UK English Departments Must Continue to Decolonise: Here’s How

The #BLM2020 Effect

During the summer of 2020, #BlackLivesMatter protests swept the UK. Edward Colston’s statue was toppled in Bristol, uprooting the foundations of Britain’s colonial past to expose its present reverberations. The Black population collectively refused to stay silent in the face of ever-present institutional racism, creating a shift amongst British citizen’s notion of their history. Many university students pressured their institutions to ‘decolonise’. In the words of Françoise Vergès (and Aime Césaire and Frantz Fanon before her), decolonisation means building a new world ‘in which war, systemic and structural violence, and racism are not its organising principles’ (2021). Decolonisation is about transformation and utopian thinking. For universities, decolonisation can mean acknowledging past profits from the transatlantic slave trade, reparative justice in the form of scholarships for Black students and re-evaluating the curriculum to centre Black knowledge production.

At Royal Holloway, University of London, an institution I joined in 2022, students ensured their voices were heard. Findings from the 2022 ‘Decolonising the Curriculum’ report revealed profound insights into the experiences of Black and Global Majority (BGM) students. Thanks to the hard work of undergraduates Fahima Rafique and Indira Falle during a summer internship, the report gathered student responses to identify key areas for change which included the representation of BGM authors on the curriculum and critical approaches to how colonialism and Western knowledge shapes education. The qualitative data showed that students wanted a curriculum reflecting the reality that Black and Global South scholars and epistemologies are foundational to knowledge— not tokenistic additions. Some students felt, for example, that on some reading lists for humanities modules ‘BGM texts were included for their use as “cultural educational [sic]” rather than for their literary or scholarly value’. They also felt that ‘events depicting BGM experiences were often written by white authors’. To one participant, this ‘plac[ed] BGM people as objects or “other”, taking away agency from BGM people to voice their own experiences’. The report’s recommendations involved co-creation between students and staff designing module content.

Sociologists of education argue that curriculum design is an ideological discourse shaped by educator’s subjective ways of knowing (Bernstein, 2000). If academics fail to account for students’ views, this leads to negative experiences in which marginalised students feel less valued and alienated, when they should be active participants in their learning. RHUL’s access and participation plan shows a 13%-17% attainment gap for BAME students compared to white students with the same A-level grades, in addition to issues with access, continuation and progression. RHUL continues to attract a diverse range of students both locally and internationally (this year’s intake in the Humanities are approximately 29% BAME).[1] It has been proven that interest leads to deep learning (Grow 1991), which may positively influence attainment. What might we gain if we centre the most marginalized students in curriculum design?

Research-led Curriculum Changes

When I joined RHUL as Lecturer in Global Anglophone Literature, I redesigned two modules in the English department. I listened to the recommendations of the ‘Decolonising the Curriculum’ report and the impressions of current students anecdotally. Driven by my research focus on how literature contributes to anti-colonial resistance, feminism, and solidarity, I introduced new texts by West African, Black British and Caribbean authors. I also reframed preexisting novels on the first-year module Reorienting the Novel. During my lecture on Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1966), for example, I highlighted figurative language, rhythm, and orality, arguing that Achebe creates a new literary aesthetic informed by Igbo epistemologies. The underlying message was that this novel is canonical.

Similarly, for the module I convene, The Postcolonial Novel: The Art of Resistance, each week focused on an aspect of a novel’s form and a theoretical approach. For example, we read Dionne Brand’s At The Full and Change of the Moon (1999) to consider how texts ‘queer’ through experimental form, embracing liminality to challenge both normative literary form and heteronormativity. At the module’s end, the Moodle page included a further reading section linking to the student-led ‘The Books that Got Us Here’ reading list, intended to show that decolonisation is a continuous process and exemplify how they can be co-creators in knowledge production. In the future, I plan to include a suggestion box on Moodle to include texts chosen by students in the curriculum.

However, decolonising education is not limited to curriculum design. Resources like University of Cape Town academics Shannon Luckett and Kathy Morreira’s ‘Questions academics can ask to decolonise their classrooms’ (2018) encourage us to reflect on the environment we create, the language that we use, our positionalities and biases. A holistic approach to decolonisation requires open-minded self-reflection: qualities that define the humanities.

