Aren't Schools Already Little Activist Factories..?

...decolonising the curriculum isn’t about burning copies of Macbeth, or chucking Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations in the bin. It’s not even about only studying writers from marginalised identities.

Says who? Why, says Nadeine Asbali, a secondary school teacher in London. And I guess she should know, eh, Reader?

As a mixed-race English teacher who believes strongly in diversifying the English syllabus, for me, it’s about re-examining the lens through which we view canonical texts in the first place – shifting it to become more critical, more aware of the systemic forces at play both within and around a text.

So much of Shakespeare is about power: who holds it and who doesn’t and why.

I wonder who it is that doesn't, in the gospel according to Nadeine? 

Decolonising the study of Shakespeare is to take these questions one step further, removing them from the text and applying them to the world around us. To teach students, through literature, to challenge the status quo.

What..? 

Call me a biased English teacher, but literature is the perfect medium for this.

I really don't need to call you anything, do I? You're doing a fine job there all by yourself... 

Unless you’ve experienced it, it’s hard to put into words how it feels to meet yourself in a book for the first time.

That's not why people read books, is it, Nadeine? Not ordinary people, anyway. 

I want to read about international spies, buccaneers on the high seas, daring spaceship pilots, FBI agents catching killers... I don't want to read about a middle aged middle class woman going to work in an office every day. 

The first time I did, I was an A-level student faced with Othello, whose contested “Moorish” background was the closest to my north African heritage I’d ever encountered on the page. And who did I meet? A man whose violence was likened to a wild beast and whose race rendered him a savage, a danger to white women.

Did...did you get to the end of the play, Nadeine? Because, ummm, no spoilers, but...