# What black history were you taught at school?



## Lord Camomile (Oct 30, 2017)

Question I've been meaning to ask all month but haven't come up with a decent way of framing it, so let's just wade in and see where we get...

What black history, if any, were you taught at school?

I feel like as a teen I knew about figures in the civil rights movement like King, Malcolm, Parks... but I'm pretty sure I didn't learn that at school. Probably also worth mentioning that well into my adulthood I was still labouring under the misapprehension that what Parks did was a random, impulsive act, rather than a planned act of civil disobedience.

There are obviously questions about other under-represented sections of society, such as women, LGBTQ+, etc, but I figure those deserve their own threads and this was prompted by the fact October is (or rather, "has been", at this point) Black History Month.


----------



## Orang Utan (Oct 30, 2017)

None


----------



## wiskey (Oct 30, 2017)

I grew up in Brixton. It was just history.


----------



## Plumdaff (Oct 30, 2017)

None. Not a thing.


----------



## Sprocket. (Oct 30, 2017)

Nothing at all.


----------



## Steel Icarus (Oct 30, 2017)

None.


----------



## Steel Icarus (Oct 30, 2017)

None, in five years of history. Did a load of old shit about the Norman conquest, some other kings and queens bollocks, the Russian Revolution, the general strike and the treaty of Versailles


----------



## bimble (Oct 30, 2017)

I think we got a half hour lesson once about the slave trade, I remember the cross section drawing of the boat and arrows across the map saying sugar / cotton .


----------



## Orang Utan (Oct 30, 2017)

I had one history teacher who taught us about corn laws and enclosure, whilst occasionally decrying the modern world by saying that Enoch Powell was misunderstood and actually talked a lot of sense.
On balance, we had another history teacher who was obsessed with teaching us about the Wobblies and the importance of trade-unionism, which was totally off-syllabus.


----------



## mx wcfc (Oct 30, 2017)

None.


----------



## Idris2002 (Oct 30, 2017)

None - the scramble for Africa was taught as an event in Euro political history, and the Anglo-French rivalry that led to Fashoda was, again, treated for its importance in European terms.


----------



## planetgeli (Oct 30, 2017)

None.

I did, however, do a brilliant (compared to anyone else’s I’ve heard about) history O level syllabus. I think it was something like Southern Joint...something exam board and we studied ‘the Irish question’, and Chinese communism. And there was even an option to study the Arab/Israeli conflict. That and the history of medicine, which seems bloody compulsory to this day, across the board(s).

But..no.


----------



## Idris2002 (Oct 30, 2017)

"Causes of the reformation" was illustrated in the textbook with a picture of a happy monk with a flagon of beer in one hand and his arm around a girl, and the caption "corruption in the church".


----------



## Thora (Oct 30, 2017)

wiskey said:


> I grew up in Brixton. It was just history.


In what way?

I don't remember any up to GCSE level.  One of my a level topics was American history which I think may have covered the civil war and slavery, though likely not from a black pov.


----------



## Lord Camomile (Oct 30, 2017)

planetgeli said:


> None.
> 
> I did, however, do a brilliant (compared to anyone else’s I’ve heard about) history O level syllabus. I think it was something like Southern Joint...something exam board and we studied ‘the Irish question’, and Chinese communism. And there was even an option to study the Arab/Israeli conflict. That and the history of medicine, which seems bloody compulsory to this day, across the board(s).
> 
> But..no.


Sounds like you did the same syllabus as one of my friends on Facebook!


> We studied Custer and Little Bighorn and the history of Mormons. It was all about learning how to research history and discuss ideas more than the history itself. It was a pre GCSE curriculum called 16+. We also did the Irish troubles or Israel/ Palestine conflict. And history of medicine.


----------



## DotCommunist (Oct 30, 2017)

we did the slave trade iirc, I know I learned about some Abolitionist big names at some point in school. William Knibb. That stuck because there are buildings named for him in n'pton. Other than that it was ww1 and two, the roaring 20s in america (so as to avoid looking at the social fabric of 20s UK says I  ). Romans. No way can I remember key stage 3 anymore


----------



## kalidarkone (Oct 30, 2017)

By my parents,not school.

BTW for black history month the hospital I work at brought some African drumming in 
Fucking really? 
I'm just thinking about the fact that Bristol has the most Jamaicans outside Jamaica and a lot of them worked in the NHS.  That would have been more interesting for a start. 
African drumming seems like a 1980's approach to celebrating diversity... But it's Bristol so Yeh 20 years behind!


----------



## pinkmonkey (Oct 30, 2017)

In school nothing. We studied our towns history, which was a Saxon town invaded by Vikings by way of the river and we studied the Industrial revolution and mining. Nothing about slavery or anything else, even though I now know how linked the industrial revolution and slavery is. What little education we had on black history was learned outside of school by way of telly programmes, for instance Roots Roots (TV Mini-Series 1977) - IMDb


----------



## Thimble Queen (Oct 30, 2017)

We did the scramble for Africa but nothing really apart from that until History A Level. I did a module on civil rights in US. 

There's so much more to black history than subjugation and struggles for freedom, it's a shame that more black history isn't taught and that what is taught is actually quite narrow.


----------



## classicdish (Oct 30, 2017)

This is what the AQA exam board History GCSE looks like:
Specification at a glance

Does any of this qualify as specifically black history or is it just the bits of US or UK history that happen to intersect with it?

