Teach Middle East Podcast
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Teach Middle East Podcast
Beyond DEI - Decolonizing Education with Rosemary Campbell-Stevens
Rosemary Campbell-Stevens, veteran educator and decolonisation advocate, shares her journey from the Investing in Diversity programme to her current work reimagining education systems worldwide through a decolonial lens.
• How the "Investing in Diversity" programme transformed leadership for global majority educators from 2003-2011
• The powerful shift from identifying as "ethnic minority" to embracing "global majority" identity
• Growing up in a "nationalistic Jamaican household" that fostered pride and global consciousness
• Why DEI initiatives often fail to create meaningful change in international schools
• The colonial roots of education systems designed to produce compliant workers rather than develop full humanity
• How parallel systems of self-determination can complement efforts to reform existing institutions
• The importance of creating education systems where no child leaves without a strong sense of self
• Current projects including decolonising corporate business models and establishing a CARICOM education commission
Contact Rosemary at rosemary@second-principle.com to learn more about her work in decolonising education systems.
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Hosted by Leisa Grace Wilson
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Speaker 2:Hello everyone. This is Lisa Grace coming to you again with another episode of the Teach Middle East podcast, season six. Today's episode is a little bit self-indulgent. I have to be very upfront with my listeners because I'm going to be talking a lot of personal stuff, maybe from my history and my journey in England, teaching in England as a young teacher, and then I'm also going to be gleaming from the knowledge of the one, the only, rosemary Campbell-Stevens, a veteran, someone I look up to, someone I admired for years and years. I am so happy to have you on the podcast. Welcome.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, lisa. Listen, it's a great, great opportunity to be able to reach your audience, but also it is lovely to reconnect with you, so I consider this an honor, thank you so much you know.
Speaker 2:All right. So I'm going to tell the story. Guys, I met Rosemary I'm sure she doesn't remember poor little old me, but here's the deal. I was 20, I want to say 23, 24 years old. I was teaching in Enfield at a little school called, not little biggish school, called Lee Valley High School in Enfield on Bullsmore Lane that's how specific it is. And I once my principal rang me and she said come and see me, you might have something you might be interested in. At the time I was one of two black teachers in the school. I would travel up from Edmonton I you know my base is Tottenham, so obviously I'm traveling up from my ends to Enfield in a working class white neighborhood, bullsmore Lane, right in the heart of it, to teach at Lee Valley. And she said to me I think you might be interested in this program called Investing in Diversity. And so she said I will put you on if you say yes. So I was like, yes, any little thing, like I'm keen, went on this program. I think I went on a retreat.
Speaker 1:I want to say sorry, arquette, I can't remember where we went retreat I want to say sorry or Kent I can't remember where we went, okay, okay, so that would be in London. We, we used to start investing in diversity in a residential, and that would run from Friday evening through till Sunday afternoon, and it was in Greenwich.
Speaker 2:Greenwich. It was somewhere south. Listen, south of the river means I'm out of my depth, yeah. So I went to this thing and at that time, like I said, I was in my early 20s and the Lisa you see today who is so talkative and outgoing is a bit of a facade. I am very, very quiet, and I was even quieter then. So I remember I was on this residential and you gave us some scenarios to do, yes, and then we had to do these scenarios and then we had to do some feedback and you were in the group hearing the feedback and I sat there quiet as a mouse because, one, I was out of my depth and two, I was just well intimidated by everybody there.
Speaker 2:And I remember you saying to me what do you have to say? I guess you probably felt sorry for me sitting in the corner looking like I've lost. I've lost the will, and you said you, what do you have to say? And I spoke, spoke. And then you said to me you make a lot of sense. Next time don't sit with your knowledge so quietly and not say anything. Speak up, learn to find your voice. That was, like you know, a seminal moment. It was so pivotal for me because it clicked in my head. I I'm like no one will ever know what I'm capable of if I sit in the corner. But I think growing up I kind of had my voice beaten out of me a bit, so I was always really quiet and so that was my turning point. So this is why I always say to people when they say oh, I said there was this lady who I admired forever. Because she said that to me, I started to speak for myself a little bit more each time, and that's how it began. So thank you.
Speaker 1:Oh, bless, bless your heart, bless your heart. That's such a lovely story as well because investing in diversity started in 2003. And at that time I had already been working in education for 20 plus years, so you know, when we started, investing in diversity was definitely about was for us, as global majority educators, to find our voice. I love that.
