Is any one watching Them school the school that tried to end racism’ C4?

[Carlottacoffee]

I’m really enjoying it and it’s well worth a watch. I’m recording it for dd (7) to watch tomorrow. Couple of heartbreaking scenes where children where struggling with their feelings or realisations and that some children already at odds with their identity.

I wish we had done something like this at school, the kids are fantastic for taking part

I thought it was terrible!! It actually got me really cross and has really annoyed me.

There is obviously lots of systemic racism within our society, but we live in a 97% white country.
Highlighting the differences and negative experiences (Which all seemed very one way) just seemed to increase the divide. Plus that test was daft and would be very easy to doctor second results now they know what the adults desired outcome was.

We should be educating our children on everything all races, genders etc have achieved not highlighting their disadvantages, (if you tell a child they are something they are much more likely to live to that) for example self fulfilling prophecy theory. However if you show them everything they are worth and can do, and show prejudice as being a past problem they can grow up assuming that they can achieve xyz regardless of what they look like.

I have found this when teaching science to my daughters. The curriculum teaches more men of note than women (simply because historically that’s whose opinion mattered most). There’s no shame in that, it’s our history they didn’t know better as we do now. Our future is to show how both sexes and different races tackled different subjects so that our children grow up without prejudice and with the knowledge that the past was wrong and we have no need to repeat that.

@Rosehip345 where did you get that statistic from? The most recent census had 86% of the population identifying as white, and that is nearly ten years out of date now. The last few census have seen the white population dropping by about 4% each decade so I would expect it to be about 82% if one is done next year when it's due.

The 2011 census does show that only 3.3%of the population identified as black - is that where you got the 97% from? This is why it irritated me that the Asian and mixed race students were "lumped in" with the black ones and had to ask themselves to be separated -really, statistically people from an Asian and mixed race backgrounds significantly outnumber black people in the UK so it's interesting that out defaults is always "BaME"

I read an interview with the headmaster who said that this was one of the issues with the experiment they hadn't anticipated. Another was that a lot of their white students who weren't British born were also disadvantaged by many of the measures set by the race questions (the running race I mean!) E.g. people from eastern Europe having to take steps back for questions like "Do your parents speak English as a first langauge" "have you had a negative experience with the police" etc.

Ah google 🤦‍♀️ Just reread it the 3% is black of that 14%

Totally agree with regards to the other races

Yes newyear they had to change the questions in the running race from the ones you see in the famous US video (more about one parent familes and poverty) as a lot of those would apply to the white working class here and so it wouldn't show what they wanted as well as the questions they asked.

I am going to make dd watch it too so they we can have a good discussion about it. They could have compared it to her school where there are only a handful of white children in each class.

I have often thought before that I'm glad that my daughter goes to a very mixed school. Different races, and religions.
I do think it makes a difference.