What black history were you taught at school?

[SpookyFrank]

Nothing whatsoever about black british history I don't think. Nor pre-european African history.

 

[Throbbing Angel]

Catholic School, Northern England, did 'O' levels = I was taught nothing on Black history at school

 

[Steel Icarus]

Not ever so sure what most of us in.my school would have made of black history tbh. Maybe - given how history was presented as stuff that had happened far away, long ago and involved largely non-ordinary people like Churchill and various royals - it would have been just as remote.

 

[Espresso]

I went to a convent school in Ireland. The Famine, lots of uprisings and rebellions, the 800 years of colonisation by the nefarious British, the Easter Rising.
No one in all of that was black, so the only time black people were heard of in my schooling was when apartheid was at its height. Which was current affairs, rather than history.

 

[Lord Camomile]

Not ever so sure what most of us in.my school would have made of black history tbh. Maybe - given how history was presented as stuff that had happened far away, long ago and involved largely non-ordinary people like Churchill and various royals - it would have been just as remote.

It's an interesting question. It certainly feels like when you're a kid it can be hard to ascribe any relevance to your current circumstances to what they teach you in history class. I honestly don't know if that's just to do with being a kid, or the way most of it is taught.

 

[crossthebreeze]

Slavery was covered very briefly.
Mary Seacole was mentioned in history of medicine.
Nothing else.

 

[Cloo]

We did the history of civil rights movement in the USA, either at History GCSE or the year before we did it, from segregation and the early movements going as far as Malcolm X, I think. This was in the mid 90s.

 

[Corax]

"What black history were you taught at school?"

Something about the slave triangle. Not sure black people existed at all outside of slavery as far as my formal education was concerned. I guess they were presented kinda like a crop, lying fallow whilst waiting to be harvested by the brave East India.

I was also astonished to subsequently learn that areas outside of Western Europe had a history at all, and that shit is alleged to have happened prior to 1066. Mind, blown.

 

[ffsear]

We learned about the British involvement in India..

Would that come under black history?

 

[equationgirl]

Nothing. No black history, no Scots or Irish history, nothing that wasn't white Anglo centric really.

 

[Jon-of-arc]

We did Rosa Parks and stuff around 1960s black civil rights movement. Jim Crow is dead and whatnot.

Don't remember a damned thing about it, but we definitely spent a term or so going over it.

My teacher was a CND hippy, mind. Probably influenced what he taught us a bit. But it was GCSE, so must have been on the syllabus somewhere...?

 

[mx wcfc]

I learnt about Florence Nightingale. My daughter studied Mary Seacole as part of her GCSE History, so things are improving. Probably still nowhere near good enough.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

very little, really.

history wasn't taught as a specific thing at primary school. up to a certain point (like where i started thinking for myself) i'd got the general impression that we / europeans had 'discovered' all these foreign places and that that this was A Good Thing for the natives who'd been thoroughly miserable until we turned up and made things better...

have vague recollections of 'red indians' being involved somewhere and think that a positive spin was put on them being 'given' reservations.

we did get a visit from a group of african drummers at primary school some time round 1980 - presumably an ilea good idea, although can't remember much context to it or anyone giving it much thought before or after

at secondary school, got bits of roman history / classics which i suppose mentioned the non european bits of the empire, but not in detail.

the triangular trade got mentioned somewhere in passing - may even have been within geography rather than history.

history skipped around a bit, remember spending a chunk of time on the crusades - think that was second year at secondary school, and think the general slant was that 'we' had been 'the good guys'

i think kinda sums it all up.

wasn't allowed to do history towards o-level as it didn't fit in to the combination of subjects for the mould that parents / teachers had decided i should be shoved into.

 

[souljacker]

I clearly remember covering everything post WW2 in 2 lessons for GCSE and Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks got a brief mention.

Reading's Central Club was thankfully on hand to help out though

 

[mx wcfc]

Pledge to keep black culture mural

If you are still in Reading, you will know about this, but if not, the Central Club building is up for sale. It looks like the mural is safe for now, but no-one trusts the council or the developers.

 

[Dr. Furface]

Does coal mining count?

 

[ffsear]

Learning history doesn't stop after school

 

[Puddy_Tat]

Learning history doesn't stop after school

some would argue that learning - not to be confused with education - often doesn't start until after you've left school...

 

[Treacle Toes]

Depends what you mean by 'Black History'?

 

[wiskey]

In what way?

Not history per se but I remember we read a lot of Anansi the spider tales in primary which is african folklore, and definitely learned about Nelson Mandela (he came to Brixton) and apartheid.

In secondary we did the history of apartheid in South Africa for gcse, but also MLK and Malcolm X and civil rights. In RE we spent a while on Rastafarianism.

Oh and we studied Mary Secole as well.

 

[pengaleng]

fuck yeah anansi we used to get read that

 

[Saul Goodman]

None.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

Not history per se but I remember we read a lot of Anansi the spider tales in primary which is african folklore, and definitely learned about Nelson Mandela (he came to Brixton) and apartheid.

In secondary we did the history of apartheid in South Africa for gcse, but also MLK and Malcolm X and civil rights. In RE we spent a while on Rastafarianism.

Oh and we studied Mary Secole as well.

sounds a bit more progressive than i got.

we did a lesson or two of 'comparitive religions' or some such towards the end of a year or two of RE, but it came across with an air of 'we know this is a load of bollocks don't we but this is what those funny foreigners believe...'

another

 

[xenon]

A little bit about the Atlantic slave trade. Ancient Egypt. But nothing about African nations and so on. Nothing about empire really. Except in A-level history apropos European history. To be honest I didn't learn anything much about the Romans or Etruscans at school. As in the very basic stuff. Such is the paucity of history teaching, timewise at least. I learnt nothing about Chinese civilisation. For example either. though I learnt some good stuff about Ireland.

Garbled sorry can't be asked editing

 

[D'wards]

Nothing. It was all industrial revolution (yawn) for my GCSE. Not even a sniff of the war or anything intersting

 

[krtek a houby]

Nothing.

 

[D'wards]

We did do The Color Purple, and discuss Themes, but i'm not sure if that counts.

Although that may have been for A-Level now i think, was a depressingly long time ago

 

[farmerbarleymow]

None as far as I can recall.

The history we did was largely focused around British history, along with the European dimension.

We did do to kill a mockingbird in English so that was at least something.

 

[kabbes]

I didn’t do GCSE history, but the first three years of secondary school had fuck-all other than slave trade and primary school had none.

It’s not like virtually anything else was covered either, mind, except for an extraordinarily narrow focus on the kings and queens (by whatever name) of England, ancient Egypt and Ancient Rome.

 

[Lord Camomile]

In RE we spent a while on Rastafarianism.

I sincerely doubt Rastafarianism even ever got mentioned at either of my schools.