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Written in 1931, this Noel Coward golden oldie conjures up images of a colonial India with the Memsaab’s and Officers drinking G&Ts on the veranda. A romantic view of a policy which acquired countries, taking over their political systems, land and people in order to exploit them economically. The song came to mind most recently after returning from a week’s holiday in Spain, because the place I stayed in was once a centre for ship building, sending some of the first boats to the America’s, settling in Cuba, bringing back chocolate and rum.
Whilst away I vowed to finish a FutureLearn course I’d started on the Tudors; I noted how the course and learning about the start of colonialism in England tied in to my surroundings and visit to a local museum. I appreciate doing a course isn’t everyone’s idea of relaxing reading. I sat by the pool with the iPad, marvelled at how it really is possible to study at any time, any place, anywhere and learnt about the impact the Tudors had on our political, social and religious structures and the legacy they left behind. Despite being a history graduate, my formal learning hasn’t included much about the Tudors. Interestingly, of the things I hadn’t considered or thought about was the existence of black and minority ethnic groups in Tudor times, apart from perhaps the assumption that if they did exist, they would have been slaves. The course had two articles included that dispelled this myth and showed tapestries and paintings with the presence of black people in the court of Henry VIII and during Elizabeth I’s reign. It included a link to an a new book Black Tudors: The untold story by Miranda Kaufmann. Whilst this racial awareness made for interesting reading and led me to read about the use of ethnic soldiers during the Dunkirk evacuation and the whitewashing of the recent Hollywood blockbuster of the same name (Why the lack of Indian and African faces in Dunkirk matters), it didn’t quite sit right with me. Upon reading these articles, I wasn’t sure what it was, was it challenging my own attitudes, values and beliefs about a black community during this time, or was it that the articles felt like they had been artificially placed in the course to address diversity, to decolonize the curriculum and was a bit too obvious?
‘Decolonizing the curriculum’ is quite the hot topic in Higher Education (HE) currently and by calling it this, I don’t mean to devalue it, quite the contrary: it’s important and quite possibly a key cog to real, genuine inclusion in education with implications for attainment. But what does ‘decolonizing the curriculum’ mean? According to Nye (2019) it’s about giving a voice to those that in the past have been pushed aside or not allowed to speak; it’s about getting everyone to think about what they say, how they say it and the way it’s said by engaging with this vast array of voices and differing viewpoints. It differs to diversity as it’s not about fitting into the existing system or scheme but about rewriting a new one (Nye, 2019, p.5).
Decolonizing started with a staff and student protest at the University of Cape Town, the ‘Rhodes must fall’ campaign, which called for the removal of a statue on campus of Cecil Rhodes. Rhodes was the British Imperialist famed for his near complete domination of the diamond market, the setting up of De Beers the diamond company still in existence today and for ‘finding’ the South African territory named after him, Rhodesia, later liberated as Zimbabwe and Zambia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Rhodes). As well as colonising a country and stealing its natural minerals and resources, Rhodes was also a white supremist believing that the native Black population needed ruling as a ‘subject race’. The ‘Rhodes must fall’ campaign spread across South African Universities with the defacing of statues and a call for ‘decolonizing education’. The effects of the uprising were felt across the world, including in the UK at Oriel, the Oxford college where Rhodes had studied in in the 1870’s (Elgot, 2015). Oxford students didn’t want to be associated with the ‘racist’ Rhodes’. The protest, apparently, forced the college to think about inclusivity, the way that it engaged with minority communities and its environment. They claimed the protests made them aware of the need to increase diversity training and outreach work amongst the BME community. Although, I do believe the statue remains in situ and BME students are underrepresented still.
There has been a ripple effect from the uprising as Universities have started to have conversations about how to listen to these voices and viewpoints. Decolonizing is challenging Academics to reconsider their own epistemological perspective and of the institutions in which they teach and research (Nye, 2019). It’s highlighting that colonialism didn’t end with the political decolonization of the British (and other) Empires, that the systematic nature of it continued and continues still, even in the 21st Century (Quijano, cited in Nye, 2019). Nye (2019) argues that decolonizing is not ‘simply about adding one or two alternative readings to the syllabus’ which is exactly where the FutureLearn course fell short for me. They hadn’t changed the course design but added in articles. They attempted to address the issue of diversity in Tudor times but didn‘t succeeded in decolonizing it (if that was their intention). This might be because the process is more than just learning design and runs to the very structures and systems of the organisation that also need reviewing. The inclusion of black history is progress, I can’t deny that, but we are in the 21 Century and I find it hard at times to believe that such inequality still exists. It’s endemic in the intuition’s systems and processes, at times unconsciously, it’s almost naïve to think it wouldn’t exist.
So, what to do about it? I’m hoping that I will be able to effect some change at the OU. How? By learning more about decolonizing the curriculum, by campaigning with the BME network on systemic issue like fair recruitment and selection processes and career development opportunities, by applying for senior management positions, by reviewing the courses I teach and through a Doctorate looking at the Black attainment gap. This is what I'm going to do.
But, what are you going to do?