The sense of belonging of an individual coming from an ethnic minority background is usually quite complex in their newly adopted country, and Claire Alexander and Debbie Weekes-Bernard present the obstacles that Britain faces with their introduction of their new curriculum. In 2014, the revised history curriculum became a controversial issue due to what many perceived as a nationalistic and ethnocentric take on the long history of Britain. This was mainly reflected by the receivers of this curriculum, the student population, being increasingly diverse. Statistics have shown that in the UK, students from Indian and Chinese backgrounds consistently outperform native White British students academically, and that demographically speaking, around 20% of England and Wales’s population are of non-White British minority backgrounds. When the British government is trying to create a sense of belonging for the younger population, is it the right choice to solely focus on the past of the native population? Over the course of Britain’s history, it went from a Celtic island conquered by continental Germanic-speaking Anglo-Saxons, went through a Latinization process with the Norman Invasion of 1066, and created the largest empire in history encompassing most of North America, Africa, and the Indian subcontinent. This means that when students learn about the legacy of the British Empire, instead of just the minority the native British became in this commonwealth, the students should learn about the contributions and affects the colonized African and Asian populations created for the empire.
Alexander, C., & Weekes-Bernard, D. (2017). History lessons: Inequality, diversity and the national curriculum. Race Ethnicity and Education, 20(4), 478–494. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2017.1294571