About 18 months back, Hart was approached by Raj Unsworth, founder and chair of the Partition Education Group, a group of educators, researchers and consultants campaigning extensively for the inclusion of the history of the Empire and the Partition in school curriculum in the UK. Since then, she along with the group — most of whom are of South Asian descent — have been reaching out to schools and teachers across the UK to encourage them to include a detailed study of the Empire in their curriculum. “We are saying there is a blind spot in the national curriculum. It is important to study this not just for the British South Asian community, but for all children to understand it as a shared heritage and also for tackling racism,” says Hart, a former head teacher at a school in Bath.

In recent years, the near absence of the history of the Empire in Britain’s school education has emerged as a concern being discussed by many. Professor Deana Heath, Chair in Indian and Colonial History at the University of Liverpool, says most of her students who have been educated in the British curriculum are almost ignorant of the Empire. “They know there was one and that it involved slavery. They might be able to name one or two colonies and that’s about it,” she says.

Interestingly, the Empire is mentioned as part of the national curriculum in England, but the nature of the schooling system in the UK is such that it leaves sufficient room for schools and teachers to decide on the topics they would like to cover. Stephen Luscombe, author of the popular website The British Empire, says it is a way for the government to avoid being accused of telling teachers what they have to teach. “It is a subtle but important distinction that allows both sides to feel some agency — the government in setting down what should be taught and school teachers in choosing what they will teach. Elements of Imperial history ‘can’ be taught but they can also be avoided,” he says. Hart says given most British teachers have little knowledge, experience or empathy for aspects of the Empire, it tends to get left out.

Members of the Partition Education Group collecting materials and resources for the teaching of the British Empire. (Pepe Hart)

Britain has for long struggled in determining how to best represent its empire to its own people. For that matter, modern British historical trajectory is very well reflected in the way the country has studied and taught the history of its imperial conquests.

The propaganda years

By the 19th century when the British Empire had started climbing to its zenith, very few children, and only those from rich families attended public or private schools. As Luscombe explains in his article Teaching ‘the Empire, they were taught quite extensively about the Greek and Roman empires and very often parallels were drawn with the then politicians and civil servants of Britain. The British Empire was seen as being heir to this classical tradition, and also learning from their mistakes so that their own could continue expanding and be more successful than the Greek and Roman ones.

It is only from the late 19th century that imperialism came to dominate school education, as it came to be associated with the monarchy and nation. However, in the beginning, it was less a part of the History curriculum and more in the teaching of Geography, English and religion. Consequently, stories of the great voyages and episodes of exploration and military conquests were taught with great interest in Geography, History and English, while the narrative of the expansion of Christianity and the success of missionary activities made their way to religious instruction.

From the 1890s, the Royal Colonial Institute (RCI) — now known as the Royal Commonwealth Society — concentrated its efforts in promoting imperial studies in schools. Historian John M MacKenzie in his book Propaganda and Empire (1984) notes that in 1883 the RCI offered money prizes for essays on imperial topics to be submitted by school children and university students. Given the disappointing response it received, the idea was dropped in 1885, but was revived in 1913.

The RCI also began exerting pressure on schools to introduce imperial studies as part of their curriculum. Letters were sent out to headmasters of schools in the 1880s and ’90s to introduce colonial history and the study of the Indian Empire. Although educational institutions were not keen on the suggestion initially things started changing by the end of the 19th century. The Education Code of the 1890s incorporated suggestions for instructions on the British colonies. Meanwhile, lectures on imperial topics began to appear on the curriculum of the Cambridge local lectures syndicate and in university extension summer schools. “The Geographical Association recommended the study of Empire geography in secondary schools in 1896, and the Library Association introduced a section on colonial literature in the Library assistant’s examination from 1904,” writes MacKenzie.

Meanwhile, the RCI also influenced the way textbooks were to take shape. In 1889, a set of textbooks were published covering the West Indies, Canada and South Africa. As MacKenzie notes, in each of these texts, imperial events held a predominance and the moral responsibilities of conflicts were shifted on to others. The Fourth Book of Lessons for the Use of Schools (1870), for instance carefully avoided detailing much about the loss of America. The World at Home (1885), meanwhile, blamed India for the Opium Wars.

Inside classrooms, teachers were urged to not just glorify the Empire but also justify it both morally and economically. For instance, teachers were asked to stimulate the interest of children in the Empire by explaining how their diet, clothes and in general everyday life depended on it. A common visual aid used for the purpose were boxes with samples of cotton, gum arabic, raw coffee, saffron, rice, camphor and others. Geography lessons would often include maps with the British territories being marked in colour and each region’s economic role being emphasised.

Heath explains that “this propaganda was also a way to mitigate class tensions inside Britain.” “It was a way of committing to the working class that even though British society, being so hierarchical, offered limited opportunities, the Empire was there as a mark of their power and status, and for them to go out and make a life and career in,” she says.

The post-war years and ‘new history’

In the aftermath of the First World War in 1918, the Empire-related propaganda started waning, even though the government increased its control over school education. The Fisher Act of 1918 increased the school leaving age from 12 to 14 and Secondary Education was removed from the hands of the local authorities and placed under the central government. This was done with the understanding that British children, if trained just as well as the Germans, would prove more effective in times of war.

