A LEADING education campaigner is calling for Black parents to lead the teaching of Black history to the next generation.

Professor Gus John believes Black parents and communities need to prioritise teaching young people Black history and not rely on schools to do it for them.

“We cannot rely on the education system because it is flawed and biased, it doesn’t tell truth about the British Empire and the debt Britain owes all of us.

Speaking to The Voice, the award-winning academic and campaigner, said he would like to see more Black history added to the national curriculum but believes real change needs to happen within the Black community.

He said: “I would like to see more black families and parents teaching their children Black history because it will empower the next generation”

Decolonisation

“We cannot rely on the education system because it is flawed and biased, it doesn’t tell truth about the British Empire and the debt Britain owes all of us.

“So how can we expect this same system to teach our children the truth about who they really are?”

You cannot decolonise the curriculum without decolonising the institution

Prof John told The Voice, the recent promises to decolonise the national curriculum after the murder of George Floyd in the US, is not enough.

He said: “You cannot decolonise the curriculum without decolonising the institution. If you don’t understand how the institution as a whole provides cover for the way Black people’s history, creative and intellectual products are marginalised, then all you are doing is adding some new names to a book list to suggest it is not totally white and Eurocentric.”

“Decolonising the curriculum is not our job, but the responsibility of those institutions,” he added.

Prof John started the first Black Supplementary School in Birmingham with a group of colleagues in 1968, which acted as a mainstream alternative to serve the Caribbean community –whose children were often labelled as educationally subnormal.

He believes there is still a demand and need for these schools, as Black children are still experiencing inequality within educational settings.

In 2016, the Department for Education, found that black Caribbean children were three and a half times more likely to be excluded, than all other children at primary, secondary and special schools. According to the latest government figures published in February, black Caribbean pupils had the second highest permanent exclusion rates between 2018 and 2019.

Prof John, who has lived in the UK since 1964 and said it is time for a proactive approach. He said: “This has been going on for so long and we keep expecting change and it is not happening. We need to take the future of our children and grandchildren in our own hands and teach them and guide them.”

The award-winning academic has been a prominent activist against racism within education for over five decades. As a proud Grenadian, he credits his traditional Caribbean upbringing for shaping him and giving him the inspiration to be a powerful voice for the Black community.

Systemic Racism

He recently wrote a powerful opinion piece for The Voice, about the recent deportations to Jamaica and Zimbabwe.

Speaking about the piece, he said he felt compelled to write it and condemned the Home Office and the government for “violating the human rights” of those facing removal from the UK.

He said: “The justification and motivation behind these deportations is sheer structural and systemic racism.

“Our young people have been routinely criminalised by the police, not because they are more prone to evil and criminality than any other ethnic group in the population, but because the police have decided to target them.

“The targeting of them is linked to the messages the government sends out about the fact that we are not wanted here.

“Every single immigration policy has been more draconian than the one before.”

“The deportations are a fundamental abuse of human rights, it is barbaric and there can be no excuse for it,” he added.

Taking a meaningful stand

Prof John also said he would like to see another day of national action from the Black community similar to those in 1981, when 25,000 people took to streets at the National Black People’s Day of Action after the New Cross Fire.

The blaze killed 13 black teenagers who were at a house party in New Cross, south-east London and injured 27 more.

Prof John was one of the key organisers of the National Black People’s Day of Action and called for the black community to make a stand against the injustice they face in Britain.

My ultimate desire is to see us collectively, as a community, recover that strength and determination not to let the British state walk all over us.

He said: “We were sending out some powerful political messages during the National Black People’s Day of Action.

“My ultimate desire is to see us collectively, as a community, recover that strength and determination not to let the British state walk all over us”

“There is no way any of us should continue going to work and propping up the transport service and health service, while the state is treating our elders in the way that they have through the hostile environment and Windrush scandal.”

Prof John said he is “shocked” at the record number of Black people accepting OBEs and CBEs.

He said: “How is it possible at a time when the state is treating us more abysmally than it has ever done before, we are lining up to be validated by them?”.

In 1999, he was invited by then-Prime Minister Tony Blair to receive a CBE but turned it down because “it was and is meaningless and is part of the iconography of empire and is an insult to the struggle of African people.”

He stressed there should be another way to award people for their achievements without attaching it to the legacy of the British Empire.

Prof Gus John said he will continue to speak out against racism and injustice and has no plans to sit back and be silent.