Does this GCSE history syllabus contain sufficient black history and is it structured in a way that guarantees that at least some of the relevant content will be covered?


----------



## Orang Utan (Oct 30, 2017)

We (me and siblings) got a very good informal education on black history by our next door neighbour and friend, Annette:
Urban life - Darcus Howe pays tribute to an unsung heroine
Thanks Annette, we were so lucky to know you.


----------



## TruXta (Oct 30, 2017)

Did a bit on the slave trade and the civil rights movement. Hardly a big focus.


----------



## inva (Oct 30, 2017)

we studied a bit about the Amistad, I remember watching the film in class. I think that was specifically for Black History Month. we also did do a bit about Rosa Parks and Jim Crow, but I can;t remember much of the context - from memory at least it was treated in a pretty isolated way that generally left it seeming disconnected from wider issues or relation to today.


----------



## wayward bob (Oct 30, 2017)

none.

kid1 did malcolm x and civil rights for her history gcse last year.


----------



## Borp (Oct 30, 2017)

Bit on slave trade, colonialism, civil rights movement.

Also did a bit on various african history and culture, and influences around the world.

And touched on a bit about egypt and roman empire.


----------



## purenarcotic (Oct 30, 2017)

I remember learning about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther king in primary school. Apparently people of colour didn’t exist in secondary school except for a short thing on slavery where it was stressed how if it hadn’t been for the nice upper class it would never have been abolished.


----------



## tim (Oct 30, 2017)

planetgeli said:


> None.
> 
> I did, however, do a brilliant (compared to anyone else’s I’ve heard about) history O level syllabus. I think it was something like Southern Joint...something exam board and we studied ‘the Irish question’, and Chinese communism. And there was even an option to study the Arab/Israeli conflict. That and the history of medicine, which seems bloody compulsory to this day, across the board(s).
> 
> But..no.



Yes, I had a similar syllabus at times more current affairs than history. We were studying the history of Zimbabwe at the time of the Lancaster house negotiations.


----------



## ViolentPanda (Oct 30, 2017)

The triangular trade, Toussaint L'Ouverture/The Haitian Rebellion, and the usual colonialist bollocks about "Empire".


----------



## BlueSquareThing (Oct 30, 2017)

None at all as I remember it.

The scramble for Africa involved chaps in fine suits with moustaches civilising the world, but other than that, nothing I think. Nothing very much even at A level - but this was 30 years ago now.


----------



## aqua (Oct 30, 2017)

Not a thing.


----------



## SpookyFrank (Oct 30, 2017)

Nothing whatsoever about black british history I don't think. Nor pre-european African history.


----------



## Throbbing Angel (Oct 30, 2017)

Catholic School, Northern England, did 'O' levels  = I was taught nothing on Black history at school


----------



## Steel Icarus (Oct 30, 2017)

Not ever so sure what most of us in.my school would have made of black history tbh. Maybe - given how history was presented as stuff that had happened far away, long ago and involved largely non-ordinary people like Churchill and various royals - it would have been just as remote.


----------



## Espresso (Oct 30, 2017)

I went to a convent school in Ireland. The Famine, lots of uprisings and rebellions, the 800 years of colonisation by the nefarious British, the Easter Rising.
No one in all of that was black, so the only time black people were heard of in my schooling was when apartheid was at its height. Which was current affairs, rather than history.


----------



## Lord Camomile (Oct 30, 2017)

S☼I said:


> Not ever so sure what most of us in.my school would have made of black history tbh. Maybe - given how history was presented as stuff that had happened far away, long ago and involved largely non-ordinary people like Churchill and various royals - it would have been just as remote.


It's an interesting question. It certainly feels like when you're a kid it can be hard to ascribe any relevance to your current circumstances to what they teach you in history class. I honestly don't know if that's just to do with being a kid, or the way most of it is taught.


----------



## crossthebreeze (Oct 30, 2017)

Slavery was covered very briefly.
Mary Seacole was mentioned in history of medicine.
Nothing else.


----------



## Cloo (Oct 30, 2017)

We did the history of civil rights movement in the USA, either at History GCSE or the year before we did it, from segregation and the early movements going as far as Malcolm X, I think. This was in the mid 90s.


----------



## Corax (Oct 30, 2017)

"What black history were you taught at school?"

Something about the slave triangle. Not sure black people existed at all outside of slavery as far as my formal education was concerned.  I guess they were presented kinda like a crop, lying fallow whilst waiting to be harvested by the brave East India.

I was also astonished to subsequently learn that areas outside of Western Europe had a history at all, and that shit is alleged to have happened prior to 1066.  Mind, blown.


----------



## ffsear (Oct 30, 2017)

We learned about the British involvement in India..

Would that come under black history?


----------



## equationgirl (Oct 30, 2017)

Nothing. No black history, no Scots or Irish history, nothing that wasn't white Anglo centric really.


----------



## Jon-of-arc (Oct 30, 2017)

We did Rosa Parks and stuff around 1960s black civil rights movement.  Jim Crow is dead and whatnot.  

Don't remember a damned thing about it, but we definitely spent a term or so going over it.  

My teacher was a CND hippy, mind.  Probably influenced what he taught us a bit.  But it was GCSE, so must have been on the syllabus somewhere...?