Speaker 2:That was where I learned the whole term global majority. And you saw that into us because I used to use the other phrase ethnic minority, because that's what we grew up learning in schools and stuff like that ethnic minority, because that's what we grew up learning in schools and stuff like that. So we we took that on and kind of embraced that. But you turned that for me when you thought no, when you look at the world, we are the majority. How did that come about?
Speaker 1:okay. So, lisa, I was invited, alongside a number of other Black educators, to attend a conversation that was being held at the Institute of Education at University College London about the state of London schools, and at that time, the Labour administration was setting up a huge multi-million pound program called the London Challenge, and the London Challenge was focused on raising the attainment of London school children, and so part of that big program I think you know it was probably about 80 million back then in the day, and you know it ran from 2003 to 2011. A significant part of the program was focused on leadership, and so I was invited, alongside a group of about 10 other black educators, to discuss principally why it was that there weren't more black and Asian and minority ethnic was the term then people in leadership positions in London schools and why they were not getting through NPQH. But the conversation was very much in the deficit mode, as it usually is around not enough of us having the confidence, not having the experience to put ourselves forward, minoritizing us, as opposed to looking at the racist, eugenicist system that was ensuring that black and other global majority people were not getting through mpqh. There are lots of people who wanted to come on the investing in diversity program and didn't have the kind of head teacher that you had and to get onto lots of programs we had to. You know, people would contact us and say my head wouldn't bat me on this, and there are lots of deputies who contacted us that said they were not getting the support that they needed to get through NPQA and so the systemic racism wasn't part of the conversation and so the systemic racism wasn't part of the conversation.
Speaker 1:Sadly to say, the majority of Black leaders sitting around that table, locked into the kind of colonial mindset of you know, we don't need a special treatment, et cetera, et cetera, refused to say that we needed something alongside NPQH, not to replace, but alongside NPQH. That was not about bringing our people up to speed. Our people were up to speed, but it was about us addressing the systemic racism in the system that was needed in order for more of us to break through. And how could we, as global majority leaders, begin to do that? And the first thing we needed to do was to not call ourselves ethnic minorities, because we were ethnic minorities in London or on the planet. And the minute you have that shift in mindset, you have different conversations about what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because it takes away that victim mentality and it empowers you to think of yourself as worthy. And that's what I walked away with when I did that program that sense of worthiness, that I belong and I should take up space. And when I tell you, I'm not saying it was the only thing that propelled me, but it was one of the fuels in my tanker that actually pushed me forward. I saw things from a different lens, because you have to understand. When you grow up around Tottenham or you grow up around Edmonton, what do you see of our people? And it's not that they're not capable, it's not that they're not smart they are but the system holds them in that position and locks them in. And until you see yourself outside of that, you can't move forward. And that's what happened. Is that you know you think the system would try to help. You did not, did not.
Speaker 2:That was the only piece of I would call it professional development that has ever stuck out in my mind and I've done many years of professional learning and I think one of the reasons is that I always say to people you cannot be what you cannot see for me. I saw you and I was like she's a Jamaican woman, tall, very sure of herself. It was not something I had seen before, especially within the space. So when we used to come for the twilight sessions at institute of ed and I used to look around because I'm very like, I was quieter but I was very observant and I would look around at all the other lecturers and stuff and I was like there was everyone and then there was you and I was like, see, this is what I'm talking about. It was such a novel not a novelty, but it was such a good thing to see somebody who you could look at and emulate. And I wondered, from your perspective, how effective do you think that program was, that investing in diversity, like? What feedback have you gotten over the years?
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 1:I think it was hugely influential. So for your. 3.5 million pounds was put into investing in diversity. It ran for eight years, from 2003 through to 2011,. So the full length of the London Challenge programme, which is unusual for Black-led initiatives, because usually there's a sort of a kickstart in terms of funding and then they cut it after 18 months and then they don't talk about the impact. A thousand teachers in London alone went through that program in over the course of those eight years and they were all aspiring leaders, so middle leaders upwards, a significant number of the leaders that you will see now in the space. If you look in linkedin, you know your diana asagi's, your ann pal you're. If we talk about the leader of the equity and social justice, they've just set up a university model Paul Miller. There are a lot of people and a lot of schools in London that are now top in terms of student attainment, where either people were tutors on that program, like Paul Miller and Diana Osagie they went through that program, like yourself or entire senior leadership levels in certain schools went through that program and we are now seeing the results in terms of their academic output.
