Decolonising the curriculum

[Mumknowsbest101]

Hi, I just want your thoughts on the subject as I feel that if there were more diverse material included that this could help the underachievers especially black children maybe as I’ve seen a lot of research done where Eurocentric education does not necessarily help black children achieve?

[doadeer]

Decolonising the curriculum shouldn't be done to help underachieving black pupils it should be done to help ALL pupils understand exploit, prejudice, racism, privilege, wealth, poverty, equality, nationhood etc etc! It's even more important white working class boys understand this!

[noblegiraffe]

TedX talk on decolonising the curriculum here: theteacherist.com/2019/07/14/tedxnorwiched-decolonise-the-curriculum/

I guess all teachers should think about how to highlight the achievements of non-white cultures in their subject areas. This is quite easy in maths!

[Piggywaspushed]

Bloody Gove rather hamstrung us on that one at GCSE.

[noblegiraffe]

It’s not on the curriculum at all in maths, but I do like going off on a tangent. E.g. the reason we have 60 minutes in an hour instead of 100 is that the Babylonians used a base 60 counting system, it’s also the reason that there are 360 degrees in a circle.
Then I get them to guess which area of the world the Babylonians came from.

[Piggywaspushed]

Oh, that is very interesting!

[noblegiraffe]

Edexcel have just added some more diverse texts to their syllabus. qualifications.pearson.com/en/qualifications/edexcel-gcses/english-literature-2015/teaching-support/new-diverse-texts.html

[Piggywaspushed]

Good for them : sadly, I think it won't have much impact as AQA has such a stranglehold. Also, other text choices dominate and teachers will stick to them. Surprised at Coram Boy - not a very GCSE text.

Off to look up the Empress book.

[Teddybear45]

But black kids don’t underachieve as a whole. It’s black kids whose parents are from certain immigrant backgrounds (usually Caribbean) that do. Black kids from African backgrounds tend to be just as focussed on academics and school as brown kids from Afro-Indian backgrounds. It’s just that there isn’t much published research yet about the difference.

[Teacakeandalatte]

I agree having more black and other ethnic teachers would help. My dd is one of only 3 girls in her engineering class but they have a female teacher and that makes her feel it is a good subject for girls who enjoy it, and stops any sexist comments from the boys.

[professionalnomad]

Another interesting position to consider if who id delivering the curriculum.

For example, in your education (school through university) how many teachers of colour did you have? And how many of those were women?

Also, when I was taught history at school there was zero mention of empire-building. Is there now?

[professionalnomad]

Sorry for the typos:

I meant to say Another interesting position to consider is who is delivering the curriculum.

[Piggywaspushed]

The answer is none for me, although the population where I grew up was almost exclusively white. It is of greater concern that this remains more or less the same in all areas of the UK ( I think there are four BAME staff members at my large comp) There are significant movements now looking at increasing BAME representation in teaching and especially in leadership. Alongside this question is your question about women, who are over represented in primary teaching by a huge degree and to a lesser degree in secondary but massively under represented in leadership roles.
I think I was taught more about imperialism at school than students are now. My education featured a lot of 17th to 19th century British and European history. This period seems to have gone out of fashion. I was educated in Scotland, mind, so my experience may not be very representative.

[professionalnomad]

I think it's really important to have teachers representing the diversity of the students they teach. It is very impactful to have someone in your life that looks, talks and probably thinks similar to you.

I was also educated in Scotland but my school did GCSEs. Can safely say that neither curriculum talked about colonialism at all. Which is probably why people still get asked, 'but where are you REALLY from' all the time (such as myself).

[Piggywaspushed]

Thanks to noble, I have just read The Empress which is a good play. Unfortunately , I can't see it challenging the canonical force of JB Priestley.

The added prose texts are good , if a little simple, so I worry, actually that the multi cultural texts (Zephaniah and Jamila Gavin) will backfire by becoming 'bottom set texts'. But it's a good step from Edexcel notwithstanding.

[YouJustDoYou]

"Maybe Chinese children are thriving as they aren’t represented in the media as ‘thugs’ or in academia as slaves..."

I think the usual explanation is a family and cultural background with extremely high expectations regarding education and aspirations

^^This.

Also, from a research project from Lambeth LA - "The reasons for the underachievement of Black Caribbean pupils are wide‐ranging and complex. ‘Withineducation literature recently four main school ‐related factors have emerged: stereotyping; teachers’ low expectations; exclusions and headteachers’ poor leadership on equality issues. All of these can perpetuate low attainment and disengagement from learning by Black Caribbean students’ (Demie 2003:243). Other
researchers also noted that the lack of adequate support to schools from parents, economic deprivation, poor housing and home circumstances (Rampton 181, Swann 1985); teachers low expectations by entering for lower or foundation tier or ability groupings (Gillborn and Youdell 2000, Strand 2012), institutional racism and the failure of the national curriculum to reflect adequately the needs of a diverse and multi ethnic society (MacPherson 1999, Gillborn 2000); lack of targeted support and negative peer pressure
(Demie 2003, GLA, 2004).
Overall the body of available research suggests a worrying picture of a failure to address the underachievement of at least three generations of Black Caribbean pupils in British schools. There is an
urgent need to increase our understanding of the factors which lie behind this underachievement"

There are far more factors into why as a group they may be underachieving, and it;s not just down to not being able to engage with the NC. I can imagine it would help - but without addressing all the other factors, nothing much is going to be able to change without radical intervention/changing of both the curriculum, atitudes, and innate views.

[YouJustDoYou]

^^Obviously this doesn't address black students as a whole, but the lowest achieving set which according to the same report are Black CArribean students. African students were actually on par with white british by 2014.

[SweetJasmine17]

Decolonisation isn't going to work. By the time a person gets to high school it's too late, really. Their attitude to learning is already ingrained.

•If your parents never read to you, talked to you, gave you books, never went on any activities, never cared, hen why would you?

•There is a glaring difference between performance of Africans and Caribbean people, and it's due to culture. Africans promote academic achievement, Caribbean people prioritise sport

•the impact of peers is also very important. Nobody wants to be ostracised or bullied for being smart, they want to fit in and be cool. This mostly applies to people from working class backgrounds regardless of race.

I went to a very diverse secondary school in an affluent area but most students were from more deprived parts of the borough.

[Piggywaspushed]

None of the above generalisations mean schools and education have no responsibility!

See post above mentioning institutional racism !

[SweetJasmine17]

There's a reason I've managed to do well ( speaking as a biracial person here) and others don't. There's obviously variation within groups and some black kids from different backgrounds do better than others.

Nobody is going to sit here and talk about everything single individual block person in the UK. For me,I'm going by what I see daily as a young person in a diverse part of London

I forgot to add working class people of all races are more likely to be involved in gang culture(this doesn't mean literally in a gang, just a certain mentality) and this directly contradicts doing well at school.