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PE01813: Reform the national curriculum to include all African Scottish history

Education

Petitioner: Eunice Olumide

Status:
Open

Closing Date for Online Petition: 05 August 2020

Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to reform the national curriculum to include Afro-Scottish history including artefacts of African diaspora, cultural and economic contributions, the role of the British Empire and the benefits to Scotland from colonies of the Caribbean and Africa.

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Do you agree the national curriculum should be changed to include Afro-Scottish history?

What should be included in the national curriculum to ensure a full account of Afro-Scottish history is taught?
 

At a national history level this is needed, though I would like to see it carried out with consultation with our existing community from international backgrounds who may have feel no relationship to our national historical story and need a broader story of current multiculturalism to be told.

Alisdair McKay

21:21 on 08 Jul 2020

Black children in Scotland should be able to see their presence in its history, and non-Black children should learn a full and not White-edited history. It's about time to destroy white supremacism in the education system.

Elizabeth Clutterbuck

18:56 on 08 Jul 2020

I think it is a great idea to clarify our history so that we can move forward into a future where people are understood and ignorant racism is no longer A Thing. Scotland is a beautiful cpuntry with many ugly stories in its past. It is a good idea that young people are taught the truth so that they can leave school with a realistic understanding of the wider world.

Camilla Houstoun

18:27 on 08 Jul 2020

I am proud of my degree in history from an ancient Scottish university. While doing research in an advanced honours class on knighthood and kingship in medieval and early renaissance Scotland, I noticed a lot of tangential references in some of the newer monographs to African connections that were present in the Scottish courts. This backed up a growing consensus among scholars that ethnic diversity and the presence of immigrants was much stronger in Scotland than had been previously realized. At the same time, while I attended from 2003 to 2007, save for one class on pre Columbian Latin America, there were no history classes available that studied non European peoples outside of colonization. I think it is worthy to note that medievalists at Scottish universities have, in the last few decades, increasingly prioritized the subject of diversity and ethnicity in Europe prior to the Renaissance. In part, this has been in response to the ways in which medieval histories are repurposed towards ethnonationalist ends, as in Braveheart. But this leadership at the research level has not trickled down to the national curriculum, or into the historical narratives celebrated by Scots and the Scottish diaspora. It should not be up to the TV series Outlander to teach young people about the Scottish relationship to slavery, especially since that representation of the issue is a spectacular and politically dangerous failure. Mark Twain famously remarked that the Waverly Novels by Walter Scott did more than any other cultural influence to instigate and justify both the Confederacy and the postbellum, lost cause narrative that saw the construction confederate monuments across the US in the early 20thC. Even now, white tourists travel to Scotland to validate an ethnonationalist origin story that has dominated white diaspora families since the late 60s, primarily as a racist backlash against desegregation and the civil rights movement.

Brittany Shannahan

18:02 on 08 Jul 2020

Long overdue!

James Daly

17:33 on 08 Jul 2020

Teach our children accurate inclusive history, to minimise the damage caused to future generations.

Charissa Gregson

16:48 on 08 Jul 2020

Only by understanding history can we understand some of the issues we are now facing - institutional and systematic racism for example. It's vital we change the curriculum to make younger generations more aware and more able to make positive change.

Sonia Jackett

15:36 on 08 Jul 2020

A more accurate teaching of history long overdue

Jo cumming

14:38 on 08 Jul 2020

Glad this is being brought up- context is everything and should fit in well with pupils' aims of Global Citizenship as well as understanding Fairtrade as well as trade injustices.

Scott Erwin

14:08 on 08 Jul 2020

Very important for people to grow up with an appreciation of their country's true history and not just the more palatable highlights.

Kelly Adair

13:32 on 08 Jul 2020

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