How Can Education ‘Decolonise the Curriculum’, but Neglect Teacher Training?

Whilst Black History should be embedded in the curriculum, it still isn’t; with October upon us, I’m sure there are many out there thinking about Black History Month and curricula.

When I hear people talking about ‘decolonising the curriculum’, I often see lots of confusion about what decolonisation means. I have seen bids to ‘diversify the curriculum’, and these two terms are not the same. I have seen academics conflate diversity work and decolonial work. To diversify reading lists and course content is only part of the problem; I think the aim of decolonisation is to deconstruct knowledge production. It’s as much about how we produce knowledge as the knowledge itself. With my backgrounds of Creative Writing and English Literature, there, it was about how we tell stories as well as who is telling it, and the different perspectives of those stories.

What makes essays worth more in academic citizenship than oral storytelling traditions — a form of disseminating information popular throughout the Black diaspora?

On psychology, we have to ask ourselves why whole slates of Black psychologists have been erased, and then study the reasons why. As far as race is concerned, one way could be studying how racism was…