----------



## mx wcfc (Oct 30, 2017)

I learnt about Florence Nightingale.  My daughter studied Mary Seacole as part of her GCSE History, so things are improving.  Probably still nowhere near good enough.


----------



## Puddy_Tat (Oct 30, 2017)

very little, really.

history wasn't taught as a specific thing at primary school.  up to a certain point (like where i started thinking for myself) i'd got the general impression that we / europeans had 'discovered' all these foreign places and that that this was A Good Thing for the natives who'd been thoroughly miserable until we turned up and made things better...  

have vague recollections of 'red indians' being involved somewhere and think that a positive spin was put on them being 'given' reservations.

we did get a visit from a group of african drummers at primary school some time round 1980 - presumably an ilea good idea, although can't remember much context to it or anyone giving it much thought before or after

at secondary school, got bits of roman history / classics which i suppose mentioned the non european bits of the empire, but not in detail.

the triangular trade got mentioned somewhere in passing - may even have been within geography rather than history.

history skipped around a bit, remember spending a chunk of time on the crusades - think that was second year at secondary school, and think the general slant was that 'we' had been 'the good guys'

i think  kinda sums it all up.

wasn't allowed to do history towards o-level as it didn't fit in to the combination of subjects for the mould that parents / teachers had decided i should be shoved into.


----------



## souljacker (Oct 30, 2017)

I clearly remember covering everything post WW2 in 2 lessons for GCSE and Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks got a brief mention.

Reading's Central Club was thankfully on hand to help out though


----------



## mx wcfc (Oct 30, 2017)

Pledge to keep black culture mural

If you are still in Reading, you will know about this, but if not, the Central Club building is up for sale.  It looks like the mural is safe for now, but no-one trusts the council or the developers.


----------



## Dr. Furface (Oct 30, 2017)

Does coal mining count?


----------



## ffsear (Oct 30, 2017)

Learning history doesn't stop after school


----------



## Puddy_Tat (Oct 30, 2017)

ffsear said:


> Learning history doesn't stop after school



some would argue that learning - not to be confused with education - often doesn't start until after you've left school...


----------



## Treacle Toes (Oct 30, 2017)

Depends what you mean by 'Black History'?


----------



## wiskey (Oct 30, 2017)

Thora said:


> In what way?



Not history per se but I remember we read a lot of Anansi the spider tales in primary which is african folklore, and definitely learned about Nelson Mandela (he came to Brixton) and apartheid.

In secondary we did the history of apartheid in South Africa for gcse, but also MLK and Malcolm X and civil rights. In RE we spent a while on Rastafarianism.

Oh and we studied Mary Secole as well.


----------



## pengaleng (Oct 30, 2017)

fuck yeah anansi  we used to get read that


----------



## Saul Goodman (Oct 30, 2017)

None.


----------



## Puddy_Tat (Oct 30, 2017)

wiskey said:


> Not history per se but I remember we read a lot of Anansi the spider tales in primary which is african folklore, and definitely learned about Nelson Mandela (he came to Brixton) and apartheid.
> 
> In secondary we did the history of apartheid in South Africa for gcse, but also MLK and Malcolm X and civil rights. In RE we spent a while on Rastafarianism.
> 
> Oh and we studied Mary Secole as well.



sounds a bit more progressive than i got.

we did a lesson or two of 'comparitive religions' or some such towards the end of a year or two of RE, but it came across with an air of 'we know this is a load of bollocks don't we but this is what those funny foreigners believe...'

another


----------



## xenon (Oct 30, 2017)

A little bit about the Atlantic slave trade.  Ancient Egypt.  But nothing about African nations and so on. Nothing about empire really. Except in A-level history apropos European history.  To be honest I didn't learn anything much about the Romans or Etruscans at school. As in the very basic stuff.  Such is the paucity of history teaching, timewise at least. I learnt nothing about Chinese  civilisation. For example either. though I learnt some good stuff about Ireland.

 Garbled sorry can't be asked editing


----------



## D'wards (Oct 31, 2017)

Nothing. It was all industrial revolution (yawn) for my GCSE. Not even a sniff of the war or anything intersting


----------



## krtek a houby (Oct 31, 2017)

Nothing.


----------



## D'wards (Oct 31, 2017)

We did do The Color Purple, and discuss Themes, but i'm not sure if that counts.

Although that may have been for A-Level now i think, was a depressingly long time ago


----------



## farmerbarleymow (Oct 31, 2017)

None as far as I can recall.

The history we did was largely focused around British history, along with the European dimension. 

We did do to kill a mockingbird in English so that was at least something.


----------



## kabbes (Oct 31, 2017)

I didn’t do GCSE history, but the first three years of secondary school had fuck-all other than slave trade and primary school had none.

It’s not like virtually anything else was covered either, mind, except for an extraordinarily narrow focus on the kings and queens (by whatever name) of England, ancient Egypt and Ancient Rome.


----------



## Lord Camomile (Oct 31, 2017)

wiskey said:


> In RE we spent a while on Rastafarianism.


I sincerely doubt Rastafarianism even ever got mentioned at either of my schools.


