Has Decolonise the Curriculum Gone too Far

[Flaxmeadow]

Just watching a Sky news item where a question was asked about a complaint that in England/UK in some schools, USA civil rights is taught, but not the English Civil War/Wars of the Three Kingdoms

I don't think this should be happening. I think our own civil war should be taught and take precedence over US civil rights being taught, though agree that USA civil

rights is an important history topic too

AIBU?

Neolara I agree with you. When I did A-level History we were asked to choose a book and pick out 5 names of random historical figures. In a class of 13 we chose about 6 women between us - out of a possible 65

As my tutor pointed out, it is His Story

@caringcarer - I think this is right. British history as a continuous narrative is never going to be able to fit into GCSE. It should be covered throughout KS2 and 3 and link in to study of geographical, religious, social and literary themes.

When I was a primary school governor I was always trying to get the school to stop separating things under subject headings. As a CoE school it had regular visits to the parish church but there was no reason for these to constitute stand-alone RE lessons: they were an ideal opportunity for studying local and national history. Any Norman church that has survived to the 21st century is going to have a lot to tell about feudalism, plagues, civil wars, etc.

@Flaxmeadow Yes I do think teaching the history of the civil rights movement in the US should be taught over the ECW, but I believe other teachers in this thread have told you that it is being taught also?

FWIW I am a teacher, in another humanities subject. Not a historian. But the fact you think white privileged is a flawed concept says volumes about you. I don't think your argument is in good faith. Frankly, I think you're a racist.

@Flaxmeadow Yes I do think teaching the history of the civil rights movement in the US should be taught over the ECW,?

Why?

Every white person does benefit from colonialism.
FFS.
Thank you to the people who shared what you learn and don't learn in the British school system. My jaw is dropping. As an American, I grew up with history education that had a painful complexity to it. With both pride and shame. I know those two strands are woven together and always will be. We got rich from stealing land and labor from others. It was a nation set into motion by a colonial power, wonderful and terrible, and here we are. The UK has done its colonizing offshore. At home, it must have seemed like a peaceful, self-contained island. But you, too, got rich by stealing land and labor from others, too. Every place the sun set over the British Empire is a place where humans suffered to benefit Britain. If you don't learn about it, you dishonor those people, and your own history.

OP the English Civil War (ECW) of the 1640s and American Civil Rights (ACR) of the 1960s are just not comparable, they are two completely different events. The only commonality is the word 'civil'. The ECW is important for understanding the evolution of governance in the UK. The ACR is important for understanding contemporary resistance and popular forces for change, which I would have thought would appeal to you given your interest in working class histories. ACR has had a huge impact on British working class identity and campaigning.

A couple of PPs have mentioned there being a lack of focus on Black British Civil Rights, with only the US figures being taught. This is certainly true from my experiences. Furthermore, I think the distinction that exists in some people's mind's between black and white histories would be less marked if they could learn how black 20th century campaigning has benefitted the whole of society.

Decolonising the curriculum is not about removing certain subjects in favour of others. It is about teaching all subjects in a rounded manner. For example, when I was at school we learnt about WW2 in a completely Eurocentric way. The colonies were not mentioned at all. When the teacher spoke about 'we' she meant white British people and their European and US allies. We thought the only black troops were a handful of American GIs! Nothing could be further from the truth.

A Tudor specialist explained once how a focus away from the exploits of royalty towards the lived experiences of the working people would allow for much greater inclusion of minorities, of whom there were several thousand residing in England at the time.

When studying Marxism, include key figures from the British Black Power movements of the 1960s for whom Marxist theories were key, and who took a keen interest in working class liberation not just black liberation. Study the life and work of Claudia Jones who was instrumental in establishing the first Notting Hill Carnival to promote peace and unity in an area fractured by race riots. She, incidentally, is buried right next to Karl Marx!

This type of approach promotes a better sense of the convergence of our shared histories, and encourages a better sense of unity in current times, and is therefore extremely important in our society today.

@W00t it’s not so much about the topic but rather how they’re taught. Ancient Egypt for example can be taught in two completely different ways. One approach involves making lots of gold coloured crafts and learning about the mummification process. The other kind explores the rise and fall of the three ‘kingdoms’ (as well what happened in between) and the theological position (and the effect this had on Egyptian culture and politics) before, during and after Akhenaten reign.

It’s not about what topics they teach, it’s about how they teach them.

@Flaxmeadow I think @UmmH has put it far more eloquently than I could. I would say that I think it's bizarre you're continually banging the drum for the teaching of that particular aspect of British history, but I see you didn't refute my point that you're a racist so I'll put it down to that.

ACR has had a huge impact on British working class identity and campaigning.

Not sure about huge. English working class people would have been more likely to be hugely impacted by trade unionism at the time than ACR

But what has identity and politcial campaigning now have to do with the way history is taught and what subjects are taught anyway?

History is research about events and people in the past. Using primary and secondary sources and putting the evidence within the context of the times.

History as a subject taught is not there to influence modern campaigns or identity. If it is being used that way then that's wrong. For example if a very right wing history teacher started comparing past events to now and tried to use it as propaganda to influence young minds politically. That is wrong

I understand that modern politics and identity issues will use historical examples. There is nothing wrong with that. But that is not what the study of history is about. Your whole post is more about modern politics and civil or civic rights than history as a subject being taught.