Speaker 1:So investing in diversity was so successful after just four years. It was a franchise, if you like was bought by the University of Toronto, oise, and they ran the program for several years and that's where the collaboration came in, with Professor John Portelli and Dr Hervine Singh, who is now in your part of the world. And then we ran programs. We developed programs Investing in Diversityors, developed programs right across England Outside of London. We had investing in diversity leads, but when you go to Yorkshire and Humber, we had diverse leaders. We had a program in Bristol, we had a program in Liverpool. Now, none of these things have been documented outside of what we are doing and so investing in diversity, people are already beginning to document some of that, what is now a 20-odd year legacy. So I think we've been hugely influential.
Speaker 1:And then there's the numbers of us who have moved out onto the global stage, and so I still do work with people across the continent of Africa who were investing in diversity graduates, if you like, people who are leading change across their systems and, of course, out here in the Caribbean.
Speaker 1:Some of us came back, but a lot of us went over to Africa or are in the Middle East and across the world, and really it's a massive program that I hope that somebody will do the research on in terms of its impact, to quantify it, because one of the reasons that I wrote my little book, educational Leadership and the Global Majority Decolonizing Narratives, wasage and African heritage, part of the global majority and land in Gatwick and somehow morph into being a minority ethnic.
Speaker 1:It's very, very limited thinking. So even when people try to look at it numerically and say, oh well, you're not a global majority in Kent, well, what does global mean? I'm a global citizen wherever I go. So if I walk into one room anywhere on planet, any postal code, I'm still part of the global majority and what we need to do is to tap in to that lineage. We are not starting from scratch. We have things that we have to say and right about now, as the systems are colliding and, you know, just collapsing, we need to widen that intellectual space and more of us need to find our voice in that space.
Speaker 2:Very much so. What's led to this passion? What's your background, what's your history? Because we see you well, I see you as a starring figure. But where did it start, like? Where did you grow up? Where did you go to school? What led you to education?
Speaker 1:I'm hearing you loud and clear and I have these conversations all the time because my mother will be 99 in a couple of weeks. Where is she? In England? In Newtown, in Birmingham. She will be 99 years. Let's start with my parents. I was born in Handsworth in Birmingham. That's where I was born, not in Jamaica, handsworth, birmingham, but in 1968, when I was born in 1961, in 1968, my father died. Yes, that's why you, as a little 23-year-old yeah, I'm 64. Whoa.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you've got to tell me what you eat, what you drink, all right, what you do after Coconut water.
Speaker 1:Woo, also black, don't crack and live good, oh, wow, oh, anyway. Anyway, I grew up in a very nationalistic Jamaican household. My parents were of the Windrush generation but they never gave me any of that claptrap about coming over to England and thinking that the streets were paved with gold or that I would have to work twice or three times as hard to be as good as white people. I never got any of that in my household, none of it. In 1968, my father died when I was seven years old and the last thing that I remember him saying to us in like you know, kind of like a serious way as a family and that was me, my younger sister, joe, my older brother and sister had already left home he wanted us to watch something on the TV and our TV was a really big deal. My parents had bought a five bedroom, three reception room house, victorian house in Birmingham that I couldn't afford to buy.
Speaker 1:Now that's where I grew up Working class people but with a different kind of mindset and my father said to me and joe we needed to come into the front room, which we were allowed to go to the front room every now and again to play. But when it was to watch telly, it was to be watch serious things and we needed to watch. What was on the tv and what we were watching was dr martin luther king's funeral. I didn't realize it at the time. I thought that it was dr martin luther king I could see the grainy black and the time I thought that it was Dr Martin Luther King I could see the grainy black and white pictures and knew that he was a black man, that he was an American and that we were connected. So the whole thing about global majority. I always saw myself as a global person and connected to other black people, and so I grew up in Handsworth through 1970s, passed my 11 plus, went to the grammar school at the time when there was a color bar being operated in Birmingham, and so knowing our history is really, really, really important.
Speaker 1:Now, that could have meant me saying, well, oh so I'm special that I've managed to pass my 11 plus and go to King Edward's grammar school. But no, the intervention of a fabulous whitehead teacher ensured, because he told my mother don't put down any of those other schools for Rosemary, she's going to pass her 11th class, she's going to go to king edward. Mom had never heard of king edward's because by that time her father had died, and so he guided us. But a few years later, when my younger sister took the same 11th class, grew up in the same home, just as bright as me in fact, joe was brighter than me didn't pass. My mother challenged that. And then there was some kind of interaction between her and the school no, not her and the school with the local authority which said that year the pass rate, you know that they'd change, et cetera, et cetera. It just so happened that none of the black girls who got into King Edward's ever had a sister or a brother who went through to those foundation schools. So clearly you know 14, you're growing up, you're watching Roots on the telly and this is all before your time. But that was part of our transitioning and so on.
