Very nice of St Helen’s School in Northwood to host its second annual post-colonial conference on March 10, to deepen students’ understanding of the colonialism and explore the scope of post-colonial themes in literature, history, and politics.
It was also good the conference welcomed students from Pinner High School, reinforcing the importance of collaborative learning.
About 21 years ago, The Guardian reported* leading historians addressing the Prince of Wales summer school for English and history specialists argued that Britain’s imperial past has been airbrushed out of history, and should be reinstated at the core of the secondary school curriculum.
Professor Niall Ferguson, who presented Empire – How Britain Made the Modern World on Channel 4 then, described the subject as “the big story of British history in the modern period”. Teaching British history without it, he said, is like “Hamlet without the prince”.
Scott Harrison, head of history for Ofsted at the time, said that the empire deserved a greater slice of school time. “We have school after school doing week after week of British social history and only one week on the empire. In terms of significance, that isn’t enough.”
Since then, many historians have argued that since imperialism/ colonialism was the ‘most important world trend of the 19th century, and the British Empire was the biggest and most important, why doesn’t it figure more prominently in British syllabuses?’
Teaching of the British colonial history is also important from the race relations point of view, where it is imperative to establish why black and Asian people have come to Britain. This education makes more sense now as the harmful divisive politics have increasingly been recycled.
It would be good to follow the St Helen’s example and enrich the school curriculum in Harrow.
*The Guardian reported
It was also good the conference welcomed students from Pinner High School, reinforcing the importance of collaborative learning.
About 21 years ago, The Guardian reported* leading historians addressing the Prince of Wales summer school for English and history specialists argued that Britain’s imperial past has been airbrushed out of history, and should be reinstated at the core of the secondary school curriculum.
Professor Niall Ferguson, who presented Empire – How Britain Made the Modern World on Channel 4 then, described the subject as “the big story of British history in the modern period”. Teaching British history without it, he said, is like “Hamlet without the prince”.
Scott Harrison, head of history for Ofsted at the time, said that the empire deserved a greater slice of school time. “We have school after school doing week after week of British social history and only one week on the empire. In terms of significance, that isn’t enough.”
Since then, many historians have argued that since imperialism/ colonialism was the ‘most important world trend of the 19th century, and the British Empire was the biggest and most important, why doesn’t it figure more prominently in British syllabuses?’
Teaching of the British colonial history is also important from the race relations point of view, where it is imperative to establish why black and Asian people have come to Britain. This education makes more sense now as the harmful divisive politics have increasingly been recycled.
It would be good to follow the St Helen’s example and enrich the school curriculum in Harrow.
*The Guardian reported
Harrow Monitoring Group 
Good idea then for the Great Colonial Master Britain to hand over the Chagos Islands 🏝 in the Indian Ocean to Ile Maurice which were Colonised as usual by the Masters of the Art Britain 🇬🇧, after booting out the non white Chagosian islanders & then let it be run by the those loudmouthed pontificaters of Free Speech , Democracy & Human Rights, the USA 🇺🇸 to run a Military Airbase 🪖 from where to launch more bombing 💣 Missions on hapless countries in the Middle East like Iraq 🇮🇶, in search of non existent “Weapons of Mass Destruction”& enjoy the pleasure of killing thousands of innocent people! What an unpleasant lot of pathetic Western hypocrites!
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