‘Partition Curriculum’: Group of educators aim to bring British colonial history to UK schools | Education News,The Indian Express
Kaur is among a group of professionals from the education sector in the UK, including schoolteachers, trainers, researchers and others, who have come together to start a campaign aimed at bringing South Asian British colonial history and India’s Partition in more detail into the school curriculum in Britain.
“It has only been a couple of years that I have actually come to know — through family, the Internet and other external sources — about the several detailed aspects of British rule in India, the repercussions of Partition, the mass migration, violence, communal riots and the lingering pain that people continue to suffer, and most importantly, the level of abuse of power that the British practised at the time,” says Kaur, an associate head teacher at a primary school.
Her two children now have the same experience that she had in school — having to learn about British colonial rule from external sources.
“There is hardly any mention of Partition or British colonial history in India and South Asia, the creation of Pakistan, and other aspects in their school curriculum. Just like me, they are only learning about it through family and other external sources. My elder one has now started questioning why they aren’t being taught unbiased aspects of the British Empire in India in their school. It is high time for the UK to realise that the division of India was just not about India and Pakistan, but was very much a British story which the younger generation growing up here — those of both British and South Asian origin — need to learn. It is something that is affecting us even today. It is our shared history,” Kaur says.
Kaur is among a group of professionals from the education sector in the UK, including schoolteachers, trainers, researchers and others, who have come together to start a campaign aimed at bringing South Asian British colonial history and India’s Partition in more detail into the school curriculum in Britain.
The Partition Education Group mostly consists of schoolteachers who were born and brought up in the UK, but trace their origin to India or Pakistan. Many of the teachers in the group had their parents or grandparents moving to the UK from Punjab years after partition displaced them, and they came to the UK to rebuild their lives. The group is currently in the process of developing a unique “Partition Curriculum” for primary and secondary classes and plan to introduce it in schools as a pilot project soon.
Rating: 5