Speaker 1:1980s was when I first qualified to teach.
Speaker 1:Early 1980s, that's when our cities were burning.
Speaker 1:While I was training to be a teacher at Birmingham University, I was also part of Pan-Africanist organizations, and so the one Pan-Africanist organizations and so the one pan-Africanist organization that was a part of run sat day schools as well as ran a building company and also looked at ways that we could be self-sufficient in food. So that's my grounding. I couldn't be anything other than that, not what the family that I grew up in, not in the space that I grew up in, but also Lisa, it's about the time because one of the things that I say to myself in terms of you know, younger generation people like yourself and those who follow you, the time that you grew up in as well as the space, is very, very important. So to be a child of the 60s, when that whole kind of world revolutionary movement 68 in particular when the father died is a critical historical year across all diasporan communities, around race and the reckoning with race. And then because my parents, you know, would have been born, as I said, my mother is 99.
Speaker 2:So you know pan-Africanist movements that had started, marcus Garvey, all of those that they would have been steeped in that, and so that's what's grounded and guided me yeah, and it's so funny because you're talking about how very poignant those days were and now I'm looking at today's days and how a lot of the structures that were built up to facilitate a level of inclusivity and diversity is now being dismantled and it makes me wonder what do you think we should be doing in these days, because now it's like a reversal. We're going back to the 60s somehow.
Speaker 1:Well, you see, one of the missteps I think, perhaps in our generation generation my generation and the generation that came before is that pan-Africanist movements were actually about self-development, you know, being self-determining. It wasn't all about fitting into existing systems and trying to shift them. It was about building our own parallel movements and ways of being, as well as shifting the system so that everybody really could have more equity. So to give you a very, very clear example that five bedrooms, three reception halls my father couldn't initially get a mortgage for it. So what did they then pull on? Did they start lobbying the banks and the building society and this that that no, no, no, no, no, no, no, then set up their own way of operating called partner yeah, I know what that is exactly, and every african person knows what that is and every asian person knows what that is, because they have it in their cultural frameworks.
Speaker 1:And so part of what it is to be self-determining and part of the reason that we haven't moved forward is that we haven't built our parallel systems, the equivalent of partner in terms of education, in terms of our economics, in terms of how we manage our food, in terms of how we manage our health, as well as trying to decolonize this deeply colonial system that we are now find ourselves in and has spread its tentacles across the world. So it has to be parallel traps. Lisa, yeah, I had that conversation with one of our colleagues on linkedin this morning where he say, well, these systems don't exist. Yes, bruv, they do. They do.
Speaker 1:The reason that you know, partner and all of those things, the reason my mother's 99 years old, is that she has a Jamaican diet. That's an African diet that suits her disposition. She eats banana, she eats ackee, she eats breadfruit, she eats all of those things. And she also has, you know, a part-time school, chinese food and Indian food. You know, my mom is that's one of the things that is really been grounded in me. My mum is that's one of the things that is really been grounded in me that how you ground yourself physically, spiritually, intellectually, will take you through and enable you to actually be who you're supposed to be and therefore do what you're supposed to do at any given time. And the only way that I can stand I'm glad you called me tall, because I'm not well. Yeah, to me it's like yeah, you see who I do stand tall. I do stand tall. And and I think the other thing is that we don't look at legacy enough I always go back to legacy. I always go back to the shoulders that I stood on. So, if you remember, investing in diversity, friday night we always start with professor gosjan. Yes, we always start with professor gosjan, because he was my mentor before mentoring was a thing. Yeah, so to teach the next generation that I'm not the poorest one talking about these things, here are the elders. Let them tell you how that people used to organize, how, at that same institute where we used to sit in those sessions in those evenings during the week.
Speaker 1:That's where Bernard Coward wrote how the British educational system made the west indian child subnormal bad rephrase of the book. He wrote them in those spaces that we're sitting in decades before. So none of us are coming with nothing new and we must build on legacy. We must understand legacy, understand what it is that we need to do now in our time. And now in our time is not about us wasting time continually reacting to a systemically racist system. What we can do, lisa, is to limit the harm of that system. How, what kind of ways?
Speaker 1:I've got friends now who are still head teachers, and one of them in particular was talking the other day about the numbers of children in her school that come from refugee communities. So one of her and her staff priorities, irrespective of Ofsted, is to ensure that those kids have something to eat every day and, because they are living in accommodation where they cannot wash their clothes, that they can come to school and bring them clothes and get that wash. That's how we lead from, you know. And, by the way, literacy and numeracy rates are off the charts. So that's the easy bit. But the real bit of being a school leader in times like these, with kids like these and with the communities that we serve, is that we focus on our priorities as leaders and not be afraid and ashamed to do that. That's one tiny thing, but can you imagine what it's like for those kids in that beautiful, beautiful school?
