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Schools that teach students that “white privilege” is a fact and not a controversial point of view are breaking the law, said the Minister for Women and Equality.
Addressing MPs during a Commons debate on Black History Month, Kemi Badenoch said the government does not want children to be taught about “the privilege of white people and their inherited racial guilt.”
“Any school that teaches these elements of the political theory of race as fact, or promotes partisan political views, such as withdrawing funds from the police without offering a balanced treatment of opposing views, is breaking the law.” He said.
He added that schools have a legal obligation to remain politically impartial and should not openly support the “anti-capitalist group Black Lives Matter.”
Badenoch was speaking in response to Labor MP Dawn Butler, who had told the Commons that black children feel inferior because of what they are taught in school and that history “needs to be decolonized.”
“Right now, history is being taught to make one group of people feel inferior and another group of people feel superior, and this has to stop,” Butler said.
“It is necessary to decolonize history. You can pass [the] the entire GCSE and have no reference to any black author. You can go through history and not understand the richness of Africa and the Caribbean, you can go through history and not understand all the leaders of the black community.
Support for movements to decolonize teaching in the UK has garnered substantial support in recent years, particularly in universities, although a Guardian research found that only a fifth have committed to reforming their curriculum to address the damaging legacy of colonialism.
Former Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn also backed calls for decolonization, while Labor leader Abena Oppong-Asare lobbied for a task force to study diversifying the content taught at school.
“We want all of our children, all of our children, black and white, every corner of this country, to better understand our history so that our children have a true sense of belonging to British culture,” he said.
Badenoch rejected the claims, insisting that history in schools “is not colonized.”
“We must not apologize for the fact that British children mainly study the history of these islands, and it goes without saying that the recent craze to decolonize mathematics, decolonize engineering, decolonize science that we have seen in our universities to make race el The principle that defines what is studied is not only erroneous, but is actively opposed to the fundamental purpose of education, “he said.
Butler responded, “Sometimes, especially during Black History Month, it would be progress if [people] it could recognize the systemic racism that not only existed then, but has a lasting legacy now in our structures, that does not exist for any other group ”.
