The past year has given us all pause for thought, has changed the way we live our lives, and caused us to think about what we want the world around us to look like.
The coronavirus, the Black Lives Matter movement and the shocking murder of George Floyd have had such incredible impact - and highlighted the change we need to see across the world.
We are starting to have honest and constructive conversations about what we teach our children, but we need these to be on a larger scale and to be backed up by actual change.
Celebrating black British and Irish writers in GCSE English
The need for this change was clear to me, even before a study commissioned by Teach First last year found that pupils could leave compulsory education without studying a single piece of literature written by a black author.
My experience from doing my own GCSEs - albeit that was some time ago - is that the focus on black writers was on African-American writers, rather than on British people’s lived experiences.
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We have so many incredible stories and storytellers from this country that there should never be a shortage of black writers to study. But we need ways to get their voices heard.
That is why I was so pleased to be approached by GCSEPod to work on Celebrating Authors of African and Caribbean Heritage (CAACH). This work has involved created a resource that comprises 25 audio-video “pods” that examine different writers’ backgrounds, influences and approaches to writing.
This will help to shine a light on British and Irish writers and artists from African and Caribbean backgrounds, and is freely available for pupils, parents and teachers across the country to help inform their understanding of this important area.
A wider array of black authors on the curriculum
To select the writers included, I spent a lot of time researching writers in Britain and Ireland, to gain a better understanding of these different stories, and who was telling them. I wanted to get a broad mix of people, looking at well-known writers like Zadie Smith and Jackie Kay, but also artists who may not be as well-known.
There are incredible writers out there, like Selina Thompson, who is an amazing theatre writer based in the Midlands, but too many people outside the theatre world have not heard of her.
Or at the other end of the scale, you have the wonderful poet Warsan Shire, who reached a global audience when her work appeared on Beyonce’s album Lemonade. Shire’s poetry speaks eloquently about the experiences of refugees and of women.
Inua Ellams is both a poet and a playwright, and his writing draws on oral traditions and international stories that transcend boundaries with a fluid beauty.
We didn’t just look at fiction writers either but instead compiled a list that included poets, theatre-writers, filmmakers, journalists - people who can all be described as storytellers in their own right.
Celebrating all backgrounds and experiences
I wanted to help schools move away from the idea that there’s a certain type of black writer or black writing that illustrates the British and Irish experience.
When I was compiling the list of writers, I wanted to make sure we had a mix of different people across the UK and Ireland, not solely London-centric voices, or just looking at young writers.
Of course, there’s more to this than just putting more black voices on the curriculum.
One of the issues for me is that the curriculum is only half the story; with any topic, you’re supposed to read around the subject to gain a full understanding of it.
Why teachers must read widely
We will never be able to have writers from every conceivable background on the prescribed reading list, and so we need more focus on how schools can enable students to fill in these holes by reading these black voices outside of the class.
And that’s something that teachers can help with, and should be encouraged to do. By first examining the gaps in their own knowledge, teachers can ensure that their students read as widely as possible, looking beyond their own personal experience and the education they find themselves in.
Schools and teachers are responsible for creating space for their students to be more curious, allowing them to look at what isn’t included in their reading lists, and supporting them to find a broader range of authors.
That could be black writers from the UK and Ireland, or writers of different ethnicity, or a different culture. Whatever is missing should be sought out.
Our list is by no means exhaustive but I want it to serve as a reminder that there are so many different stories out there, and that schools shouldn’t just settle for the same old voices.
No one is expecting schools to cover every lived experience, but in supporting teachers to see what’s missing in the curriculum, they can help them to guide their students to understand so much more about the world around them.
When you look back at the past year, that feels more important now than ever.
Degna Stone is a poet and PhD student
