Decolonise the Curriculum | Pran Patel | TEDxNorwichED

What does ‘Decolonise the Curriculum’ mean to you? Pran Patel looks at the school curriculum in the UK. He utilises his personal experience of education in the UK as a pupil, teacher and secondary school senior leader.
He asks questions such as what is the future of curriculum development in the UK? Why is my curriculum white? What is the impact of an ethnocentric curriculum? Will school leave some pupils feeling inferior? More importantly,​ will school leave the majority of pupils (white) in the UK with a sense of superiority? Pran Patel is a warm, friendly, passionate educator, with 15 years’ experience in schools in various London boroughs, as well as the West Midlands, most recently as a secondary assistant principal.
He believes integrity is essential and lives by the saying ‘The right thing to do is always the right to do, regardless of the consequences’.
He champions diversity, advocates positive mental health and challenges the system, for instance, he willingly risked his future employment prospects by being interviewed for the Buzzfeed article ‘Black teachers are leaving the profession due to racism’.
Pran also announced on BBC Inside Out that he suffers from bouts of anxiety, depression and sleeplessness and that current workload issues have compounded them. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx

[@egogeo]

I am sorry to say he is not very accommodating to views opposed to his ideas. Rather than discuss he shuts down opposite views. I speak from personal experience after participating in a forum with him. I hope he listens more...

[@9slides]

I agree with you. As an educator, he is so asinine. He is exactly the kind of person you wouldn't want in your school. He WILL NOT listen to opposing view and he loves to shame others.

[@dominichaigh1844]

Very true, I’ve just been blocked by him for disagreeing.

[@t_albino]

Coming from an ethnic minority here, and the more I read and hear people talk of decolonisation, the less I seem to understand them. All of your education doesnt stem from schools alone - it's up to your community and people around you to help you feel centred within your own culture.

[@kurumbiwone4005]

Learning culture in eduction system and learning eduction in cultural system. Latter is more powerful than the first one.

[@alexgibson2871]

all this de-colonise stuff. why not just start a school, or college?

[@edwinamendelssohn5129]

@@alexgibson2871 that takes effort

[@ifrit177]

Most of the facts about non-white historical people he mentions are correct and I always thought well known, I learned about them at school, college, and university from the 1990s onwards. I have heard a lot about 'decolonise the curriculum', wasn't aware he is the man who invented the term. To be honest it seems like a very devisive term for a campaign that purportedly just wants to broaden the curriculum. Then again I have seen other people using this term to suggest things like re-education and sensitivity classes, in schools and in the work place, deleting contentious figures from the curriculum, forcing some students from particular groups to take critical race, and gender studies as mandatory subjects to 'humble' them. We have seen this kind of thing lead to no platforming and a crisis of critical thinking among students. Some studies even suggest that these programs serve to widen attainment gaps between races and genders, as well as to enflame existing racial tensions. Broadent the curriculum if you will but be aware that this rhetoric can also be used to camouflage some fairly sinister politics.

[@MrGraemeb2022]

Good points.

[@PakLiam]

Important work to consider

[@pranpatel8039]

Thank you, Liam. In your setting we really need to make change. I’m so happy you’re engaging.

[@devinmcgroot7560]

not important at all. useless.

[@theplaylabchicago]

Bravo!🙌🏾

[@MrGraemeb2022]

Dear oh dear...

[@sambeal3011]

Engaging overview of the challenges in UK curriculum with practical 'can do' ideas for ways forward. Thank you.

[@pranpatel8039]

Thanks, Sam. I’d love to hear about the ways you’re decolonising the curriculum in your context.

[@jo18533]

@@pranpatel8039 It's not difficult, it just means replacing white authors with non-white ones.

[@funkydanieluk]

@@jo18533 And that would help...how?

[@333stevo]

I think, but I’m not sure, that it was Du Bois that said it is human nature for people to want to live in a society that reflects their own identity. Things like this only expose the faults at the heart of mass immigration and multiculturalism.

[@collegesandcannibals241]

It always seems to be the angriest men who have the most wheedling voices.

[@itsuki6883]

shot up mate👍🙈

[@funkydanieluk]

So the problem is that historical figures aren't the right colour? If you are in the UK, you are going to mainly learn UK history and a UK point of view. In India, I am sure they learn all about India and its wonderful culture and rich history, but the UK isn't India. We aren't physically capable of teaching students all the culture and history of the entire planet.

[@jagbirkaur6754]

Oh and one more thing the histprical figures we learn about were not he pioneers of whatever they claim to be...so yeah they're not the right colour! Colonialism literally erased much of the truth about who these historical figures should have been!With the invention of guns, wuropeans thought they can simply rewrite history and put themselves on top and shoot whoever tries to stop them! The only advatage the chickens had, and now they're complaining about the roosters coming home to roost!

[@harishshaddy]

First 🤗

[@pranpatel8039]

Thank you for being first.

[@GospelArtRocks]

This feels like a poor excuse of a theme to talk , but isn´t it just bad, it is misleading, trying to get over drammatic over a issue that isn´t really an issue at all. Also, the way that he tries to force his ideas as a mind blowing new experience, is poor, bad skils with bad subject makes a incredible boring ted .

[@johnbald8635]

Ramanajan. This is propaganda, and the propagandist is very particular about who he talks to.

[@aezad9069]

I don't think your white counterpart (as you so call him) can take credit for what other people in his identity group have accomplished. As such, neither party should have felt any sense of superiority or inferiority. Suffice it to say, the purpose of school should be to learn skills, and a wide variety of material can be used to practices those skills from a wide variety of cultures. When it comes to things such as the sciences and mathematics, the earliest civilizations established the foundational knowledge off of which western scientists and mathematicians would build. Those contributions are, however, learned, such as the concept of 0, but the origins of such concepts are overlooked in favor of simply teaching the concept. It would be good if time were taken to focus on analysis of the contexts - and by proxy, the cultures - in which these concepts were created. In any case, it seems to me that concepts developed in the West are contextualized more simply because those happen to be the current foundational concepts off of which future mathematicians and scientists are to build. The periodic table of elements, for instance, was developed by a Russian chemist, and we currently have experiments being done in nuclear power plants to see what happens when different elements are bombarded with neutrons, etc. This "colonization of the curriculum", thus, may be intentional, or it may be happenstance.

[@ifrit177]

Exactly, why can't we just tell the truth and let people make their own minds up. Plenty of achievement to go round. European intelectual contributions don't automatically diminish other groups.

[@jo18533]

'I don't think your white counterpart (as you so call him) can take credit for what other people in his identity group have accomplished.' If we can't be proud of our past then we also can't feel guilty about our past.

[@LiamNajor]

That title is so asinine my brain just short circuited...

[@ldr540]

“Decolonise the curriculum?” BAME need to decolonise from the UK, and go home.

[@itsuki6883]

ffs

[@ldr540]

@@itsuki6883 Yeah I know, the colonisation of the UK is sad. The British decolonised from India, so don't worry, pretty soon it will be time for Asians to return the favor and leave the UK.

[@OliviaElle1001]

'and go home'....What if they were born in England?

[@ldr540]

@@OliviaElle1001 It’s tricky, leaving could be encouraged through incentives rather than by force.

[@OliviaElle1001]

@@ldr540 what are you even saying?🙄