{"id":45852,"date":"2018-11-02T14:03:37","date_gmt":"2018-11-02T21:03:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=45852"},"modified":"2018-11-02T14:03:37","modified_gmt":"2018-11-02T21:03:37","slug":"british-empire-is-still-being-whitewashed-by-the-school-curriculum-historian-on-why-this-must-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/british-empire-is-still-being-whitewashed-by-the-school-curriculum-historian-on-why-this-must-change\/","title":{"rendered":"British Empire is still being whitewashed by the school curriculum \u2013 historian on why this must change"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nJeremy Corbyn has recently proposed that British school children should be taught about the history of the realities of British imperialism and colonialism. This would include the history of people of colour as components of, and contributors to, the British nation-state \u2013 rather than simply as\u00a0enslaved victims of it<\/a>. As Corbyn rightly noted: \u201cBlack history is British history\u201d \u2013 and hence its study should be part of the national curriculum, not segregated in a single month each year.<\/p>\n

This is a welcome proposal because, as an academic who teaches modules on South Asian, imperial, colonial and global history, I face an uphill struggle at the start of each new academic year. Many of the undergraduates who greet me know virtually nothing about any of the subjects I teach.<\/p>\n

These are students who are educated through a school history curriculum that focuses almost entirely on English political and religious history \u2013 with bits of 20th-century European history thrown in. These are the bits with figures who can easily be cast as \u201cevil\u201d \u2013 Hitler or Stalin, for example. The students who I encounter know very little about Britain\u2019s past, let alone Britain\u2019s connections with the wider world or the history of the world outside Europe.<\/p>\n

They therefore know practically nothing about empire and its legacies \u2013 including in Britain. The histories they have studied and texts they have read were virtually all about or by white men, so they also know nothing about the history of women or the histories of people of colour, either. This includes those who have played important roles in shaping Britain\u2019s past.<\/p>\n

\u2018Black history is British history\u2019<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Corbyn\u2019s proposals would not only begin to redress the phenomenal gulf between academic history and the English school curriculum. They would also help students to see people of colour as historical agents. The proposals may also help to challenge the exclusivist and essentialist ways in which students are taught to view both\u00a0Britain and the wider world<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These proposals, however, have been met with the type of outrage many have come to expect from white, middle-aged, right-wing conservatives. According to the \u201cbullish\u201d\u00a0Brexiteer<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Conservative MP Tom Loughton<\/a>,\u00a0Corbyn\u2019s proposals<\/a>\u00a0demonstrated he was \u201cashamed\u201d of his own country \u2013 and was more interested in \u201ctalking down\u201d Britain rather than celebrating \u201cthe immense amount of good we have done in the world over many centuries\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cBad things\u201d, according to Loughton, undoubtedly happened in the name of empire, but Britain should be proud of its many legacies \u2013 including its role in abolishing the global slave trade. Not to be outdone, the equally bullish Brexiteer Jacob Rees Mogg trotted out Britain\u2019s abolition of the slave trade on\u00a0Nick Ferrari\u2019s LBC show<\/a>. He also\u00a0noted that while there were<\/a>\u00a0\u201cblots\u201d on Britain\u2019s colonial history it had some \u201cgood bits\u201d that were \u201creally wonderful\u201d.<\/p>\n

Denial about empire<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Such responses demonstrate a profound ignorance about British imperial and colonial history, particularly about the impact of empire on not only the colonised but also the colonisers as well. But it is a state of denial about empire that makes views like those of\u00a0Loughton and Rees Mogg possible<\/a>. To say that empire had \u201cgood bits\u201d is to deny what empire entailed \u2013 namely the conquest, subjugation and\u00a0exploitation of millions of people<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It is to erase the tremendous structural and symbolic violence that empire unleashed. To praise Britain\u2019s role in abolishing the slave trade is only possible if we deny the various forms of economic, political, social and cultural violence that enabled the perpetuation of such a trade \u2013 in Britain and its empire \u2013 as well as the ongoing legacies of such forms of violence. To view empire as having \u201cgood\u201d and \u201cbad\u201d bits also entails viewing the past in simplistic terms. And to claim students should only study the \u201cgood bits\u201d of the past also begs the question: whose \u201cgood bits\u201d, exactly?<\/p>\n

It also assumes that to teach schoolchildren the \u201cbad\u201d bits is to make them ashamed of their country\u2019s past.\u00a0Yet as Germany has demonstrated<\/a>, teaching children to interrogate difficult histories does not make them hate their country. It can serve, instead, to promote an \u201canti-nationalist nationalism\u201d, in which the very tenets of nationalist thinking \u2013 including viewing the past in nationalistic terms \u2013\u00a0are critiqued<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As my own students have told me, being able to interrogate difficult histories such as the history of empire, to explore the myriad connections between people in different parts of the planet, or to study the writings of Indian thinkers and actors has given them a much better understanding of themselves and their place in the world. Or, as one student put it, it has enabled them to \u201cgrow as a person\u201d. And that, surely, is what education is supposed to do.<\/p>\n

Author Bio:<\/strong> Deana Heath is a Senior Lecturer in Indian and Colonial History at the University of Liverpool<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeremy Corbyn has recently proposed that British school children should be taught about the history of the realities of British imperialism and colonialism. This would include the history of people of colour as components of, and contributors to, the British nation-state \u2013 rather than simply as\u00a0enslaved victims of it. As Corbyn rightly noted: \u201cBlack history […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":45853,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15645],"tags":[224480],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-45852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","tag-british-imperialism"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBritish Empire is still being whitewashed by the school curriculum \u2013 historian on why this must change - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/british-empire-is-still-being-whitewashed-by-the-school-curriculum-historian-on-why-this-must-change\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"British Empire is still being whitewashed by the school curriculum \u2013 historian on why this must change - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jeremy Corbyn has recently proposed that British school children should be taught about the history of the realities of British imperialism and colonialism. This would include the history of people of colour as components of, and contributors to, the British nation-state \u2013 rather than simply as\u00a0enslaved victims of it. 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