It shouldn’t have taken the murder of George Floyd to get us to think about our past. The official histories of George Watson’s College, one written in the 1970s and another early this century, made some mention of the ways in which George Watson made the money with which he eventually endowed the foundation of the school in his will. But, crucially, neither of these histories - nor any of the official narratives through which we retold his story - made any mention of slavery.
Yet, another published account of George Watson’s life, researched and written by a former member of staff, did make the connection between the founder and a ship that, in all probability, sailed “the Middle Passage” between Africa and the Americas. And if a ship made that passage, it could only have had one purpose.
George Watson’s College was by no means alone, in the summer of 2020, in having a flurry of interest from current and former students about its links with slavery. The horror of what happened to George Floyd made young people ask questions that older people like me should have asked long before.
In our case, we were determined to use these quite legitimate challenges to strengthen a shared sense of our community, rather than risk institutional defensiveness and recrimination weakening it.
What followed was a series of discussions, two of which were conducted online with several hundred people from around the world logging in. We were supported by some excellent contributions from leading academics and we encouraged views from anyone who had any stake in our school. We were particularly keen to hear the voices of our current and former students of colour, and we were not disappointed in the response.
Talking about a school’s link to slavery
A consultation exercise over summer 2021 elicited well over 200 contributions, many of them long and well thought-out, some of them anguished. This was both an exercise in historical understanding and a very public self-examination of the values of our school today.
No one who contributed was indifferent to the issues or oblivious to the significance of what had been discovered about the founder. However, a consensus emerged strongly from across the generations and around the world that the name “George Watson’s College” belonged more to the people who had made the school what it is today than to a man who was dead 20 years before the first student came through its doors. Watson’s would remain Watson’s.
But there was equally a consensus that we could no longer pretend that Watson was just a benign philanthropist whose generosity was an unalloyed good thing. If we were to continue to own the name, we had to own the legacy and address it full square. As well as exploring the history, we had to look at the reality of racism in school and in society today.
This is not just about eliminating racism as part of the experience of all members of our community, as crucial as that is. It is also about understanding the racial assumptions upon which so much of our education system is based. Yes, we’ve looked at the choice of texts and images used to illustrate learning, but we’ve also begun to ask more profound questions about the choices we make without thinking about them.
The idea of “decolonising the curriculum” has become one of the battlegrounds of the so-called culture war, and it is a term that we have striven to avoid. However, apart from in the teaching of Chinese, it is almost impossible to identify any perspective in our curriculum that is not viewed from a mainstream European or North American perspective. Even if you don’t subscribe to the view that this is the result of racism, it is difficult to argue that this is a particularly helpful way of teaching children in an increasingly complex world. Even if it is “woke” to think about the cultural and racial underpinnings of Scottish education, it is also intellectually lazy not to do so.
The work will continue as the next school year begins. There is still more to discover about George Watson, his dealings and his milieu. There is a great deal still to investigate, discuss and deliberate about as we continue to look back to move forward.
Melvyn Roffe is principal of George Watson’s College in Edinburgh and chair-elect of the HMC (Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference) group of independent schools, which this October is holding its annual conference in Edinburgh, jointly organised with the Independent Association of Prep Schools
