Should Students See Themselves in the Curriculum?

Becky Francis chair of the Curriculum Review stated at Research Ed National Conference that ‘The review will not dumb down content, or infuse with issues or campaigns.’ Yet the review ‘will (her italics) ensure that every young person can see themselves in the curriculum, and that it challenges discrimination and extends horizons’

Is this contradictory? Arguably dumbing down content is achieved if you try to organise a curriculum in which every young person can see themselves. Not infusing a curriculum with issues or campaigns yet ensuring it challenges discrimination might also hint at a contradiction.

At the time of recording we don’t know how she will try to achieve these aims but let’s examine what the argument might be.

Seeing yourself in the curriculum is usually an identitarian call to arms in that curriculum material chosen and content covered should resist all being about dead white men. It should include more BAME representation, Women, ‘Otherwise abled’, LGBTQ, Working Class, ‘Young People’ etc. in a more positive and inclusive way.

What possibly could be an argument against? Cultural transmission: The distortions to the curriculum needed to ensure this representation mean that the ‘great books’, ‘our island story’, great works of art, music etc, works of science, historical moments of importance, are no longer the grand narrative of curriculum design so that certain ‘great works’ are ignored in order to make space for ‘DEI’ works that either do not live up to the level of the works they replace and/or disrupt the curriculum narrative so that the importance of what was happening in, say, the Crimean War is replaced by an undue focus on Mary Seacole.

Who could be against challenging discrimination? Well, I take it that discrimination is not seen as a bad thing because we want students to be discriminating in many ways. To favour certain things over other things. To develop a moral code, a sense of right and wrong, for example. But how far do we take this?

Schools are places where we have to guard against bullying against racism, inappropriate behaviour, anti-semitism etc. but do we get into grey areas when we start either choosing texts in order to make these policies clear? Is this dumbing down? Or interpreting texts to eke out the messages - for example setting an essay about What can Romeo and Juliet teach us about anti-racism?

What is our attitude towards Andrew Tate, Tommy Robinson, Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Netanyahu, Putin, Jeremy Corbyn, Sultana and that bloke from the Greens? etc. Or are all acceptable?

Where do we draw the lines? Should We Draw Lines?