![]() ![]() This neat trick of viewing the past as concluded was on display again on a recent family holiday to the Republic of Benin. Had Shakespeare, I asked, anticipated how the UK’s history of conquest and dominion would be made manifest each time millions opened their mouths to speak? For educators like me, the challenge, then, is not only the fight to have this history included in our curriculum, but to contextualise for our pupils how it relates to the world today.Ī visualisation of Benin’s Marina Project in Ouidah, which will include a full-scale replica slave ship. Think, I prompted, of Caliban’s curse to his master, Prospero, because he taught him his language : “You taught me language and my profit on ‘t/ Is, I know how to curse: the red plague rid you,/ For learning me your language!” What parallels could we draw between that and Unesco’s prediction that of the 6,000 languages spoken in the world today, half are threatened with extinction? Their biggest predator? English. My response as his teacher was to emphasise that, yes, there is much more to black history than enslavement, but that, still, this bitter history matters to us all. ![]() The question revealed a great deal, not least a belief that this history had nothing to do with him. I couldn’t say much of the above to the pupil who, during a lesson on Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, asked what good Black History Month was, if all that was taught related to slavery. ![]()
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