DURING the holidays, my family and I watched a movie called the Six Triple Eight. It’s the heroic, true story of the only all-Black and all-female unit of the Women’s Army Corps to serve overseas during the Second World War.
We’d already seen the inspirational movie Hidden Figures, focusing on three African-American female mathematicians who endured sexism and racism to make themselves essential to the success of early spaceflight.
I’d also already watched The Tuskegee Airmen, about the group of African-American pilots who overcame racist pushback to become some of the finest US fighters in the Second World War.
You’ll have probably seen similar movies. Perhaps Glory starring Denzel Washington where we learned all about the unit of free Black volunteers who, commanded by a white officer, fought racism and ignorance to prove their valour in battle.
Maybe the 2013 movie Belle, which chronicles the life of Dido Belle who was born into slavery and raised as an aristocrat in 18th century London?
Or Ruby Bridges, the first Black child to attend an all-white school in the American South. Not in the 20s or 30s but in the same year The Beatles were formed – 1960.
Perhaps you’ve seen the Small Axe film series, providing an insight into the discrimination, resilience and triumph in the face of racism endured by the Black community in Britain, in particular between the 60s and 80s.
With a diverse school curriculum years ago, these movies would not be our gateway into these important stories. We’d already know. So would our kids.
So along comes Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson with a move to “refresh” our “outdated curriculum”, only to be met this week with a wailing and a gnashing of teeth from traditionalists.
To some critics whose business model remains intransigence, the diversity they picked up from Upstairs Downstairs or Downton Abbey is all they’ll ever be interested in. They are aghast at anything that upsets their ideas of the past.
Not only do they reject the research and idea of education, they frame even the idea of it as heresy. They try to worry or anger you into mistakenly believing an important plank of our history is being wiped out, rather than corrected.
Sought for his view on the potential changes, Sir John Hayes, the former Conservative education minister, spluttered: “There’s a canon of English literature, there’s a factual basis to learning, and you can’t twist the facts to suit your political agenda.”
Teachers’ union NASUWT, the Association of School and College Leaders, the National Association of Head Teachers, National Education Union and OCR, one of England, Wales and Northern Ireland’s five main exam boards, would all beg to differ.
All have supported the plans with the National Education Union insisting the curriculum should “prepare all students for life in modern, diverse Britain”. Still, Sir John, 66, was standing his ground.
“The pretence that some things count and others don’t – that’s just not intellectually rigorous,” he told The Telegraph.
Filmmakers and production companies have, over several decades, thrown billions of pounds behind a litany of movies to illustrate just that.
Most open-minded parents and grandparents welcome that education. They understand we are living in a more enlightened world, unlike the one they grew up in. The vitriol says more about the critics than the plans.