Speaker 2:it's like a refuge for them.
Speaker 1:It's a safe space of course, and so we lift the level of what it is the purpose of education.
Speaker 2:I know we do talk a lot about Maslow's hierarchy of needs and we talk about it in you know, very abstract ways. But you're right, if my clothes are dirty and if I'm hungry, your theories and your content means absolutely nothing to me, because I've got unmet basic needs In 1993, I was a young Ofsted inspector.
Speaker 1:Ofsted had only just been created, I think in 92 or 93. At that time I was, before becoming an Ofsted inspector, I was an advisor in the London Borough of Waltham Forest for institutional review and development and what that meant is that I was advising headteachers. I was only you know, I was young, I was in my 30s, early, early 30s Became an after inspector. I remember inspecting a school. I'm secondary trained as well, my subject is English, but I often did the leadership and management element of the report. They needed somebody to do a primary school inspection and so I've fitted in because, you know, I was able to just do that. I remember going into that primary school and standing in the dinner queue in 1993 and watching a kid go up to get his dinner and then watching him sit down and then his brother, who was in a different year group, came in and he said it wasn't his turn to eat Because somehow I don't know how it was, whether they were both not getting free school meals or whatever it was, but it was like he needed to share his dinner with his brother.
Speaker 1:1993, london, in the late 1980s, after I'd spent five joyous years as a deputy head in Coventry and I moved to headship. I remember in a secondary school white working class secondary school you could count the black children on one hand and it was me and the cleaners there as black people in that school. So there the fight was on class and I remember seeing a kid walking, you know, through the corridor thinking to himself he's a really disabled white kid. And so I approached one of his friends and I said look, what's happened to Simon, why is Simon? And he said oh, miss, don't say anything, don't say anything, don't say anything. I said look, what's happened to Simon, why is Simon living? And he said oh, miss, don't say anything, don't say anything, don't say anything. I said what? He was living in a car. He'd been living in a car for two weeks. His parents kicked him out the house. When he was able to, he managed to squeeze and go and get him shirt, his wash in his friend's house, which often meant that they were both late for school, etc. Etc.
Speaker 1:You have to live in the real world of the people that you serve. So, of course, one of the first things that I started in my school then was breakfast club, because you can't teach kids who are hungry, yeah, and they'll be falling asleep or badly behaved by 10 o'clock. So basic is ofsted. Looking at that, I don't care. It's what is required in order for us to fully fulfill our function as leaders. That's why I love people like Koso okay, because I met him many, many years later very disciplined young man and a very thoughtful and deep young man, and he was always interested in other things other than putting kids through processes that prepare them for the world of work, and that's where our leadership needs to be. Now. What kind of human beings are we developing? Do they have the skills for life?
Speaker 2:because if they do, the skills for work will be yeah, I wonder as well, because the context that we serve here with international private schools, there is always a talk about DEI and about inclusion, but it's very theoretical. There is no practical application that I have seen of true DEI being implemented in any effective way. What people tend to do is they tend to do the easier things, like they might put a few books from authors who are from the global majority, or if they're showcasing things on their websites or brochures etc. They try their best to find one or two students from the global majority, or maybe the one member of staff from the global majority who are on their team to put forward for those brochures. But when you look at their senior leadership teams, middle leadership teams, teams, etc. The people they hire in for consultancy, the people they bring in for training, it screams homogeny.
Speaker 2:There you go and I'm really curious as to what can be done in such a environment where one these are international private schools, so they're run by private organizations. Majority of them are profit-led. There are one or two little drops of not-for-profits in there, but the vast majority are for corporations that are shareholder first and they sell a, especially the british international schools. They sell a ideology of britain equals white, and they actually say things like we offer an authentic British school experience, which always makes me think have you been to England any time recently? What exactly does that mean an authentic British experience in your school here in Bahrain or somewhere? And so I'm really, you know, I'm curious. How can we start to address some of those issues? Because it's so nuanced, with the profit part of it, because if it were government, you could legislate and you could come at it from a legislative perspective, but having it being so led by shareholders, I'm like I'm at a loss.