----------



## Spymaster (Oct 31, 2017)

Just slavery although one of our best teachers was history. In one of our lessons someone asked him why the slavers went all the way from the US to Africa when they could have just gone to the Caribbean and taken slaves from there. The teacher, Mr Ennals, said that anyone who was interested in that question could come back at lunchtime. About 10 kids did and that hour or so was probably the only dedicated black history lesson we ever had.


----------



## Monkeygrinder's Organ (Oct 31, 2017)

None. I didn't do it to GCSE and we basically started with the Romans and went forwards from there through British History only. I think I just about got to Henry VIII before I stopped. 

ETA - not to say there wasn't any black british history by that point of course. Nothing included in our headline tour of half an hour a week lessons though.


----------



## Lord Camomile (Oct 31, 2017)

Spymaster said:


> The teacher, Mr Ennals, said that anyone who was interested in that question could come back at lunchtime. About 10 kids did and that hour or so was probably the only dedicated black history lesson we ever had.


Fair play to Mr Ennals


----------



## Yu_Gi_Oh (Oct 31, 2017)

Lord Camomile said:


> I sincerely doubt Rastafarianism even ever got mentioned at either of my schools.



In my infant school we spent about a term learning about Rastafarianism, and then the next term, two Rastafarian children joined our school, and none of us seemed to bat an eyelid. I guess they knew these kids were coming and tried to make it as familiar as possible in advance. Good for them tbh. 

We did very little apart from slavery in history afaicr, although I did drop out of school at 14, so who knows what happened in year 10 and 11. 

I learned a lot more during my BA in English through studying a lot of American and Postcolonial literature. I'm continuing within these sorts of contexts during my MA, and the syllabus I follow at work is full of MLK, Baldwin, and Ta-Nehisi Coetes in one course, and lots of postcolonial literature in the other, some of which is related to or set in Africa, but still, it doesn't go back far enough, or spread wide enough, to explore black history outside of a context of oppression.


----------



## editor (Oct 31, 2017)

None, but then we were taught no Welsh history either. Just Ennngerrland.


----------



## ElizabethofYork (Oct 31, 2017)

A little bit.  In our History GCE lessons we covered a bit about apartheid in South Africa and race relations in the USA.


----------



## Lord Camomile (Oct 31, 2017)

editor said:


> None, but then we were taught no Welsh history either. Just Ennngerrland.


Was that in Wales or England? Not saying it's ok if it's the latter, just much fucking worse if it's the former


----------



## editor (Oct 31, 2017)

Lord Camomile said:


> Was that in Wales or England? Not saying it's ok if it's the latter, just much fucking worse if it's the former


In Wales. I only got to hear of Owain Glyndwr years after I'd left school. Oh and I tell a lie: we did celebrate something to do with the (guffaw) Prince Of Wales.


----------



## Lord Camomile (Oct 31, 2017)

Bloody hell...


----------



## felixthecat (Oct 31, 2017)

We did a project on Jamaican Maroons when I was at primary school. It was a little village school and we had a slightly eccentric teacher who made us do all manner of unusual (for that day and age) projects.
In secondary school a bit about apartheid and the civil rights movement.


----------



## beesonthewhatnow (Oct 31, 2017)

More than most by the look of this thread. Covered slavery and the eventual ending of it in the U.K, the American civil war, the 1960's civil rights movement, apartheid in South Africa/Mandela, Also did stuff like the Windrush arriving in 1948, race relations in the UK (Brixton riots, police mistrust etc).


----------



## planetgeli (Oct 31, 2017)

beesonthewhatnow said:


> More than most by the look of this thread. Covered slavery and the eventual ending of it in the U.K, the American civil war, the 1960's civil rights movement, apartheid in South Africa/Mandela, Also did stuff like the Windrush arriving in 1948, race relations in the UK (Brixton riots, police mistrust etc).



Talking about the Brixton riots at a University interview is what got me an unconditional offer. Not to do history though.


----------



## ringo (Oct 31, 2017)

'O' levels in ancient history, the history of architecture and archaeology, 'A' levels in ancient history and archaeology, degree in archaeological science and not one lesson, bar the occasional mention that a Western empire such as the Romans invaded a black African nation and the prehistoric period when we were all in Africa.


----------



## Sapphireblue (Oct 31, 2017)

i don't remember ever having an interesting history lesson, we did a bit of Romans i think, Henry VIII and then endless fucking corn laws and industrial revolution. i think we did a bit on american independence and tea party and that but american history skipped straight to that bit without any mention of the indigenous people.

had to do it at GSCE as it was either that or geography (sheep farming in Norway anyone? no, i don't know why either) so it was basically compulsory. at least the GCSE teacher wasn't a bullying fake jovial wanker as was the teacher i'd had until then.


----------



## Orang Utan (Oct 31, 2017)

We had RE lessons with books like 'Our Friends The Jews' and 'Our Friends The Sikhs' in a school that many Jews and Sikhs attending, which, even as a kid, I sensed wasn't quite right


----------



## krtek a houby (Oct 31, 2017)

Orang Utan said:


> We had RE lessons with books like 'Our Friends The Jews' and 'Our Friends The Sikhs' in a school that many Jews and Sikhs attending, which, even as a kid, I sensed wasn't quite right



Our religious lessons (when I had them before attending multidenominational school) didn't mention other religions much. Apart from Protestants, for some reason. "Our Friends in the North", if you will. Even in multidenom. we weren't taught about other cultures/histories/religions.


