Black history should mean more than slavery

All have been cited as causes of the underachievement of African-Caribbean boys in the heated debate on the subject. And, chances are, some of those boys won’t be going back to school after the Easter break.

There’s clear evidence that unfit housing conditions make learning more difficult and that black families are overrepresented in social housing. But what marks this debate out is that the education system is no longer in the dock, and I want to know why.

Pupils and parents alike must take responsibility, but is the dramatic shift of focus away from education really justified? Are we missing a trick in the haste to shake off the “victim mentality” image?

With only 27% of African-Caribbean boys gaining five or more good GCSEs, Commission for Racial Equality boss Trevor Phillips recently raised the spectre of segregated education as a solution to the crisis. Everyone clamoured to have a say but no one was saying anything new.

Even the Home Office’s most recent equality strategy, Improving Opportunity, Strengthening Society, is of little help. The long list of commitments to tackle black youth disaffection in the strategy amount to little more than a push to promote British culture and increase the take-up of sports for black kids.

I had to work extra hard to keep my son interested in school. His complaint? Too little reflection of himself as a black person in the education he received. All contributors were white. Blacks in school history lessons were only mentioned in the context of slavery. It took a long time for him to analyse and articulate this deep dissatisfaction but when he did, I could sympathise.

Tertiary education has whitewashed out the contribution of black figures from the history books, leaving a pale representation of the truth. But a closer examination reveals a much more colourful past and provokes questions which need to be answered.

What happened to Mary Seacole, the black contemporary of Florence Nightingale who, unlike Florence, received four medals for her caring contribution during the Crimean War? Seacole rose to great fame in England but disappeared from the history books whereas Nightingale was immortalised.

Tertiary education has whitewashed out the contribution of black figures from the history books, leaving a pale representation of the truth

Where is the memory of Olaudah Equiano, the freed slave and abolitionist whose autobiography and national campaigning had significant impact in Britain on the fight against slavery? Our history books recount only the contribution of William Wilberforce.

Why have we forgotten Samuel Coldridge-Taylor, black musical phenomenon of the 1800s of whom Sir Edward Elgar spoke highly? Or George AP Bridgetower, private musician to King George IV and personal friend of Beethoven, whose compositions remain in the vaults of the British Museum?

The list of prominent Africans who have contributed to Western civilisation goes on and on but our school books are left only with images of the naked slave on bended knee and in chains. While the horror of the slave trade mustn’t be forgotten, a healthy society needs the whole truth, not half-truths which perpetuate racist notions of superiority.

Figures like Seacole, Bridgetower, Equiano and many others rose above extreme oppression to establish themselves as prominent experts in their field. Their contributions should be part of mainstream education and not just Black History Month.

Children need to be taught to respect cultures that are different from their own but they also need to know that black people have been around sharing in and enriching British culture for a very long time.

While an airbrushed account of history holds sway in school, our children – black and white – will continue to be robbed of the best hope of a genuinely cohesive society built on mutual respect. And black pupils will go on switching off and dropping out.