Speaker 1:Listen, that was a beautiful exposition of how white supremacist systems work globally. Yeah, and I'm sorry to use those terms in the DEI space, but we need to start using those terms in the DEI space. You see, dei makes it sound nice and you know, diversity, inclusion, equity, as if it's separate to white supremacist systems. White supremacist system, white supremacist systems, is what you have across colonial education systems across the world, whether they're in Abu Dhabi, london, kingston, jamaica or Nairobi or Delhi, wherever those tentacles have spread, they actually are rooted in white supremacism. So diversity, inclusion, is a side issue.
Speaker 1:As you say, what is the purpose of their education system? The purpose of their education systems is to maintain the system. Yeah, it isn't about bringing in people or diversifying the system or, dare I say, decolonizing the system. No, it's not about that. It's about maintaining the system. So, yes, all of their little, you know, approaches a little black book on the shelf and a lovely black face on them poster. This is why I say you know, we can't reduce our conversation around equity, inclusion and diversity to who is sitting at the table Number one. It's not our table. They always catch him at the edge.
Speaker 2:I'm going to translate for my listeners like catching, I'm going to have to have some texts. I've not heard that expression in a long time Catch A catch.
Speaker 1:So you're catching at somebody else's table number one. You're playing by their rules number two. At somebody else's table number one, you're playing by their rules number two, because only those of us who play by those rules are really afforded the space to enact and have any kind of efficacy, because we're not changing anything, we're just maintaining. So it really is about it. So it really is about. That's why I talk about limiting the harm. Yeah, but also now we do have to be serious about where we sit in terms of decolonizing education system, because we will get to a space, even in international school, where the systems that are running are just not producing what is needed for our society to survive. And so the decolonizing of systems, looking at things through different lenses if we were just to think about economics, food, and look at agricultural policy, health, climate change, never mind education system, if we decolonize the systems around those areas and included perspectives like yours and mine, then we'd be having different conversations about what is going on in the world and it would be beneficial for everybody.
Speaker 1:Lisa, but the current systems are not meant for everybody. They have eugenicist roots that are based on who is deserving and who is not. And remember, in terms of eugenicist thinking. We black african people are at the bottom of the pile in terms of what we are considered to actually be able to contribute. Yes, so even our assessments, our standardized assessment tests, have eugenicist rules that will place black children at the bottom, brown children in the middle and white children at the top, but they don't work for even all of those classes of children if you're cut across it in that way. So people talk about, you know, the diversity, equity and inclusion, and I know it's important for us to have people pushing boundaries in those spaces. But I think that, to prevent us burning ourselves out, just being honest with ourselves, this system is doing what it was set up to do. It's not broken. It's only us that have a problem with it. Everybody else is cool. So it's like what you're trying to change.
Speaker 2:I mean, if it's serving who it's meant to serve, why would they dismantle it? I got a question for you. Talk a lot about decolonization. So for my listeners, who don't really understand what that concept means, what does it mean to you? How do we define decolonization?
Speaker 1:okay, part of the thing that links the global majority African, asian, black, brown, mixed heritage, arab, indigenous peoples of the global south and those who have been racialized and minoritized as minorities is colonization. Okay, that's one of the things that link us, that when you look across all of those peoples and societies, there has been colonization, largely from the West and European. So there's systems, education, particularly if we look across Africa and the Caribbean. But you know, look beyond that, look to the Singapore's, look to your Vietnam's, look to your Australia, look to your Canada, look right across. These places have all had the tentacles of British educational system. So that's the first light bulb moment. What other systems are in place? Well, there's language and the use of English. That's another colonial leftover. There's also and now I'm going into tricky territory religion and Christianity.
Speaker 1:If we're looking at decolonization, what we are saying is 85 of the world is not white, but the systems, the primary systems that run the world and are now actually imploding, not working on all of the levels that I've talked about economics, agriculture, global climate change, et cetera, et cetera. The people who are mostly suffering from those systems are global majority people. So we need to decolonize ourselves from those systems. So part of me is yeah, I played my part in the uk. I got my you know mb for 35 years service to education. All right, I played my part, but now I have to be looking at, well, what is the role in terms of us globally decolonizing our system?
Speaker 1:We have a colonized education system out here in Jamaica and across the Caribbean. It does not serve us, so why are we holding on to it? We have to create education systems that have a different purpose. Number one and all the rubrics that go with that how we assess students, how we place students, what the roles of schools are, public sector as opposed to privately owned, and privately owned without any ethical, you know, underpinnings or any real commitment to nation building. So the kind of privatization of education that's happened where you are in the UK, etc. Etc. The academization, you know we could see that going in the wrong direction for a long time. So the work that I'm doing, primarily from the Caribbean, but right across the globe, is about developing decolonized education system, starting them from scratch. What do we now need from our education system?