----------



## nogojones (Oct 31, 2017)

None


----------



## chilango (Oct 31, 2017)

None that the best of my memory. Including GCSE and A Level.

I can remember doing:

Russian Revolution
French Revolution
English Civil War (and the restoration and William of Orange I think)
Probably the industrial revolution 
Owain Glyndwr.


----------



## chilango (Oct 31, 2017)

Mandela.

But that was news, not history


----------



## stuff_it (Oct 31, 2017)

Secondary school seemed to be an endless re-hash of WW1, thanks to a change of schools and syllabus.


----------



## Chilli.s (Oct 31, 2017)

none


----------



## Lord Camomile (Oct 31, 2017)

Orang Utan said:


> We had RE lessons with books like 'Our Friends The Jews' and 'Our Friends The Sikhs' in a school that many Jews and Sikhs attending, which, even as a kid, I sensed wasn't quite right


I was very perturbed a few years ago when I was looking through an old RE project of mine and it said  "we" for Christian practices. It was a CofE school, so not really surprising, but still unnerved this atheist to see it in his own handwriting 

My parents sent me there because it was a good school and a 5 minute walk from our house, but I've always been curious about how they dealt with all the Christian stuff. Pretty sure I asked my mum once, but I've forgotten her answer


----------



## Casual Observer (Oct 31, 2017)

We had a 30 minute talk on Zulu history in my first year at secondary school. The talk was given by a classmate not a teacher.


----------



## Idris2002 (Nov 2, 2017)

Spymaster said:


> Just slavery although one of our best teachers was history. In one of our lessons someone asked him why the slavers went all the way from the US to Africa when they could have just gone to the Caribbean and taken slaves from there. The teacher, Mr Ennals, said that anyone who was interested in that question could come back at lunchtime. About 10 kids did and that hour or so was probably the only dedicated black history lesson we ever had.


The Confederacy did plan to conquer a lot of the Caribbean and Central America, so your fellow pupil wasn't that wide of the mark, really.


----------



## dylanredefined (Nov 2, 2017)

Mary Seacole ( the nurse who actually saved lives unlike that owl murderer flo) and that's about it.


----------



## Tankus (Nov 2, 2017)

editor said:


> *In Wales. I only got to hear of Owain Glyndwr years after I'd left school.* Oh and I tell a lie: we did celebrate something to do with the (guffaw) Prince Of Wales.



Same here

  WJEC at its finest


----------



## agricola (Nov 3, 2017)

Tankus said:


> Same here
> 
> WJEC at its finest



IIRC the only Welsh history taught at GCSE level in the north-east of Wales in the early 90s was the nineteenth century stuff like Rebecca, Merthyr and the ironmasters and the Chartists, but not more local matters like the Mold Riots or the Tithe Wars.  We were even taught (in geography) about the effects that the loss of heavy industry could have on a society with Corby as the example; this was at the same time that Brymbo finally went under, and ten years after Shotton had gone through the largest single-day mass redundancy in modern history (6500 in one day), both of which were less than ten miles from the school and with kids whose parents had been affected in the class.


----------



## Gromit (Nov 3, 2017)

agricola said:


> IIRC the only Welsh history taught at GCSE level in the north-east of Wales in the early 90s was the nineteenth century stuff like Rebecca, Merthyr and the ironmasters and the Chartists, but not more local matters like the Mold Riots or the Tithe Wars.  We were even taught (in geography) about the effects that the loss of heavy industry could have on a society with Corby as the example; this was at the same time that Brymbo finally went under, and ten years after Shotton had gone through the largest single-day mass redundancy in modern history (6500 in one day), both of which were less than ten miles from the school and with kids whose parents had been affected in the class.


Didn't even get that in South Glamorgan. I remember some stuff about Medieval Argiculture, WWII, Battle of Hastings, Bayeux tapestry, Oliver Cromwell. 

Apart from the argiculture stuff it was all about war modern and ancient.


----------



## chilango (Nov 3, 2017)

agricola said:


> IIRC the only Welsh history taught at GCSE level in the north-east of Wales in the early 90s was the nineteenth century stuff like Rebecca, Merthyr and the ironmasters and the Chartists, but not more local matters like the Mold Riots or the Tithe Wars.  We were even taught (in geography) about the effects that the loss of heavy industry could have on a society with Corby as the example; this was at the same time that Brymbo finally went under, and ten years after Shotton had gone through the largest single-day mass redundancy in modern history (6500 in one day), both of which were less than ten miles from the school and with kids whose parents had been affected in the class.



We got Glyndwr, but nothing else “local”. 

In Geography iirc - Industry in the Greenfield valley.

Neither Shotton Steel nor Point of Ayr colliery - despite their importance - were ever part of what was taught.


----------



## bubblesmcgrath (Nov 3, 2017)

In primary school we had the same teacher for 3 years. He was very interested in history...and taught us about colonialism....what happened in Ireland...America...Australia... India and Africa in terms of colonisation, persecution, slavery and the subjugation of the native indiginous people and their culture and language. He helped us to see the deliberate dismantling of countries..cultures and people.....
We learned about apartheid in SA... . I remember the Dunnes Stores workers went on strike around that time and refused to handle fruit that was coming from South Africa because they did not want to support apartheid. We spent weeks following that in school in 84.