However, the trauma left behind by the war had an impact on almost everyone in Britain. A new generation of teachers emerged who were less likely to accept ‘unthinking patriotism’ and vowed to have a more critical approach to Britain’s national story.

Luscombe in his article notes that the emergence of Left wing politics in the post-war period also impacted the teaching of history. “Socialists and Communists were less interested in the roles of individuals, kings and generals. They were interested in the history of the working classes and of the oppressed,” he writes, adding that this explains why Mahatma Gandhi was greeted like a hero in the East End of London in 1931.

During World War II, while popular media like the radio frequently ran programmes portraying the empire as a source of strength and pride, the loss of imperial territories in the immediate aftermath made it difficult for educational institutions to focus upon a success story of the British Empire. History teaching in the post-war period was characterised by an ambivalence towards the Empire, as Britain came to be overshadowed by the emergence of America and the Soviet Union as world superpowers.

The emergence of new imperial history during this period was of significance in the way the Empire was being taught in schools. Historian Philip A Buckner in an article written in 1993 notes, “By the 1960s, the empire was no longer seen as an unmitigated blessing for its subjects overseas and the emphasis of the newer studies was an attempt to reassess British policy making from a more critical perspective.”

Social and cultural history started to take a centre stage now, and imperial history was sidelined and almost treated as an embarrassment. Luscombe suggests that the only aspect of empire that fitted the bottom-up approach of new history was slavery. Almost everything else was left out of the classroom.

Interestingly, this was also the time when large waves of migrants from its former colonies were leading to the creation of a multicultural Britain. “It is ironic that the reason for why Britain was becoming a multicultural country was being removed from the classrooms just as the sons, daughters, grandsons and granddaughters of the empire began attending those same schools,” writes Luscombe. “By the 1980s, empire was a dirty word.”

The making of a ‘national curriculum’

Under the prime ministerial regime of Margaret Thatcher, the national curriculum was introduced. The idea was to bring about a standardisation in all the subjects being taught. The teaching of history was particularly crucial in this regard. In her autobiography, Thatcher notes: “There had to be some consistency in the curriculum, atleast in the core subjects… The state could not just ignore what children learned: they were after all its future citizens and we had a duty to them.”

“The governments in the 1960s and 70s had been relatively Left wing and so the content in History textbooks had moved towards being much more skeptical of British history. Margaret Thatcher was more of a traditionalist and she wanted to bring back the idea of British pride,” explains Luscombe.

History teachers reacted to Thatcher’s plans with much caution. A battle between the government and the History profession had followed in which the teachers were clear of not accepting a prescriptive syllabus and having the freedom to take a critical approach to History and deciding on what to teach in the classroom.

In her autobiography, Thatcher further says that the hardest battle she fought on the national curriculum was about history. A History working group was formed which produced its interim report in 1989. Thatcher writes that she was appalled to find in the report that “there was insufficient weight given to British history” and not enough emphasis on History as a chronological study.

Eventually a compromise was reached in which the History teachers agreed to a national curriculum and accepted the idea of a chronological order being the bedrock of the syllabus. However, they insisted on having the freedom to decide what to teach within that chronological order. Consequently, a large menu of topics were to be provided in the curriculum, from which individual teachers could pick what they wanted to teach. In this framework of things, lessons on empire once again failed to follow in any meaningful way, except the topic of slavery.

At present, for stages one to three (5-14 years old), the 2013 revised national curriculum specifications provide the overarching menu for teachers to choose from. The topic of empire comes up in stage three as a non-statutory example of what may be taught under the period of ‘ideas, political power, industry and empire: Britain, 1745-1901’. It once again appears among a list of topics that may be taught in the A-levels, but again there is no requirement to do so and can be side-stepped.

Luscombe says Britain’s approach to history education is in contrast to France, another former imperial power, where he taught for several years. In France, the education system is a lot more centralised with stronger prescriptions on what must be taught in the classrooms. “In France, they do teach the different European empires such as the Portuguese, Belgian, British, or Dutch in a comparative manner, which I thought was quite valuable,” he says.

In recent years, there has been some conversation around increasing focus on the British Empire in the History syllabus, although both the Labour and the Conservative Parties in the UK are equally cautious in their approach to the subject. In 2018, for instance, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn announced proposals to increase the amount of black history being taught in schools along with history of the British Empire, colonialism and slavery. “But there has not been any British government that sought to introduce the empire in History teaching in any meaningful and critical way,” says Heath. “Things might change in future, but I cannot imagine an overhaul of the kind when Germany critically re-assessed how the holocaust came about and ensuring that it never happened again,” she adds.

Hart believes that with the increasing number of South Asians in Britain now, it is imperative to push for reforms and ensure teaching of the imperial past as a shared heritage. “We are focusing on key figures and incidents in British imperial history such as the Jallianwala Bagh, and also on how India gained Independence from the British,” she says about the way the Partition Education Group is going about consolidating the history they believe needs to be taught.

Given the fact that teachers are free to decide what they choose to teach, Hart agrees the opposition to imperial history is not so much from the teachers as it is a reluctance from curriculum policy advisors to promote the topic. “At present, Empire is a hidden part of the history syllabus. However, it is the right of South Asians in Britain to know about their history and equally important for children across the UK as part of our shared history,” she says. “The government needs to make Empire a compulsory part of history learning.”