Changing Britain in a Changing World: How understanding our past can prepare us for a hopeful future
Changing Britain in a Changing World: How understanding our past can prepare us for a hopeful future
Alero Etuwewe

Summary
This project seeks to explore the potential that history has to construct hope and social progress, in a way that specifically addresses issues relating to race relations in Britain and in our wider global context today.
In their reasons behind making the teaching of history mandatory until KS3, the National Curriculum weakly recognises the potential for progressive understanding that history holds. However, in the context of the society we find ourselves in today, the juxtapositions of wokeness, ignorance, silence, shame and guilt (characteristics which are all too often associated with contemporary acknowledgements of Britain’s national history) are choking the potential history holds as a hopeful and progressive force.
I believe we are wasting the potential in our past. Setting off in a car without properly checking your rear-view mirror is a recipe for collision. I believe that much of the chaos, conflict and incoherence regarding race relations in our contemporary world is rooted here. This project seeks to examine and demonstrate the importance of looking back productively, to move forward safely. Not to shame or to blame, but for a hopeful future.
This project seeks to emerge from the gap between knowledge and application. Whilst colonial miseducation is still rife, there are many resources out there that are now giving a voice to some of the marginalised. We are slowly starting to see broader pictures of history and knowledge in our systems of learning. Colloquially, this is often referred to as ‘wokeness’. ‘Wokeness’ is a sentiment very similar to Fanon’s (1961) ideas on ‘Negritude’, and as Fanon (1961) theorised, this increased awareness is not the solution in itself.
In agreement with Fanon (1961) I believe that we will only see further hopeful progress if this knowledge is applied productively. Thus, with these ideas at the basis, this project seeks to begin by examining both the importance of teaching history and few key points in British history itself. The project will then go on to propose the need for the emergence of a New History Learning Model in our compulsory education system, that pairs the teaching of history with clear understandings of how every moment has lead to this one right here. This re-imagined History Learning Model hopes to begin to fill the gap between knowledge and application, in inspiring hope, critical thinking skills and empowering all of our pupils as the protagonists of the future timelines of the world they will grow up to inherit.