Educated Slavery
Teaching about slavery is to become a compulsory subject in secondary school history classes.
Schoolchildren will learn about the roles of William Wilberforce, the MP who campaigned for the abolition of slavery, and Olaudah Equiano, a former slave who drew attention to the horrors of the trade after buying his freedom and writing an autobiography.
They will also be taught about the origins of the empire, with one unit looking at rise and fall of the Mughals in India and the arrival of the British. Another is titled “How was it that, by 1900, Britain controlled nearly a quarter of the world?” (The Telegraph)
This is, I suppose, a cause for celebration. After all, any British history being taught in schools is very nearly a miracle in itself.
However, the emphasis that is going to be given to the slave trade - “pupils will study the development of the slave trade, colonisation and the links between slavery, the British empire and the industrial revolution” - is just absurd. Slavery played a very very minor role in the British Empire and constituted a only as teeny-tiny amount of national income. And the work the Empire did after its abolition cost us more than the benefits we accrued . As did the entire Empire, despite the modern cries of “OPPRESHUN!11!” whenever the British Empire is mentioned.
Of course, slavery wasn’t exactly a high-point in British history. But, as I pointed out not long ago, history must be studied in context - the “why” is as important as the “what” and the “how”. And it must also be noted that slavery had a far greater impact on America than it ever did in Britain. [What is also interesting to note is that the party in America who were most anti-abolition and black equality is now the one about the nominate the first black presidential candidate.]
Educating our young people about slavery is good. But it must be done properly, and without allowing the usual massive exaggeration of its impact. And as much time should also be allocated to the fact that the British were by the far the first nation to ban slavery and spent so much fighting the trade.
The eternal problem with teaching history in school is that the necessity to make it a story, so as to keep the interest of the pupils, means that the balance is often lost in the narrative. With a subject as complicated and sensitive as slavery, balance is essential - meaning that no judgement should be passed by the material produced to teach with. This was massively lacking from the subject when I was taught about slavery in school about 8 years ago.*
To end on a bright note, that the British Empire will be a compulsory part of the secondary school curriculum is definitely a Good Thing. Even if the way they appear from the reports to want to teach it seems more-than-slightly** skewed to pass on the message that “Empire is bad” to our school children. But I credit them with enough intelligence to see through the worst of this.
* It was actually this sort of thing which drove me to make study of the British Empire to main focus of the history part of my degree and postgrad study.
** ie. fucking massively.