We learned about the lives of slaves in America working on the plantations and in the cotton fields...the inhuman and inhumane treatment they received  ..we learned about MLK...and the civil rights movement...
We learned about colonial powers.....
Colonial Britain...France...Holland and others... 
He even taught us about the native American group that sent alms / money to the starving Irish during the famine...while Victoria and her government twiddled their thumbs and did sweet f a..

We got to the stage where we recognised that we, as descendents of people who were colonised and also sold into slavery, should always recognise and talk about what happened to the blacks in Africa and those who were taken and sold into slavery in America...and their history.....that we should never tolerate racism in any form or apartheid in any form. He was a great teacher...He was so interested in human rights and connected so many issues together. He used to say that you couldn't look at any historical issue in isolation.....and that imbalance of power leads to persecution ..


----------



## krtek a houby (Nov 5, 2017)

Speaking of MLK; what the hell..?

Explosive King document amid JFK files

Releasing this smear document is really bad timing, given the climate in the US. I'm sure people will see it as MLK being assasinated all over again.


----------



## kabbes (Nov 5, 2017)

krtek a houby said:


> Speaking of MLK; what the hell..?
> 
> Explosive King document amid JFK files
> 
> Releasing this smear document is really bad timing, given the climate in the US. I'm sure people will see it as MLK being assasinated all over again.


It’s old news that the FBI were doing their best to smear MLK, even trying to use what they found to goad him to suicide.

What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals


----------



## porp (Nov 9, 2017)

None at primary school - does ancient Egypt count? Though it was hardly Black Athena . More like growing cress on damp sugar paper to represent the annual Nile flood crop.After Egypt was covered, we tactfully paid no more attention to the brown or black  world.

Secondary - Schools Council History thematic syllabus involved about 3000 lessons (it felt like) about the American West. A more balanced and sympathetic account of the Native American tragedy, but still more than a hint of manifest destiny about the whole thing.


----------



## kabbes (Nov 9, 2017)

The other thing about studying Ancient Egypt in primary school was that I happily managed a whole term of it without once realising that the ancient Egyptians might have been anything other than white.


----------



## KeeperofDragons (Nov 11, 2017)

Fuck all. 

I got my history from reading my library books during my lessons & learned a shed load more that way


----------



## krtek a houby (Nov 11, 2017)

kabbes said:


> The other thing about studying Ancient Egypt in primary school was that I happily managed a whole term of it without once realising that the ancient Egyptians might have been anything other than white.



Yeah; their colour was never mentioned. Like Jesus, come to think of it. All the representations of Jesus were of a white bloke.


----------



## kabbes (Nov 11, 2017)

krtek a houby said:


> Yeah; their colour was never mentioned. Like Jesus, come to think of it. All the representations of Jesus were of a white bloke.


Indeed, it seems that things aren’t much changed.


----------



## J Ed (Nov 11, 2017)

kabbes said:


> Indeed, it seems that things aren’t much changed.



Are you sure? They don't exactly look Swedish on that book cover.


----------



## kabbes (Nov 11, 2017)

J Ed said:


> Are you sure? They don't exactly look Swedish on that book cover.


Matter of subjectivity, I suppose.  Looks pretty generic European to me.


----------



## Silas Loom (Nov 11, 2017)

Jesus would have looked typically Sephardic, wouldn’t he? Off-white. IC2. Olive Blush, if you work in marketing for Dulux. But in binary terms, white rather than black.


----------



## J Ed (Nov 11, 2017)

kabbes said:


> Matter of subjectivity, I suppose.  Looks pretty generic European to me.



Not an area of history that I'm all that familiar with, but wasn't Ancient Egypt a multiracial empire which included both people who looked like that and also sub-Saharan Africans?


----------



## DotCommunist (Nov 11, 2017)

they were briefly ruled by a nubian dynasty 
Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt - Wikipedia


----------



## kabbes (Nov 11, 2017)

J Ed said:


> Not an area of history that I'm all that familiar with, but wasn't Ancient Egypt a multiracial empire which included both people who looked like that and also sub-Saharan Africans?


I guess the fact that neither of us is particularly familiar one way or other kind of proves the point that whilst Ancient Egypt is taught in schools, no mention is made whatsoever of the fact that the residents of Ancient Egypt might look anything other than like the kids in the class.  And if you went to the kind of suburban home counties middle England school that I did, that means 100% white.


----------



## GarveyLives (Nov 12, 2017)

kalidarkone said:


> ... I'm just thinking about the fact that *Bristol* has the most Jamaicans outside Jamaica and a lot of them worked in the NHS.  That would have been more interesting for a start ...


... so might this?


----------



## kalidarkone (Nov 12, 2017)

GarveyLives said:


> ... so might this?


Yes seen that many times.


----------



## GarveyLives (Nov 12, 2017)

> What black history were you taught at school?



Nothing ...






*... fortunately, the lions have their own lions.*​


----------



## ManchesterBeth (Nov 12, 2017)

DotCommunist said:


> we did the slave trade iirc, I know I learned about some Abolitionist big names at some point in school. William Knibb. That stuck because there are buildings named for him in n'pton. Other than that it was ww1 and two, the roaring 20s in america (so as to avoid looking at the social fabric of 20s UK says I  ). Romans. No way can I remember key stage 3 anymore



5 year plans and cold war?


