The horrors of slavery should be a core part of the curriculum like maths and physics, Professor Sir Geoff Palmer told the Edinburgh Open Education Conference today.
He called for the horrors of slavery to be taught “truthfully” in schools, and for it not to be optional.
Sir Geoff - a human rights activist and scientist who became Scotland’s first black professor in 1989 - said that “we cannot change the past but we can change the consequences of the past, such as racism, for the better using education, and education is the tool to change attitudes”.
Sir Geoff was speaking at Enlightened Education, a three-day joint conference organised by the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC) and the Independent Association of Prep Schools (IAPS), attended by nearly 1,000 school leaders.
Today, the final day of the conference, is open to leaders from all sectors of education, under the title Edinburgh Open Education Conference.
Schools confronting racism and slavery
Sir Geoff praised Melvyn Roffe, principal of George Watson’s College in Edinburgh and chair of the HMC, for being truthful about his own school benefitting from slavery - and called on others to do the same.
Writing for Tes Scotland in July, Mr Roffe said that a school whose name connects it to the slave trade has a duty to confront its past. George Watson’s had decided to retain its founder’s name, he wrote, but the school was no longer going to pretend “that Watson was just a benign philanthropist whose generosity was an unalloyed good thing”.
Sir Geoff said that when he first came to the UK from Jamaica - just before his 15th birthday in 1955 - the first school he applied to attend in North London branded him “educationally subnormal”. However, he said that “good people” supported him and that eventually led to him going to university.
He said: “I couldn’t have got anywhere near to that university if it weren’t for good people. We need laws to give people rights, whether its women’s rights, race rights, age or religion. We are not good at being fair. We need a law or laws to tell us to be fair but some people can circumvent the law - they have ways of doing it - therefore it depends on individuals. What Robert Burns called “good people”.”
Sir Geoff’s comments are timely, coming in the wake of racist abuse suffered by black and minority ethnic (BAME) Scottish teachers and pupils.
During the Scottish Learning Festival last month, educators involved in delivering sessions on anti-racist education and the diversification of the teaching workforce were subjected to racist abuse. Then, on Friday, more abuse followed after the first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, visited St Albert’s Primary School in Glasgow and posted pictures with BAME staff and pupils on social media site Twitter.
Ms Sturgeon immediately condemned the “vile racists” but yesterday she made further comment after the attacks were raised in the Scottish Parliament by MSP Kaukab Stewart, who became the first woman of colour to be elected to the Scottish Parliament last year, and who is herself a former primary teacher.
Ms Sturgeon said: “Racism always sickens me but there is nothing that turns my stomach more than the idea of adults - whether they are from Scotland or anywhere else in the world - that can look at a photograph of beautiful, clever children and only see the colour of their skin. It is despicable, it is disgusting and it has no place in Scotland, and I hope all of us unite in utter condemnation of vile racists everywhere.”
