Schools don’t need an ‘anti-racist’ curriculum

English schools are not ‘anti-racist’ enough, a coalition of identitarian organisations has declared. In an open letter to the Labour government, published last month, they warn that a ‘crisis’ of racism ‘is holding all young people back’.

This bizarre accusation is a response to education secretary Bridget Phillipson’s ongoing review of the curriculum in England. The coalition, which includes groups like Everyday Racism, the Centre for Mental Health and the Black Curriculum, as well as writer Nels Abbey, recommends that ‘anti-racist’ content be embedded into the curriculum and that ‘black history’ be made a compulsory subject.

Of course, the idea that schools are rife with racism and ruining kids’ prospects is total nonsense. For starters, a 2022 government report found that pupils from ethnic-minority backgrounds are happier, more academically confident and less likely to feel bullied than their white peers. Multiple non-white groups even outperform white pupils in school. Data for 2022 show that, of pupils entered for the English Baccalaureate (usually the most academically able), 34 per cent were white, while 47 per cent were black.

Not that introducing the nebulous subject of ‘black history’ would do much to help those students who are struggling at school. What, exactly, is even meant by black history? The history of Nigeria? Zimbabwe? Kenya? Jamaica? The American Civil Rights movement? And how would it help to boost the grades of non-black ethnic-minority students who, we are expected to assume, are also suffering due to racism in the classroom?

Who’s to say that a racialised classroom and curriculum would even be welcomed by black pupils? Many of them will be far more curious about the history of Britain – the country in which they live, together with their white peers – than that of their recent or distant ancestors. Besides, surely no child wants to be continually reminded of how different they are from their classmates, or told that their identity must revolve around being a victim.

This isn’t the first time that identitarians have tried to hijack Phillipson’s curriculum review in the name of racial politics. Back in September, one of the review’s advisers, Funmilola Stewart, made the astonishing claim that a failure to teach anti-racism in schools led to the riots this summer. Stewart took to X to bemoan ‘people questioning “Why we make everything about race” instead of questioning people’s prejudice’.

What the anti-racist activists fail to grasp is that the classroom is not the place to do this. Do they really believe that forcing bored teenagers to sit through unconscious-bias training will actually make them any less prejudiced – if, indeed, they’re even prejudiced to begin with?

This misconception is partially the result of a now commonplace idea that schools should be teaching ‘skills’, rather than knowledge. Chair of the OCR exam board Charles Clarke sums up this mistaken belief in a report from September, when he writes: ‘[School] should be more about enabling young people to develop the skills and confidence to meet the challenges which they will face in the future than simply acquiring the canons of knowledge which have been built up over centuries.’

Of course, the glaring omission here is that those canons of knowledge have been built up and passed down for a reason. In engaging with such knowledge, pupils’ own independence of thought and judgement is strengthened. We can all agree that racism is deplorable. But rather than simply teaching kids not to be racist, it would be far preferable, and more academically enriching, to teach them about the history, literature, philosophy and science that went into creating today’s liberal and tolerant society.

Schools have more than one function. They enable pupils to gain qualifications. They socialise the young into precepts needed to live alongside people other than immediate family. They also contribute to maintaining a common culture – without which the integration of ethnic-minority citizens is nearly impossible. Yet it is precisely this common culture that activists have in their crosshairs. Each push for an ‘anti-racist’ or ‘decolonised’ curriculum brings yet more damage.

If these supposed anti-racist activists really care about helping non-white pupils go far in life, and fostering a classroom environment that welcomes everyone, they should start by ditching the divisive identity politics. We should be teaching kids that there is far more that unites them than divides them.

Alka Sehgal Cuthbert is director of campaign group Don’t Divide Us.