5,000 signatures reached
To: Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills
Changes to history education syllabus regarding the creation of structural racism
Include a mandatory historical account of British colonisation, imperialism and involvement in the transatlantic slave trade in primary and secondary education for a deeper understanding into structural racism and white privilege
Why is this important?
In light of recent events where we as a global community have witnessed innocent black lives taken in acts of racial discrimination, we have to ask ourselves why the response of many people is still to discriminate. It is the responsibility of the educational system to highlight the history of British colonisation and involvement in the Transatlantic Slave Trade to understand how and why racial prejudice, divisions and unequal opportunities exist for black people in Scotland and Britain.
It seems that a lack of understanding of the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement comes down to a lack of education, and we cannot let this be a failing of our educational system, nor let it feed into peoples ignorance. The police brutality demonstrated in recent events unveils a universal racist system that does not afford black people the same privilege as that of white people and an understanding of this must be achieved through education.
This is as much relevant in the UK as structural racism has been evident in Grenfell, disproportionate deaths related to COVID19 and the tragic incident involving Mark Duggan, to name a few.
