Does the curriculum really need ‘decolonising’?

Layla Moran, the Lib Dems’ education spokesman, has written to Gavin Williamson urging him to do something about ‘systemic racism’ in schools. ‘Changes to the history curriculum, such as learning about non-white historical figures and addressing the darker sides of British history honestly, are a vital first step to tackling racism in our education system,’ she wrote. ‘This chasm in information only serves to present students with a one-sided view of the events in history.’

I’m not sure Moran knows very much about how the education system works. For one thing, Williamson cannot dictate how history is taught in free schools and academies — they don’t have to follow the national curriculum. Since that’s about three-quarters of secondary schools, there isn’t a great deal he can do. Then there’s the fact that children already learn about ‘non-white historical figures’. Doesn’t Moran recall the petition seven years ago insisting that primary school children continue to be taught about Mary Seacole? It secured more than 35,000 signatures, forcing Michael Gove to abandon plans to dump the ‘black Florence Nightingale’.

As for the ‘darker sides of British history’, my own kids have been taught about little else, including Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade. The ‘chasm in information’ is all on the other side I’m afraid, with children not being taught that many more Europeans have been enslaved throughout history than Africans. What’s unique about the British Empire isn’t that it participated in the slave trade — that’s true of every empire. It’s that it committed blood and treasure to abolishing it.

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Listening to the politicians and activists urging schools to ‘decolonise the curriculum’, you’d think children were being taught about the ‘white man’s burden’ and re-enacting Gordon of Khartoum’s defence of Sudan in the playground.