----------



## ManchesterBeth (Nov 12, 2017)

My history teacher encouraged us to read nial ferguson.

At the time there was no library genesis or kindle drm removing tools so i made do with the handouts sadly, otherwise i would have criticised.


----------



## Lord Camomile (Dec 21, 2017)

From a local group I'm part of.

Best to use this link though as the one in the FB post takes you to the Thank You page as if you've already signed it: Petition: Teach black history In History lessons


----------



## hipipol (Dec 23, 2017)

Lenny henry on radio 4 just now, claiming that the totally wasted base head, Richard Prior was a role model
That's just how bad the education has been re what is good about the great cultures and achievements of Africa, a coke head yank comedian is seen as somehow a pinnacle
Surely teaching "Black History" as opposed to world history, is to make it "special" 0 ther VERY best insult for an under 10..
He should have been singing this guys praises:- Malik Ambar
Malik Ambar: The Ethiopian Who Ruled The Deccan | Madras Courier


----------



## GarveyLives (May 7, 2019)

"The Missing Pages of World History" ...

​


----------



## Pickman's model (May 7, 2019)

Lord Camomile said:


> From a local group I'm part of.
> 
> Best to use this link though as the one in the FB post takes you to the Thank You page as if you've already signed it: Petition: Teach black history In History lessons



being as there's a great reluctance to teach welsh, scottish or particularly irish history, i would be very surprised if you managed to get black history into the curriculum


----------



## Lord Camomile (May 7, 2019)

Pickman's model said:


> being as there's a great reluctance to teach welsh, scottish or particularly irish history, i think it's a great ask to include black history in the curriculum.


----------



## equationgirl (May 7, 2019)

I got taught nothing about black, Scottish, Welsh or Irish history at school. Anything I've learnt I've gained through my own reading, whether here or books and other websites.


----------



## Pickman's model (May 7, 2019)

Lord Camomile said:


>


i have nothing against having all of them in the curriculum.


----------



## Lord Camomile (May 7, 2019)

Pickman's model said:


> i have nothing against having all of them in the curriculum.


Aye, sorry, t'was a bit of a flippant post but was aware you weren't saying because we didn't have the former we shouldn't have the latter.


----------



## Pickman's model (May 7, 2019)

Lord Camomile said:


> Aye, sorry, t'was a bit of a flippant post but was aware you weren't saying because we didn't have the former we shouldn't have the latter.


To paraphrase poe, there are some histories the government will not allow to be taught


----------



## 8ball (May 7, 2019)

kabbes said:


> I guess the fact that neither of us is particularly familiar one way or other kind of proves the point that whilst Ancient Egypt is taught in schools, no mention is made whatsoever of the fact that the residents of Ancient Egypt might look anything other than like the kids in the class.  And if you went to the kind of suburban home counties middle England school that I did, that means 100% white.



I read somewhere (and I really can't remember where), that the upper-classes of ancient Egypt would have looked pretty much like an average middle-class Egyptian person of today.
Cartoon representations are kind of stylised, so it can be a thorny issue when racial characteristics are portrayed in cartoon form, so I expect they just went with a change of skin tone compared with their European representations for this reason.

eta:  looking at their "house style" of how they draw faces, I can't see a problem myself


----------



## 8ball (May 7, 2019)

Re: the OP - when I was in school they taught history in such a dull way that I barely paid any attention, but for the most part it seemed to involve white European aristocracy and their power squabbles.  Yawn.


----------



## Pickman's model (May 7, 2019)

kabbes said:


> I guess the fact that neither of us is particularly familiar one way or other kind of proves the point that whilst Ancient Egypt is taught in schools, no mention is made whatsoever of the fact that the residents of Ancient Egypt might look anything other than like the kids in the class.  And if you went to the kind of suburban home counties middle England school that I did, that means 100% white.


never mind ancient egypt, churches up and down the land perpetuate the notion that jesus was a pale-skinned european


----------



## 8ball (May 7, 2019)

Pickman's model said:


> never mind ancient egypt, churches up and down the land perpetuate the notion that jesus was a pale-skinned european



Yeah, I don't go into churches much, but was in a local church a few weeks back and it was only in some pics painted by local schoolchildren that Jesus looked like a middle-Eastern person.
Not that you typically get pics of him everywhere in churches, but the guy on the big cross and a couple of books and things had Euro-Jesus on them.  

At least it wasn't Scandi-Jesus.


----------



## Lord Camomile (May 7, 2019)

Jesus is a curious one, because obviously we only know the ethnicity of one of his parents.

Who knows what the fuck you look like if you're the son of a god. Fucker might have been purple for all we know.


----------



## 8ball (May 7, 2019)

Lord Camomile said:


> Jesus is a curious one, because obviously we only know the ethnicity of one of his parents.
> 
> Who knows what the fuck you look like if you're the son of a god. Fucker might have been purple for all we know.



It says something somewhere in the Bible about how there was nothing remarkable about Jesus in terms of his appearance (I believe the original text is a little less flattering than that), so no reason not to go with the likely appearance of his contemporaries.


----------



## Lord Camomile (May 7, 2019)

8ball said:


> It says something somewhere in the Bible about how there was nothing remarkable about Jesus in terms of his appearance (I believe the original text is a little less flattering than that), so no reason not to go with the likely appearance of his contemporaries.


