Racism isn’t just a US problem; to fight it in the UK we need to change how it’s taught in schools
Back to Topic
Click to Print
Useful Websites
Glossary Term Selection
It’s time to move away from a ‘whitewashed’ curriculum, where black history is omitted or taught only in terms of colonialism and slavery.
By Rachel Cranshaw
The first time she was taught African history as anything other than a sidebar to European adventures, Lavinya Stennett was at university. Reflecting on how little she and her fellow students had been taught about black history at school – usually short references to the American civil rights leader Martin Luther King or the South African anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela – inspired her last year to set up The Black Curriculum, a campaign for black British history to be embedded into the UK curriculum rather than limited to Black History Month (if that). The proposal includes four modules: art history; migration; politics and the legal system; and land and the environment.
“[University] was the first time I had studied African history that incorporated a non-Eurocentric perspective,” she told me, speaking at the end of a lon...
Want to see the rest of this article?
Would you like to see the rest of this article and all the other benefits that Issues Online can provide with?
- Useful related articles
- Video and multimedia references
- Statistical information and reference material
- Glossary of terms
- Key Facts and figures
- Related assignments
- Resource material and websites
