History wars

In recent years, calls to ‘decolonise education’ have gained in popularity. From campaigns such as ‘Why is my curriculum white?’ to the renaming of buildings, educational establishments across the country are undertaking wide-ranging audits in a reckoning with Europe’s colonial past.

While universities have long been battling over campaigns like Rhodes Must Fall in Oxford, schools are now in the firing line. More than 30 have embarked on an anti-slave-trade makeover, with girls’ private schools in Bristol to rural primary schools in East Yorkshire changing their names. But how will this new focus on the impact of colonialism affect the teaching of history, the curriculum and the wider educational environment?

Supporters of moves to change the way students engage with history argue that calls to decolonise or diversify education are about opening students up to different perspectives. They argue that the English canon, for example, was created in a context in which female or minority voices were valued less, and that the British elite has had a monopoly on deciding what version of history gets told. More hardline critics argue that teaching European history, and the celebration of ‘dead white men’, provides a foundation for white supremacy and racism.

While supporters of a revamp of ‘pale, male and stale’ institutions claim they are backed up by pressure from students, critics argue that many of the changes seem pre-emptive. Monuments to figures like Clive, Aske, Drake and Colston have been removed. But even those whose relationship to the slave trade is complicated – like William Gladstone and Isaac Newton – have had their names stripped from public buildings. Some educators have raised concerns about the need to preserve a sense of the past – with all its complexity and contradiction – rather than changing it to appease modern sensitivities.

Those who disagree with moves to retroactively change the way we look at history argue that education should be grounded in knowledge and pedagogy and that it should have autonomy from political determinations. The universal values found in Shakespeare, Mozart and Kant, they argue, liberate students from a worldview that would be otherwise entrenched according to personal background.

Others argue that there is flexibility to teach history from a variety of perspectives. Many academics point to the fact that history education was often seen as a means of explaining away empire – and that while learning about important historical events or people is one thing, political context is worth challenging. On a more practical note, many teachers complain that the current curriculum leaves no space for the kind of nuanced and imaginative discussions needed to engage modern students with the past.

How should we decide what works of literature, art and history form the ‘canon’ in our curricula, and which historical figures should we choose to adorn our establishment buildings? Are today’s students really too sensitive to live and learn alongside Britain’s past, to appreciate that today’s moral standards are different to those of our ancestors? And how big is the issue of calls for decolonisation? Is the idea that the school or university curriculum should rely on codified knowledge of the past simply a desire to maintain the status quo?