Abstract
Anti-racist teachers are faced with a dilemma: how should they respond to the range of new policies that are affecting black students in British schools? On the one hand, ‘multi-culturalism’ offers one of the very few remaining areas in which resources are being made available for curricular innovation. As Clara Mulhern argues in a document produced in November 1979 by ALTARF (All London Teachers Against Racism and Fascism):
In a climate of retrenchment and defensiveness in education, when many of the curricular innovations of the Sixties are under attack, practically the only present source of progressive perspectives on the curriculum is the concept of multi-culturalism.1
But in the same month, the Organisation of Women of Asian and African Descent pointed tellingly to a different aspect of policy.
It is no coincidence that the cuts in education will not mean a reduction in the number of disruptive units. Some boroughs are even considering building more, despite their reduced budgets.2
The problem often seems to be that discussions about the nature of curricular changes that could adequately reflect a multiracial society tend to avoid — or at least to address only implicitly — issues of discipline and control which are central to education practice.
Screen Education, no. 34, Spring 1980.
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Notes
Clara Mulhern, ‘Multicultural Education and the Fight Against Racism in Schools’, Teaching and Racism, London: ALTARF, 1979.
Inner London Education Authority, A Multi-Ethnic Education: Joint Report of Schools Sub-committee and Further and Higher Education Sub-committee, London: Waterlow, 1977.
Department of Education and Science and Welsh Office, Education in Schools, (Cmnd 6869), London: HMSO, 1977, paras 1.10–1.11.
Robert Jeffcoate, Positive Image: Towards a Multiracial Curriculum, London: Writers and Readers Cooperative, 1979, p. 122.
Farrukh Dhondy, Come to Mecca, London, Fontana Lions, 1978, p. 67.
See Ama Ata Aidoo, No Sweetness Here, London: Longman, 1970, and Our Sister Killjoy, Longman, 1978;
Toni Cade Bambara, Gorrilla, My Love, New York: Random House, 1972; The Seabirds Are Still Alive, Random House, 1977, and (ed.) The Black Woman, New York: Mentor, 1970;
Buchi Emecheta, In the Ditch, London: Allison & Busby 1979; Second Class Citizen, London: Fontana, 1977; The Bride Price, London: Fontana, 1976; The Slave Girl, Fontana, 1979, and The Joys of Motherhood, London: Allison & Busby, 1979;
Rosa Guy, The Friends, Harmondsworth: Puffin, 1977, and Ruby, New York: Bantam, 1979;
Joyce Ladner, Tomorrow’s Tomorrow: The Black Woman, New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1971;
Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye, New York: Pocket Books, 1972; Sula, New York: Bantam, 1975, and Song of Solomon, Signet, 1978;
Alice Walker, In Love and Trouble, New York: Harvest/HBJ, 1973; The Third Life of George Copeland, New York: Harvest/HBJ, 1977, and Meridian, New York: Pocket Books, 1977;
Amrit Wilson, Finding a Voice, London: Virago, 1978.
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© 1993 Hazel Carby
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Carby, H. (1993). Multi-Culture. In: Alvarado, M., Buscombe, E., Collins, R. (eds) The Screen Education Reader. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22426-5_18
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