Resistance to Change?

Interestingly, not everyone was open to listening the ‘Decolonising the Curriculum’ project’s insights. In one focus group at an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion training day in the School of Humanities, several academics argued that their curriculums did not need to change and interpreted the report’s recommendations as the result of a political fad. They argued that changing the curriculum in response to student demand would surely lead to academics constantly updating their teaching resources when the landscape moved on to the next current event.

Such resistance to change leads to the wave of potential transformation sparked by #BLM2020 hitting a wall and crashing down, only to build up again as the next cohorts of students remain alienated and marginalised. Amongst a diverse student population, we risk undermining the very essence of our disciplines. We should influence all students to become critical and reflective citizens actively participating in shaping their world. If not, we risk perpetuating disparities. Additionally, representation amongst the staff body may seem performative unless those identifying as white are willing to unlearn and work together to create an environment in which all students thrive.

For me, decolonising education is not a buzzword: it is an epistemological method reaching beyond representation and reading lists. It means creating educational experiences in which students see themselves as critical thinkers and agents of change. We know that interest leads to a deep approach to learning (Entwistle and Peterson 2004), so with this in mind, I reflected on how I might achieve this beyond the classroom.

Case Study: Field Trip to the Black Cultural Archives

For the group of third year students studying postcolonial literature, understanding the significance of Black and South Asian communities to Britain's national history felt paramount. I organise an annual field trip to the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton, London.

Students read, feel, touch, and listen to materials documenting the legacies of activism connected to the texts they study. The archive facilitates intergenerational knowledge sharing, as students learn about the 1981 Brixton Uprising. In one collection, we unexpectedly found a transcript of author George Lamming’s radio show.

In 2024 the trip was also open to students of African American literature and creative writing, who contributed unique perspectives and experiences to the sessions. Some reflected on their own family histories, told stories about their local areas, and discussed the representation (and erasure) of Black history. Students found the trip eye-opening and influential. One student’s dissertation project about Caribbean arts and culture was inspired by the archival encounter.

The last example I’ll share to show how decolonisation reaches beyond curriculum design was a conversation between students. In the BCA’s exhibition room artwork was displayed by African American and Black British artists. At the end of the day two students shared an anecdote with me. They had a private conversation about how much they ‘loved’ a painting, then reflected on its depiction of violence. They altered their language to ‘appreciate’ as a way of showing empathy, respect, and acknowledging positionality. By reading novels like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (2013), they had learned to question their consumption of works depicting violence against racialised people. I found this incredibly moving. These encounters and conversations represent what critical thinking in education should be: a shift in perspective applied to our interactions and experiences in the world.

Bibliography

Anon. ‘Access and Participation Plan 2020-21 to 2024-25.’ Royal Holloway, University of London. Available at: https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/media/14282/royal-holloway-university-of-london-app.pdf (Accessed: 19 September 2024).

Bernstein, B. (2000) Pedagogy, Symbolic Control, and Identity: Theory, Research, Critique. Rowman & Littlefield.

Entwistle, P. (2004). ‘Conceptions of learning and knowledge in higher education: relationships with study behaviour and influences of learning environments’. International Journal of Educational Research, 41, 407-428.

Falle, I and Rafique, F.  (2022) ‘Decolonising the Curriculum’. Powerpoint presentation circulated at School of Humanities EDI away day, 6 January 2023.

Forrester, W. (2021) ‘Decolonial Feminisms: An Interview with Françoise Vergès’  PEN Transmissions, 30 April. Available at: https://pentransmissions.com/2021/04/30/decolonial-feminisms-an-interview-with-francoise-verges/ (Accessed: 19 September 2024).

Grow, G.O. (1991). ‘Teaching learners to be self-directed’. Adult Education Quarterly, 41 (3): 125-149.

Luckett, S. and Morreira, K. (2018) ‘Questions academics can ask to decolonise their classrooms’ The Conversation, 17 October. Available at: https://theconversation.com/questions-academics-can-ask-to-decolonise-their-classrooms-103251 (Accessed: 20 September 2024).

[1] Latest student demographic data retrieved on 18 September 2024.