"At no point did the curriculum require me to learn about the role that Britain had in establishing and maintaining the transatlantic slave trade"Emma Turner

There is no denying that the British curriculum is sorely lacking in its coverage of the dark side of British history and, frequently, in its approach to other cultures in general. 

For my GCSEs, I learnt about the slave trade in the US and dutifully wrote essays on the decades-long struggles of the civil rights movement. At no point did the curriculum require me to learn about the role that Britain had in establishing and maintaining the transatlantic slave trade; we learnt about the sugar plantations, but the textbooks ‘helpfully’ skipped the part about British traders importing that sugar. It was also only this year – and from social media – that I learnt that the British government had been paying ‘compensation’ to enslavers until 2015.

"Growing up in an extremely monocultural pocket of the North East, my social life did nothing to provide more diverse perspectives. "

Growing up in an extremely monocultural pocket of the North East, my social life did nothing to provide more diverse perspectives. However, my small state school had one massive advantage: its teachers. Where the curriculum falls down, there are teachers who can bridge the gap between the classroom and reality. This gap should not exist in the first place, but I am immensely grateful to those who often go overlooked in these national debates, and who taught me things that the textbooks did not.

During my GCSEs, my History teacher used a ‘Politics, Philosophy, Religion and Economics’ lesson (a broad topic for only an hour per week...) to bring in news articles and engage us in political debates. Living far from Westminster’s attention, politics had often felt inaccessible - but these lessons taught me I had a voice. The articles covered anything from climate change to immigration to unemployment, and the group discussion helped expose us to - and teach us to question - different points of view. It is this mixture of empathy and critical thinking that should be present in all of our lessons, not just one hour a week. It should be present when we examine how colonialism is taught in our History lessons, or when we study predominantly white authors in English.

In another lesson that was not standard for most students, the same History teacher showed us a documentary on institutional racism in the British police force. Even to this day, when I hear the term ‘institutional racism’, that classroom still flashes before my eyes. It is an enormous privilege that I should learn about institutional racism in a classroom, as I could have easily never learnt about it at all, particularly in my almost all-white neighbourhood. 

Furthermore, my real interactions with people from other ethnic groups were largely limited to entirely optional projects. During my A Levels, my English teacher led a British Council project with a group of schools in Pakistan. As part of this, we wrote letters and exchanged recipes with students in Abottabad. To complement these exchanges, our teacher showed us photos and told us about the challenges these students faced in areas that we took for granted – tasks as seemingly simple as staying in school past the age of 11 to tasks as terrifying as resisting terrorism.

Maintaining the link between our school and the school in Pakistan was not easy, and the project’s success was tied to the perseverance of its leaders. The hostile (and xenophobic) reaction from some teachers and students meant that my teacher had to fight to justify her actions and to keep the exchange alive. Thankfully, her friendship with a teacher from Pakistan allowed the program to flourish beyond expectations, and we even spent half a lesson in a cross-continental video call with our partner school. 

"More could have and should have been done."

Of course, not every student had teachers like mine, and to have my education on racial inequality in the UK reduced to one documentary, and my interactions with people from vastly different backgrounds limited to an optional project, is worrisome to say the least. More could have and should have been done. 

Yet, earlier this month, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson claimed that Britain should be “proud” of its history, insisting that the curriculum was broad enough to allow schools to teach black histories. What happens when race (and racism) is just an option that schools are ‘allowed’ to teach? There is no obligation for teachers to go the extra mile, like some of mine did. We rely on the drive and resources of individual schools and teachers, while state schools remain chronically underfunded and teachers unjustly overworked.


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So, yes: I am grateful, because there are many teachers who are doing incredible work to teach us what the textbooks do not. But the task should not rely solely on individual initiative. Our standard curriculum is lacking, and we must urgently decolonise and diversify it.