New Approaches to Teaching the History of the British Empire

在英国，殖民历史应该如何在学校教授一直是重要的公共辩论主题，自2020年夏季《黑人的命也是命》以来，这一辩论愈演愈烈。传统上，这个话题是通过列出大英帝国的“利弊”来教授的，这种方法被称为“资产负债表”。在一段关于大英帝国遗产及其产生的两极分化意见的激烈公众讨论期间，延续这一传统被视为公平地反映在一个情绪化话题上存在分歧的公众意见。我的博士研究通过调查和与学生的焦点小组以及观察几个月的历史课来调查这种教学方法的后果。把殖民主义分成正反两部分，鼓励学生们把一个复杂过程的不同方面视为完全独立的。例如，学生们把“教育”说成是“亲”的，把“压制土著文化”说成是“弊”。然而，关于哪些文化更优越、哪些文化应该被压制的信念，推动了大英帝国西方教育制度的发展，证明了学校的种族隔离是合理的，并塑造了学生在这些学校所学到的内容。“利与弊”的框框使学生无法看到“利”与“弊”之间的相互联系。资产负债表方法还将英国人对其他人产生了什么影响的问题置于教训的中心。在这一框架内的唯一机构是英国人，而非洲人、亚洲人、爱尔兰人以及大洋洲和美洲的土著人民只能以英国行动的受害者或受益者的身份出现。最后，这些将事件分类为利弊的活动也--正如一位老师表达她的不适之处--“不能将相似与相似进行比较。”例如，工作表将“传播板球和橄榄球”与“跨大西洋奴隶贸易”并列为“职业”，将一段非常痛苦的历史轻描淡写。我为替代资产负债表方法的富有成效的替代方法制定了一套建议，例如，更强的地区关注度将使特定的殖民前和殖民后历史有更多的细节，从而使更广泛的群体被认为塑造了这些地区的历史。我还描述了如何使用“普通”个人的故事来展示资产负债表方法中看不见的相互联系。获得ESRC博士后奖学金将使我能够在学术期刊上发表我的研究和建议，并将我的工作展示给教师(线上和线下)，目的是刺激教学实践的改变。英国当然不是唯一一个在如何教授复杂殖民地历史的艰难历史问题上挣扎的国家。ESRC博士后奖学金将使我能够提交精心开发的申请，以资助一个多年项目，该项目在三个进一步的背景下研究这些主题。肯尼亚、南非和美国的不同政治压力促使政策制定者采取行动重组历史课程，并将在未来两年内实施这些变化。然而，在关于这些变化的公开讨论中，教师的声音并未被放在首位，许多教师害怕公开谈论这些变化，尤其是在美国。这些即将提出的申请将建议调查这些政策变化的起源及其影响，这是(匿名的)历史教师所理解的。我还将引出它们与英语背景下的辩论的相关性。英格兰的政策制定者抵制了强制修改历史课程的呼吁，并强调教师在如何解释国家课程方面拥有相对自主权的重要性。细致入微地了解这一领域的政策干预是如何被其他地方的教师接受的，有助于为参与这些辩论的教育部和民间社会组织提供信息。

How colonial history should be taught in schools has been the subject of significant public debate in England, a debate which has intensified since the 2020 summer of Black Lives Matter. Traditionally this topic has been taught by listing the 'pros and cons' of the British Empire, a method called 'the balance sheet'. During a period of intense public discussion about the legacy of the British Empire and the polarised opinions this generated, continuing in this tradition was seen as a way of fairly reflecting divided public opinion on an emotive topic. My doctoral research investigated the consequences of this teaching method through surveys and focus groups with students and observing months of history lessons. Splitting colonialism into 'pros' and 'cons' encouraged students to see different aspects of a complex process as entirely separate from each other. For example, students described 'education' as a 'pro' and 'suppressing indigenous cultures' as a 'con'. However, beliefs about which cultures were superior and which cultures should be supressed drove the growth of Western education systems in the British Empire, justified the racial segregation of schools and shaped the content of what students learnt in these schools. A framing of 'pros and cons' prevents students from seeing these interconnections between 'pros' and 'cons'. The balance sheet approach also puts the question of what effects did the British have on other people at the centre of lessons. The only people with agency in that framework are British, while Africans, Asians, Irish and Indigenous peoples of Oceania and the Americas can only appear as victims or beneficiaries of British actions. Lastly, these activities of sorting events into 'pros' and 'cons' also - as one teacher expressing her discomfort put it - "do not compare like with like." For example, worksheets which put 'spread cricket and rugby' as a 'pro' alongside 'the transatlantic slave trade' as a 'con' trivialises a very painful history.I developed a set of recommendations for productive alternatives to balance sheet approaches, e.g. a stronger regional focus would enable greater detail of specific pre- and post-colonial histories, allowing for a wider range of groups to be recognised as shaping the history of these regions. I also describe ways in which using the stories of 'ordinary' individuals can show the interconnections made invisible in balance sheet approaches. An ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship would enable me to publish my research and recommendations in scholarly journals as well as to present my work to teachers (online and offline) with the aim of stimulating change in teaching practice.England has certainly not been alone in wrestling with questions about how to teach difficult histories of a complex colonial past. An ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship would enable me to submit well-developed applications to fund a multi-year project which investigates these themes in three further contexts. Different political pressures in Kenya, South Africa and the US have led to policymakers taking action to restructure history curricula and are set to implement these changes within the next two years. However, teachers' voices have not been prioritised in public discussions of these changes and many teachers fear speaking publicly about them, particularly in the US. These forthcoming applications would propose to investigate the origins of these policy changes and their effects as understood by (anonymised) history teachers. I will also draw out their relevance for debates in the English context. Policymakers in England have resisted calls for compulsory changes to history curricula and emphasised the importance of teachers having relative autonomy in how they interpret the national curriculum. A nuanced understanding of how policy interventions in this space have been received by teachers elsewhere can helpfully inform both the DfE and civil society organisations engaged in these debates.