Speaker 2:What do we now need? Tell me, I do we now need? Tell me, I want to know what, because you're doing work in the space and we talk a lot about it's no longer fit for purpose, so I want to know what's the need. Where are we going?
Speaker 1:so the colonial education system had a very simple direction of travel and purpose. The time when, when Britain set up public as in for the majority of children in the UK public education system towards the end of the 1800s, was as they were moving into the Industrial Revolution and what they needed from their education system was to have compliant workers, who were largely living in rural parts of Britain, move into the cities that were going to drive industrial revolution. That's how you ended up with schools for the masses in the uk, and they're clear about it. There's books written about it. So that was the purpose. Is that the purpose of education? No, yeah, for every society needs to have a new conversation because they got this all it's like. It's like us trying to watch vhs you know, video in cyberspace. It made no sense. We've got this all. Rooted technology, this whole thing. That was set up over 100 years ago for a different purpose and a different time, and now we need to have a new conversation about what do we need from education? What we need from education, if we look at how the world is going, is for us to center humanity okay, for us to learn what it is to be human. So, what it is to be human is not just to go to school, learn to read and write so that you can get a job. What it is to be human is to be connected to other human beings. That would be a good start. Imagine if we all thought that we are connected to other human beings, how we would operate differently. From an African perspective, to be a human being if you look at Naim Atfa, for example is that we have a physical body, we have an intellect, we are spiritual, ancestral and tribal souls. Now this education system that we operate in on barely looks at the intellectual we're operating on barely looks at the intellectual, barely right, and merely touches on the physical and left everything else out.
Speaker 1:So if you had a different frame of saying this is the purpose of education, part of it is about developing fully functioning, happy, happy, efficacious, connected human beings. One of the things that we would not have that we will be having next week is black boys having to pull out their plaits, cut their hair, etc. Etc. Etc. Because there are some schools that still focus on hairstyles and want to exclude black kids for who they are. Right. So going back to a child that is hungry can't learn If the subliminal nuance message that you're getting from your school is that if you come to school with your afro, it is not acceptable. Then how are you going to learn algebra if the hair on your head, when the hair on your head isn't acceptable in the school? You know what's going on inside your head. What kind of schooling process is going on there? I mean, I'm reducing it to simple things because you know these simple things are things that we need to be taking care of.
Speaker 1:So I want an education system that has all kinds of subjects. I want an education system that doesn't have an artificial divide between so-called academic and so-called practical. I want an education system that allows young people in high school to have project-based learning. I want an education system and standardized assessment tests that were set up to read the bell curves. They'll tell you where your standardized assessment tests come from. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1:And these tests in schools were done in the united states on black children who'd never gone to school, white children and hispanic children for whom english was not their first language, but they had to take the test in english. How are you going to get a fair test? And that's what our sats are still based on. So let's get our brains together and come up with different forms of assessment. For a start, never mind the curriculum and what should be in there, you and I shouldn't be going in or sending our children or our picnic or nieces or nephews or grandnieces into schools where they learn to despise themselves, learn to see whiteness as the the only you know.
Speaker 2:That's the level, that's what we aim for, the way we speak, the way we present, and that the form of blackness that we're allowed to have is only what the white media creates for us, because we haven't created something through a set yeah, unfortunately, I know, because I grapple with that with my sons, I do a lot of talking to them about who they are and, you know, their dad is really, really good at that and I think he's better at that because he's not from our kinds of background. Because he's not from our kinds of background, you know, he grew up obviously knowing, because he's from Southern Africa and they didn't have the history of, you know, being taken and West Africa is different. So they grew up, they have their tribes, they have their traditions and they're very good at preserving that, and so it makes it easier for him to pass things on to the boys.
Speaker 1:And no running out of time, but they also had apartheid.
Speaker 2:But he's not South African, he's Zambian, zimbabwean, that side.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right, okay, so part of what he's passing on to his sons is that sense, as you say, of self. Yes, and every education system. If we're asking what's the baseline for every education system, is that no child should leave that education system without a sense of self. At the moment, for black children to leave those education systems, they have to have fathers, like your husband, yeah, yeah, otherwise the school system will undo everything. Yes, and so what we want are school systems that operate like it takes a village to raise a family, because they're not always going to be fathers or husbands in those households, and so what you want is for the school to do that, the school to give them a sense of pride, and you're not going to do that from a half-baked British and colonial education system that the British themselves are running from.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's hard. It's a hard one, I think, also when you think about our students I'm talking about students from the global majority when they go into these schools and these spaces. It is so hard for them, I can remember it's so hard for them to find a path because they're sometimes being intentionally led down a path of low expectations. Let me tell you what I noticed of Black Caribbean and Black African children and saying do not allow them to take your sons out of their lessons to go and run track or play football. These things are important, but they must not be a substitute, and the parents will be like, oh, but then say him good. I'm like, yes, then say him good, I'm like, yes, he's good, but if he cannot hold his own academically and he breaks his shin I don't know where your shin is he's going to struggle.