Famously reliable narrators in the Bible


----------



## 8ball (May 7, 2019)

Lord Camomile said:


> Famously reliable narrators in the Bible



I think if he was purple that might have made it into the cut.


----------



## Pickman's model (May 7, 2019)

Lord Camomile said:


> Famously reliable narrators in the Bible


there's quite a bit which is reliable in the bible if you excise the bits about god/s, stuff about the geography of the holy land palestine


----------



## Saul Goodman (May 7, 2019)

Pickman's model said:


> To paraphrase poe, there are some histories the government will not allow to be taught


Can you imagine it! 
"And this is how we starved the people of Ireland to death, children"


----------



## Pickman's model (May 7, 2019)

Saul Goodman said:


> Can you imagine it!
> "And this is how we starved the people of Ireland to death, children"


Quite


----------



## dylanredefined (May 7, 2019)

Not a thing tbh we had two black pupils in my school so doubt it would have been seen as relevant.


----------



## 8ball (May 7, 2019)

dylanredefined said:


> Not a thing tbh we had two black pupils in my school so doubt it would have been seen as relevant.



Unlike some random spat between some Royals in 1540 or whatever...


----------



## GarveyLives (Oct 7, 2020)

It is time for Black History Bufoonery & Entertainment Month again ...

​


----------



## GarveyLives (Apr 6, 2021)

*NASUWT-The Teachers’ Union* have now passed a resolution stating that 'Black' history should be fully embedded and taught _across the curriculum_ in schools, which could result in children in the UK being taught that Africans existed _prior_ to the Transatlantic trade in them as forms of chattel:

Black history 'should be taught across _all_ subjects in UK schools'


----------



## Shechemite (Apr 7, 2021)

Don’t remember anything pre-year 7.
Remember doing stuff about age of exploration/save tradeBritish empire in year 7 and 8 albeit with a grim ‘pros and cons’ of empire. Watched clips from ‘Dances with wolves’ in a couple of year 7 lesson. Watched bits of L’amistad in year 8. After year 8 I was in er alternative places of education.


----------



## Artaxerxes (Apr 7, 2021)

Couple of poems in English but no history aside from summing up slavery and the triangle.


----------



## tony.c (Apr 7, 2021)

I can't remember anything, except Vikings in primary school and Tudor kings aand queens in secondary school - I failed History GCE O-level.


----------



## maomao (Apr 7, 2021)

We did fuck all apart from the two world wars. Couple of months on the Russian revolution in last year of GCSEs but apart from that it was five years of trenches and Hitler.


----------



## Sprocket. (Apr 7, 2021)

Absolutely nothing about Black history. We had little  more than Tudors, Armada, Trafalgar, Waterloo and a tiny bit on Germany at secondary school.  Though one of the alleged history teachers organised a trip to watch Zulu and later Waterloo at the local cinema.


----------



## danny la rouge (Apr 7, 2021)

I was at high school in the late 70s - early 80s.  I learned about the American civil rights movement in modern studies.  Learned more outside of school than in school, though, initially from music and television.


----------



## Elpenor (Apr 7, 2021)

I can’t remember anything specifically black and I studied up to A Level. Non-white would have been Mughal India (though I think I didn’t study that we must have done a different module) and Communist China.

I did however study Tudors, Stuart’s, Nazis, crime and punishment through time, the industrial revolution and 19th century British and European history. And more Nazis.


----------



## miss direct (Apr 7, 2021)

Nothing. I did stop studying history when I was 13 (disgraceful that this is/was an option).


----------



## Doodler (Apr 7, 2021)

None until History A-level with the Scramble for Africa.


----------



## 8ball (Apr 7, 2021)

Doodler said:


> None until History A-level with the Scramble for Africa.



How was that covered?  Without basically calling it “Those Europeans, They Were Right Shits The Lot Of ‘Em?”.


----------



## Doodler (Apr 7, 2021)

8ball said:


> How was that covered?  Without basically calling it “Those Europeans, They Were Right Shits The Lot Of ‘Em?”.



This was quite a long time ago so I don't remember much from it. The set textbook had an old newspaper cartoon on its cover showing a python, with the head of King Leopold of Belgium, wrapping itself round a terrified African man. I think there was some patriotic chauvinism in the teaching: the Belgians and the Germans were the real bastards, while the French got all excited and colonised bits which didn't have much in the way of natural resources. So the British were supposedly the best or the least bad.


----------



## Artaxerxes (Apr 7, 2021)

Doodler said:


> None until History A-level with the Scramble for Africa.



I think we covered a bit of that but it was mostly about explorers rather than any actual perspectives on colonialism or perspectives from natives.


----------



## 8ball (Apr 7, 2021)

Doodler said:


> This was quite a long time ago so I don't remember much from it. The set textbook had an old newspaper cartoon on its cover showing a python, with the head of King Leopold of Belgium, wrapping itself round a terrified African man. I think there was some patriotic chauvinism in the teaching: the Belgians and the Germans were the real bastards, while the French got all excited and colonised bits which didn't have much in the way of natural resources. So the British were supposedly the best or the least bad.



Yeah, makes sense that’s how they’d do it.  I got out of school history as soon as I could.  I think they deliberately taught it with that result in mind.


----------

