An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr Timothy Riding (Scottish Arts and Humanities Alliance Postdoctoral Fellow 2021-22):
Decolonising Schools: The Darien Scheme, Colonialism and the Scottish Curriculum
This paper explores the debate in Scotland on its colonial history and the implications for the secondary history curriculum. While higher education and heritage organisations enact decolonising initiatives, the prospect for secondary education is more contested and less clear. The Scottish Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) embraces concepts of global citizenship education, but though such policies present themselves as justice-oriented and inclusive, they have been criticised for sustaining nationalist and neoliberal agendas (Gamal and Swanson 2017). The paper explores ways in which the curriculum’s goal of developing “knowledge and understanding of the world and Scotland’s place in it” could be implemented in a manner which encourages a critical engagement with concepts of modernity and colonialism. The project is working with school pupils on a Scottish colonial episode: the Darien Scheme of 1698–1700. By reading colonial sources both along the grain — revealing and unpicking colonial discourses — and against the grain — uncovering indigenous agency — pupils construct a global history of colonial encounters which decentres Scotland and emphasises ambiguity over clear historical narratives.
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/81322391722
Passcode: Vr8f3ew2