Speaker 2:I said don't allow them. If they want those trophies and those cups, let them stay behind after school for a set amount of time and do the practice. And when he gets home, ensure that he has a good meal and he sits down for a set time and he does his work at home as well. Because what used to happen? They used to be told. Well, because what used to happen? They used to be told oh no, it's fine, you'll be um good at sports and you will do all of that just to get them to get the trophies, and you know it. It really it pained me. I was like no, no, no, no. So behind the school's back I used to be like ring the no, no, no, no, no, don't, don't allow that absolutely.
Speaker 1:and you see, lisa, you see, if we were proper intellectual educationalists, we would understand that the research that needs to be doing one of the things that I'm talking about out here in terms of depoloniality how do you teach bodily kinesthetic youngsters or people with a bodily kinesthetic learning preference that doesn't mean that they can't access learning by any other means yes, how do you teach them academic concepts? Because same kids who are good at football and sports have the same propensity to be mathematicians and surgeons, etc. Etc. Etc. So you see, if we were really interested in schooling, we would go down that path, wouldn't we? Because you and I are the first people to be having that kind of conversation and to understand how things work.
Speaker 1:But no, we use schooling, not education, to separate and define and to place people in hierarchies, and never the twain shall meet. Find me a surgeon whose way of playing is not sport or music or something. In fact, you find me. You find me that person, that bodily kinesthetic way of operating. So those kids could have been in the football team, but they needed also to be in top set maths and it was a very easy step for them to get there. But hell no. And here's the irony of what I used to hear as an Oxford inspector the reason they're not in top set is not really because of their ability, it's because of their behavior yeah, I used to hear that as well that's a whole other part thought, you see why we need our own systems, so we don't have to be dealing with this foolishness yeah, I get what you're saying.
Speaker 2:So we've come, we've, we've. I knew this is what happened, but I'm loving it and I'm enjoying the, the banter, so much. Listen, you're still. You're still vibrant and full of energy. What are you doing nowadays? I mean, you're on the beautiful island of jamaica, but what are you doing? Where's your work? What are you centering on now?
Speaker 1:I'm centering on decoloniality, but what that looks like is a contract with a big company that makes ice cream globally, where what they wanted to discuss was how that company's roots in europe, how their colonial roots, could deliver decolonial fruits. So what that means is I've been working with them for two years and it's been fabulous, joyous, happy work where we're looking at a business model that decolonizes itself. That's what you asked me what my work looks like. That's what it looks like there. What it looks like in London is that for councils like Westminster, I do all of the anti-racist training Okay, and I do leadership work outside of that with their top tier. What that means is that we have to create a space where that kind of anti-racist training can then be be facilitated into changes in policies within that local authority, and that has to be facilitated by the leadership. So work in a political context where the government has said there's no such thing as systemic build-up and you can't even use certain words now. So it's helping that kind of leadership to ensure that that kind of training lands well in the political context that we're operating in. And that means coaching outside of the headlines about how you navigate this, how you write that paper who you connect with blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's what that looks like.
Speaker 1:Okay, then over here on the Caribbean side, mia Amor Motley, the Prime Minister of Badeda, who should be Queen of the Caribbean and probably will be at some point. I do some work with her, and the most important work is at the moment setting up a decolonizing education CARICOM commission, which will be looking at how we all across the Caribbean, begin to decolonize our education system and, of course, in the very, very early stages, we need to be talking to our African brethren, some of whom are further down the road in terms of making sure that those British colonial systems that still operate across the continent of Africa are decolonized too.
Speaker 2:Brilliant. How can people reach you if they want to get in touch with you?
Speaker 1:Don't contact me on the Saturdays that I'm DJing on the beach, because you have to protect your joy and that's why I may look like this. Yeah, I'm dragged, but seriously, you can share my email. It's really simple. Rosemary, r-o-s-e-m-a-r-y at second S-E-D-O-N-D dash principal, e-r-i-n-c-i-p-l-e dot com.
Speaker 2:Brilliant. Thank you so much. It's been absolutely fabulous, just fabulous, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much.
