The problem with ‘diversifying’ the curriculum 

As an English teacher, one of my favourite poems to teach, to pupils of almost all ages, is Chinua Achebe’s ‘Vultures’. In the poem, the speaker describes various images that uncomfortably combine love and violence: a vulture picking apart a corpse before nestling up to its mate; a Commandant at Belsen buying chocolate for his children whilst the ‘fumes of human roast… cling rebelliously to his nostrils’. I choose to teach it not because Achebe is black, or because I am trying to decolonise my teaching, but because it asks fundamental questions about human nature and the universal duality of good and evil, something which transcends race, sex or class.

And this is why I am so concerned about Labour’s determination to ‘refresh’ the curriculum by ‘diversifying’ subjects that have been branded too ‘mono-cultural’. Curriculums should be about imparting knowledge, not advancing social justice.