Britain’s connection to history is “not fit for purpose,” according to a leading historian who said too many students are still being taught a “dishonest version” of the nation’s past that misses awkward truths.
David Olusoga, a writer and television cameraman, told school leaders that Britain often sees its history as “an entertaining … place to go for comfort, a place to feel good about ourselves” that leads to ignorance. about the history of her empire, and to immigration scandals like Windrush.
“We are becoming, perhaps already, a nation for which the history we have and the connection to the history that prevails is not appropriate for the purpose,” Olusoga told a conference in Birmingham.
“If history is a soft play area, there is no room for stories that explain how we all ended up here on these islands together, because these stories cannot be enjoyed just as entertainment, they cannot always be heroic.
“So we’ve been in the habit of not including these stories for decades, and we’re so good at it that we don’t even notice the trick being done. It’s like a trick trick, sophisticated so no one can see the dexterity of the hands.
“We are happy with the story of the abolition, but we are not happy with the history of two and a half centuries of the slave trade that necessitated the abolition. We are comfortable talking about the Indian railways, but much less comfortable talking about the famine … which also happened in the same country. “
Olusoga said the Interior Ministry’s failed attempts during the Windrush affair showed “the active damage that ignorance of history can do.”
“People in the Ministry of Interior decided the status of people whose history they do not understand. “They did not realize that the people of Jamaica were from an island that had been part of England and the British Empire since 1655, when it was attacked by Oliver Cromwell,” he told a conference of school leaders in Birmingham.
“So knowing this story is not only good for everyone, it actively, obviously, harms our society when people act without knowing this story.”
Olusoga said he failed the history taught at the school in the 1980s when he grew up in Gateshead and suffered at the hands of racist bullies who attended the same schools and were taught the same stories as him.
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Although he learned in great detail about the Lancashire cotton mills, Olusoga said he had not been taught “where cotton came from or that cotton was made by 1.8 million African Americans who lived and died in chains in slavery.”
“It hurts me to know that there are children in the classroom who are still being taught the dishonest version of the Industrial Revolution, which does not include the lives and suffering of these 1.8 million African Americans,” he told the Confederations of Schools’ annual conference. trusts.
But Olusoga said the interest in historical problems and injustices unleashed by the Black Lives Matter movement was not a “political fad” or a passing dispute.
“It is built on profound changes in generations and attitudes. This will not go away. When I talk to my students, these views, these positions, these priorities, they are not positions. These are the ones who are. “
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