BLACK BORED JUNGLE

06-03-2007

The latest Department of Education research suggests that the education system is failing black boys, who are three times more likely to be excluded than their white counterparts. There is, they conclude, evidence of institutional racism. Derrick Campbell wonders why a new report is still telling us the same old story.

Following the release of the government's findings on why African Caribbean boys are under achieving in British schools, the response from the black community is “tell us something we didn't know!”

According to the report, for decades black children have been let down due to a systemic failure in the education system and institutional racism, which is revealed through a continuing attitude of teachers who view black boys as loud troublemakers, with no ambition and who are almost sub-normal.

With this prevailing attitude what chance do these youngsters have; it is obvious that they are doomed to fail before they even start.

It is a bleak but sad fact that for black boys, the place often viewed with hope has become the place of their destruction, for no other reason than the colour of their skin.

This attitude is not a recent revelation. According to his book “How the West Indian Child is made Educationally Subnormal in the British School System” which was first published in 1971, Bernard Coard stated that throughout the 60's and into the 70's, the presence of black children in British schools was seen as problematic.

Many black children, particularly Caribbean boys, were labelled as 'educationally subnormal'. Portrayed as unable to get to grips with the English language, suffering from negative self-image and struggling with identity crises, many children were written off and subsequently dumped in 'educationally subnormal' (ESN) schools, where pupils were destined to be road cleaners and not much else.

It seems clear that his discoveries, which were ridiculed and condemned by white educationalists at the time, have now been admitted by the government. But the saddest thing of all is that there does not seem to be any way to repair the lives of the many tens of thousands of black people whose live have been destroyed forever by a racist education system.

However, now that it has been acknowledged…what do the educationalists intend to do about it…more importantly what do we intend to do about it?

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