The big education story of last week was, it eventually transpired, almost entirely made up.

On Wednesday, the Telegraph printed (on its front page, no less) a large picture of Lola Olufemi, Women’s Equality Officer at Cambridge University, alongside the headline “Student Forces Cambridge to Drop White Authors”. The following day, after the story had been picked up by a variety of other publications (including the Daily Mail) the Telegraph printed a tiny retraction which finished: “Neither [the recommendations] nor the open letter called for the University to replace white authors with black ones and there are no plans to do so”.

A storm in a teacup, you might think. Except that what this particular brand of sensationalist claptrap and the subsequent inevitable social media furore has unfortunately succeeded in doing is derailing what was, in fact, a very sensible proposal: that more black and ethnic minority writers be included within the English curriculum.

When we think of an “ism” or a “phobia” most often we associate it with affirmative action, rather than neglect. People declare themselves to be “not sexist”, for example, based on the fact that they don’t actively hate women or men, while failing to consider that unconscious gender bias is probably lurking within them somewhere, influencing their beliefs and behaviours.

Teaching awareness

I see this most often in a school environment in relation to the treatment of LGBT+ pupils. Schools - rightly - have assemblies focussing on homophobic bullying but, if the testimonials I hear from pupils are correct, they tend to wait until Year 9, or when someone in the year comes out, whichever happens first. What the school have unwittingly done in this instance is to place responsibility upon LGBT+ people for having their existence acknowledged and - in the case where one person in a year has come out - drawn further scrutiny towards them during what is already likely to be a turbulent and emotional time.

Instead, what pupils tell me they’d prefer is for their environments - be they home, school or social - to acknowledge that at least 1 in 10 people is LGBT+ and that they exist, regardless of whether they have publicly declared their sexuality.

A sense of belonging is - along with love, purpose, achievement and being heard and understood - one of the five key psychological needs. Without having these basic needs fulfilled a person is unlikely to have high self-esteem, which in turn is a fundamental component of good mental health. This goes some way to explaining, I believe, why there are much higher instances of depression and suicide in the LGBT+ community. Heteronormative assumption means that LGBT+ people cannot assume in the same way straight people can that they are accepted and that they belong.

We recognise that to isolate a single person from a community is an act of bullying. In fact, Refuge, a charity which helps victims of domestic violence, lists ignoring someone as a way abuse can be perpetrated. Yet we haven’t, it does not seem, been able to extrapolate this lesson and apply it to demographics.

Bullying by exclusion

Racism doesn’t have to be a visible act of discrimination. By omitting BME people from the narrative of British history and from the canon of English literature, we bully them by exclusion. This has far-reaching consequences because each generation appears to assume that people of colour have “popped up from nowhere”, which in turn fuels xenophobia and anti-immigration rhetoric.

In fact, there are records of black people in England as far back as the 12th century - and there is extensive documentation of the positive impact mixed race people and the communities around them had in encouraging social cohesion from the 17th century onwards. Britain could not have been as historically successful were it not for our multiculturalism. People from a huge variety of races, colours and religions have made significant cultural and sociopolitical contributions. It is only in retrospect that their efforts have been whitewashed.

The treatment of Lola Olufemi, while abhorrent, is secondary to the crucial work her open letter aimed to kickstart. Not only in higher education, but also in schools throughout the land, teachers should have the opportunity to select modules and reading material that reflects the ethnic mix of their students. In doing so, they could not only provide a better, more honest education: they would service the wellbeing of individual pupils and their communities.

Natasha Devon is the former government mental health champion for schools and founder of the Body Gossip Education Programme and the Self-Esteem Team. She tweets as @NatashaDevonMBE

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