Lavinya Stennett, The Black Curriculum
We are kicking off our Summer School edit with Lavinya Stennett founder and managing director of The Black Curriculum. Lavinya is a historian, writer and recent First Class graduate from SOAS.
Lavinya founded the Black Curriculum in 2019 after studying abroad in New Zealand and noticing the similarity between the way colonialism had erased Māori history and the erasure of Black British history in our curriculum, ‘it was a global system of erasure, and I knew I had to do something about it.’ Lavinya worked with Bethany Thompson and Lisa Kennedy to create a syllabus which became the Black Curriculum.
The curriculum has four modules; Art History, Migration, Politics and the Legal System and Land and the Environment and then 12 topics across the four. You can find the full curriculum here.
The aims of the Black Curriculum are;
1. To provide a sense of belonging and identity to young people across the UK.
2. To teach an accessible educational Black British history curriculum that raises attainment for young people.
3. To improve social cohesion between young people in the UK.
The Black Lives Matter movement in the U.S and here in the U.K has woken more people up to the systemic racism in all of our institutions. Calls to decolonise school curriculum and to teach Black British history have been picked up by more people - which we love to see. But it is no surprise that Black women have been doing this work for TIME. See below an extract from a 2013 interview with Doreen Lawrence twenty years after the murder of her son Stephen Lawrence;
by Suki Dhanda
“I hated history at school, because it had nothing to do with me. We were taught about empire but not about slavery, what our grandparents and great grandparents went through. I wanted the Macpherson report to ensure that we opened up history lessons so all the kids in the class knew where they were from. If kids just hear that these people are over here taking our jobs, they will believe it. If they hear that in the past Britain has exploited every single aspect of the places where these children come from, then perhaps they will see things differently. Black boys in particular have a sense that their self-worth is not much; we need to change that. All children should have an understanding of the forces that created the country we all live in today.”
In January 2020 The Black Curriculum published their Black British History in the National Curriculum Report 2020. ‘The report explores how the current History National Curriculum systematically omits the contribution of Black British history in favour of a dominant White, Eurocentric curriculum that fails to reflect our multi ethnic and broadly diverse society.’ It highlights that the lack of Black history teachers in the UK is compounding the issues already built into the curriculum and ‘remains a significant factor in the narrative of British history that get purported within our classrooms.’
The Black Curriculum requested to meet the Secretary of State for Education as part of their campaign ‘for the teaching of Black British history to go beyond a token series during Black History month, and for it to be integrated into the national curriculum as a compulsory aspect of learning.’ Disappointingly the Government rejected their request to meet and refused to commit to any educational reform. The Black Curriculum have asked that we continue to support them in the following ways;
Take the pledge to #TBH365 = Teach Black History / To Be Honest
Be vocal about implementing black histories in schools, seeking the support of local leadership
Help us in our efforts moving forward to support teachers and young people