's Revolt and the part the plague played in freeing the peasants from the feudal system. But as a nation we were still pretty deferential until WW1, so maybe that's why history teachers find the whole 20the century so interesting.

Was some sort of clarification issued re World Music? I seem to remember reading something about music teacher protesting in some way about the reformed spec?

I am not sure everyone has such an intellectual boss!

You are arguing for cultural capital there, on the 'trad' end of the current debate. And many would agree that cultural capital is important for the disadvantaged. But I do think a proper, rigorous history education would examine more critically the part Britain played in slavery, for example.

In terms of the history GCSE it seems to me all the students I know are now locked in at GCSE and A Level to the Tudors, the world wars (especially 2) and the Cold War. There is a wider choice than that but it seems to be avoided, which I am sure is for myriad reasons.

Whilst i am sceptical that it would improve the grades of black kids, I worry it would then devalue their education once in the work place.

Studying the same things as previous generations gives us common ground for discussion at work and with family. My early hands up in my career came because I could discuss a little Shakespeare and Chaucer, the boss (very into both) preferred that chit chat to what my competitors could offer. On another couple of occasions the rhyme of the ancient mariner did the trick. Education is more than grades, it provides individuals with the tools to interact with each other for life.

Checkin out me history is ds's favourite poem!

For secondary history I think there is a lot of leeway in what topics teachers choose. The primary curriculum hasn't been in for very long and lots of teachers complained it was boring and irrelevant to that age.

Music (which is what I know more about) is of course only those who choose GCSE but what I would term world music is a fairly important part of the GCSE curriculum.

comefrom, that's an interesting list of what you say students study. In all my years of teaching, I have never taught students who have studied any of those things at secondary history, the Holocaust aside.

I went to school in Scotland and studied British history from very much a Scots angle.It is really interesting to compare my learning of historical events with the English angle. The biases are really obvious! My curriculum was very nationally proud and I did think it engendered a real sense of identity and heritage in us. Again, this is flawed as I learnt nothing outside of Europe and the US. But I did feel positively represented. If anything, I think the amount of US history in curricula is (or has been) a bit much. And this is often where the 'blacks as victims' broad brush comes from, too.

On a side note Checkin Out Me History by John Agard provides excellent commentary on the sidelining of black history and does more to teach positive black history in one poem than 15 years of prior education! It's one poem amongst 15 possibly studied , of course...

OP, I take it you meant more representation in the curriculum not repression?!

I honestly thought your shopping list was trying to make some kind of point!

On the subject of travellers, each council used to have a traveller community education advocate . I live in a big traveller county and met ours a few times. Her efforts to engage travellers in education were often a bit futile but there were some really interesting materials produced. The racism towards travellers in rife and shocking and sadly very overt. Occasional MN threads pop up which are so far from typical MN political sensibilities it's quite shocking (or it is unless you see how my local community respond to travellers on FB!) .

But , yes, OP, statistically, it is not black children who are hugely underachieving. It is a subgroup of boys within both the white and black communities.

Interesting thread. Thanks for tagging me noble. Efforts are made in the English curriculum but it is very rather token and actually in my opinion has done more accidentally to 'other' some racial groups.. I do find the history curriculum very narrow, even more so since Gove did his dabbling. It is astonishing what 15 years olds do and do not know. Anecdotally, girls are just more open minded than boys and all they years of SATs and GCSE papers being written with a 'boy focus' have not significantly increased boys' attainment or narrowed the gap. This has actually led to a problem , th9ugh, with positive female representations at GCSE which is pale, male. stale in lit and sees Language papers full of positive representations of young men and their typical interests.

I think - or hope- movements to encourage more people from BAME backgrounds into teaching will make a bigger difference in the end.

This is an award winning set of history teaching resources developed to assist in teaching history from a migration perspective. www.ourmigrationstory.org.uk/information-for-teachers.html

I think there is a dip in attainment for the second generation for all immigrants (remembering some Australian research I read years ago). The high expectations and work ethic for the first generation come from having the sort of parents with the get up and go to emigrate and make something of themselves in a new country.