Britain’s schools don’t need a ‘black curriculum’

The campaign to diversify history teaching is not just misguided, it risks further stoking up racial tensions

Should we be spending more time teaching black history in schools? A growing movement called The Black Curriculum – whose aims have been backed by, among others, Lib Dem education spokesman Layla Moran – certainly thinks so.

As ever with a sensitive issue that has been adopted by the Left, dissenting from the politically correct line has not been easy. Last week I was yelled over and shut down on ITV’S Good Morning Britain for disagreeing with their stance. In that context, I was pleased to see schools minister Nick Gibb showing the bravery to oppose the idea of a “black curriculum”, a term that is troubling in itself.

How do we define “black history”? Is the history of Britain not our history, too? I resent the implication that black people have a separate, segregated history and that “British” history belongs solely to white people. This campaign not only raises more questions than it answers – it comes across as fundamentally racist.

Mr Gibb was correct when he pointed out that the curriculum is “broad and balanced” and “can also include the role of the countries of the former British Empire in both World Wars, and the part black and minority ethnic people have played in shaping the UK in the 20th century”.

History is an essential subject at school. We want young people to understand their past: doing so helps them to develop critical thinking and the ability to reach judgments based on evidence they’ve weighed up and arguments they’ve sifted.

What we as teachers do not, and must never do, is present a narrative, in one direction or another. History isn’t there for us to like or dislike; it just is. And yet some people are desperate to use history as a political tool. Fiddling around with the curriculum – which is designed by subject experts to maximise all our teaching time – based on current events and political issues of the day is a very dangerous game to play.

What’s more, activists campaigning for more black history on the curriculum are often arguing from an uninformed position. It’s easy to provide anecdotes about what we remember being taught when we were children ourselves; but how much research has been done on what is currently being taught in history lessons in schools? I’d suggest not a lot, based on the arguments I’ve seen.

We already teach about the British Empire, colonialism, the

Commonwealth, immigration to and from Britain over the ages, the diversity of European migrants and early African and Asian migrants – and that’s just a few of the modules currently available.

As Mr Gibb pointed out, we have a number of influential black people on the curriculum, including, but by no means limited to, figures such as Rosa Parks and Mary Seacole. This isn’t exclusive to GCSE, either. These are things we teach right through from Key Stage 1, at five years of age.

I’d like to know what precisely these activists think is missing from the curriculum, and what they’d remove to replace it. This is a zero-sum game. We have a limited amount of time in the classroom to pass on knowledge; would these campaigners be happy removing the Tudors or the Stuarts in favour of more black figures? That would hardly be an accurate representation of British history.

What is more important than this social justice warrior campaign is that we teach topics like parliamentary democracy, which we helped spread throughout the world. We need to ensure we keep teaching about prominent Brits who shaped our nation and the globe, such as Tim Berners-lee, creator of the World Wide Web. These are people who will inspire a new generation of young British students of every skin colour.

What’s actually happening here is a further attempt to cause division and stoke up racial tensions. I’m not sure this campaign has much to do with young people – who tend not to see their race as their sole identity. This is more about addressing the insecurities of a particular sub-section of adults stuck in a victimhood mentality.

The idea that if young black people see more black people in their history books, it will somehow improve their self-esteem is totally wrong. All the evidence seems to demonstrate the opposite, that by separating the curriculum into black and white the campaigners are going to cause problems where there were none to begin with.

This is not to mention the fact that it’s an insult to attempt to lump all black people into one box as if we all subscribe to a unified “black” identity. It’s time to treat people as individuals who are part of a greater whole. Let’s not encourage the breaking up of pupils into groups by their race and work on bringing them all together as proud Brits, positive contributors to a wider community.

Rather than focus on the things that divide us, we’d do better to teach our young people that British history belongs to all of us, and that is something that unites us, regardless of race, creed, or religion.

Calvin Robinson is an assistant principal in the state sector

Calvin Robinson on Twitter @calvinrobinson; read more at telegraph.co.uk/opinion