Researchers from University College London and the University of Oxford have recently launched an ambitious new project aiming to provide an empirical portrait of current teaching and learning around the interconnected themes of the British Empire, migration and belonging in England’s secondary schools.
On the 13th June 2020, a letter was published in The Times newspaper signed by more than 50 UK-based academics, educators, campaigners, novelists and historians underscoring the timely ‘need to teach colonial history’ in Britain’s schools.
The letter’s signatories were far from alone in making such an appeal. That same month, 47 separate petitions directly related to teaching about empire were submitted via the UK Government and Parliament website; 268,882 people lent their support to the most successful of these. While such themes have in fact long been of concern to historians, educators and politicians, the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter activism that followed on both sides of the Atlantic appeared to propel a striking new interest in the positioning of British imperial history within the nations’ classrooms and curriculum amongst the wider British public too. Competing petitioners simultaneously urged government to, ‘make teaching about colonialism and its impact on society mandatory’, while others advocated schools ‘embrace our colonial history with pride [in] how we saved the free world countless times’. Inflamed further by both burgeoning column inches and party-political attention, three years later and on first impression, this appears to be a public interest that continues to polarise.