A history teacher should keep current events and current context out of the lesson completely

"A history teacher should keep current events and current context out of the lesson completely."

So if a child asks me if the current issues related to Israel and Palestine relate in any way to WW2 I just say "I am not allowed to discuss current context"? Or if I'm asked if the BLM relates to the Jim Crow laws we studied that day? Or if a child asks me if immigration to Britain relates to a legacy of empire I just say: "Sorry kiddo. Get you to the Googles!" rather than give a carefully constructed, nuanced answer?

A history teacher should keep current events and current context out of the lesson completely

If this were true, then I as a historian would say BIN HISTORY entirely. It's nowt but stories if we are not to learn from it; if our present is not in any way to be shaped by it; if the cycles and repetitions of history are not relevant to the present; if the fact that everything we do becomes history the moment it is done - if none of that is important then ditch it from the curriculum altogether because with that attitude we're wasting our kids' time.

UmmH - exactly. History is our context. Even if you argue that you can't learn from the past (I'm not convinced personally that humans learn from past events as much as we might like to hope), and you argue it is the telling of "our nation's story", what's the point if it isn't to understand how our nation became what it is today?

I wish we WOULD learn from the past. We'd save a lot of bloodshed and reinvention of wheels

Agree about the lack of context and timelines, but there's also the lack of links between the 'topics'. Eg the way slaves were controlled in America has direct antecedents in the way vagrants were controlled in the UK in the Tudor period onwards. The English vagrancy laws specified flogging, branding and forced removal back to the home parish (ie tied up, on a cart), just for turning up in a place and then having no abode and source of income. What makes the links even more overt is that people convicted under vagrancy laws were even shipped to the plantations in Virginia, where they must have worked alongside black slaves. But if you study 'slavery' as an isolated topic, no wonder you might end up with the impression that all white people are complicit in the crimes.

Teaching has left me a bit jaded I'm afraid. We can't even stop ourselves reinventing the wheel with strategies in education so I'm unconvinced that we're going to learn about the big things like oppression and power! I'm totally with you in the hope though

So if a child asks me if the current issues related to Israel and Palestine relate in any way to WW2 I just say "I am not allowed to discuss current context"?

But then this would become a discussion, not just about the history of Israel and Palestine, but modern politics

Or if I'm asked if the BLM relates to the Jim Crow laws we studied that day?

Again. This is a different subject. BLM is current events. Jim Crow is ACR

Or if a child asks me if immigration to Britain relates to a legacy of empire I just say: "Sorry kiddo. Get you to the Googles!" rather than give a carefully constructed, nuanced answer

If you mean the Windrush era. Yes this is more relevant

I'm not saying these topics above are not connected, of course they are, or that they shouldn't be discussed, if course they should, but I'm not sure a history lesson is the right place to get into it all. Not least because the amount of time you have to discuss them.

I was taught ACR in the 1970s. I really enjoyed it as a topic. But the teacher only had so much time. He would have answered briefly I suppose and then moved on with the lesson.

The usefulness of history for me is to know how we got here and have some idea of the chronology and the broad sweep of that history.
I agree with Tom about teaching the English Civil War(s) as they are key to understanding present-day UK set-up. And the facts of Empire, its development and scope, should be taught. There's a lot to cover and like all history, it's a difficult subject to teach.

World wars and how and why they started and how they led to our present-day institutions and ideas such as the League of Nations, the post- second world war Council of Europe and its European Convention on Human Rights; the UN and the European Community, (now EU) and Israel. And socialism and the Russian and Chinese revolutions.

Britain itself is full of rich history in a broader sense. Development of law, liberty, religious and civic rights in tandem with revolutions and ideas happening elsewhere (France, USA), central government, local government, parishes, villages, churches, education, agriculture and industry, class, literacy, living conditions, marriage, property and voting rights, the plethora of religions and sects springing up at different times, are very interesting topics. So is Mining a rich subject and history in itself, rather than one single event of modern times, the miners' strike.

OP, history can never be taught as a set of discrete topics. Children will naturally make connections and this is what we aim to encourage: questioning and critical thinking which will then shape how they approach problems in their own lives. We are all constantly making analogies and interpreting information we take in according to our own experiences and understandings. It's not about feeding them political propaganda, but encouraging them to use and question a range of sources in order to comprehend how our understandings of history are constructed; and to be able to grasp information in nuanced, critical and balanced ways.

OP, I’m Indian and grew up learning in detail about colonialism, including major events such as the Jallianwala massacre and the famine in Bengal (both of which led to ma y, many Indian deaths). I was shocked when I came to the UK and nobody I spoke to here had even heard of these. In fact, most of my colleagues said they saw colonialism as a good thing.

I was also surprised when studying for the UK citizenship test that the study guide goes into great detail about the Normans and Tudors and the names of Henry VIII’s wives and so on, and there was literally just a line or two about the British Empire in the entire book.

I don’t think any country can really move forward and learn from the past unless it actually acknowledges it. Britain did a lot of harmful things during the Empire, but I’m not sure erasing it from history books is the answer really.

British schools could look a lot closer to home when studying civil rights in history (and their removal more specifically). British involvement in Ireland over so many centuries was a prime example of this and should be taught in now in Britain schools.

Haven't read the thread but no, it hasn't