Don't let the zealots ‘decolonise' British history in our schools
The idea that history needs to be 'relevant' is total nonsense. But many teachers seem to disagree.
This week, it transpired that a textbook used by many English primary schools claims that Stonehenge was built by black Britons 7,000 years ago. That assertion is not only inaccurate, but betrays the problem with cack-handed attempts to 'decolonise' the subject. By turning the study of the past into a moral Top 40 in which identity and relevance trump all else, what you are left with is a reflection of 'here today, gone tomorrow' prejudices. It's less history, more a platform for activism.
Educational theories trickling down from universities to schools increasingly prioritise relevance – which in today's terms means that history must reflect diversity and be inclusive, whatever that actually means. This is an imposition of values as biased as the imposition of Victorian jingoism 150 years earlier. Decolonisation – the programme to dismantle 'colonial' structures of knowledge – puts cultural orthodoxy above learning.
'The essential tool for studying history is to inhabit the minds of people who think differently to us and understand why they think differently,' says Paul Lay, the author and former editor of History Today. 'The idea of relevance is incredibly anachronistic, because what obsesses us will not obsess future generations and didn't obsess those from the past.'
I recall my daughter telling me three years ago how a Year 6 teacher explained that artefacts found at Hadrian's Wall suggested that people from north Africa had made it to Cumbria. All very interesting, except it transpired that her reason for divulging this was to make learning about the Romans 'relevant' to her non-white pupils, since she considered Romans and Britons had a whiteness that did not reflect her classroom. The teacher, who was white herself, explained this to me in these exact terms during a parents' evening. This facile approach was a missed opportunity to show the children something useful: namely that empires are always diverse, that the north Africans travelled as part of a brutal conquering army alongside a system of Roman slavery that existed 2,000 years ago. Instead it was taught as if the pots and pans appeared as the result of a short break for some holidaying Moroccans. All this potential learning was lost in the cause of 'relevancy'.
This may explain why the teaching of themes such as the Napoleonic Wars and the Middle Ages is declining in secondary schools. The World Wars and the Norman Conquest, on the other hand, are still popular topics, and there's no shame in that given their formative importance. The teaching of English history is not something to shy away from as if it were an expression of nationalism. The Normans are hardly a celebratory subject (spoiler alert, the English lost). And the suggestion that English children should not learn a majority of English history would be laughed at in other countries.
The Policy Exchange report that unearthed the Stonehenge example shows the most popular historical theme taught to 11 to 14-year-olds is the transatlantic slave trade, with 99 per cent of secondary schools covering it, while 96 per cent include the abolition of slavery in their offering. There's great value in teaching the narrative and legacy of Empire, but only if it equips pupils with the ability to put their learning in context, rather than an exercise in a specifically anti-British and anti-West agenda. It's hard to have any trust in the good intentions of the educational elite on that score.
While the Policy Exchange report is optimistic about the popularity of the subject, it also cautions that three quarters of training courses for specialist teachers include a module on decolonising the curriculum, suggesting an almost coercive conformity. When you couple that with the priorities of the National Education Union (NEU), which this week announced a workshop to train members how to 'advocate for Palestine in our schools', which will provide 'foundational knowledge on key issues like the Nakba [the Arabic term used to refer to the displacement of Palestinians], settler colonialism, imperialism, and apartheid', the risks of a high degree of politicisation are obvious, not to say worrying. Nothing says 'our priority is the schoolchildren' like holding a day of action at work to highlight the Palestinian struggle for freedom.
The NEU website's 'decolonisation' page contains many sweeping and unprovable statements that illustrate the extent to which learning has been subsumed by fuzzy logic, such as: 'Domestic debates about migration would be completely different if they were informed by a shared understanding of Empire.' How could it possibly know the truth of this statement and what exactly is a 'shared understanding of Empire'? The enquiring mind must acknowledge there can be no such thing. It is mere indoctrination.
'Part of the success of podcasts such as The Rest Is History is that they tell these stories in a really exciting way and do not concentrate on relevance and identity,' says Lay. 'The best history is great storytelling and then you leave it to the reader or the listener to decide what is important about them. History is already relevant.'
Studying history is the best way of equipping a young person for a lifetime of enlightenment. It is not neutral – it is a succession of choices – which is why it is so important to be conscious of those choices and to step back from ideology wherever possible, especially ideology that is so overtly of the 'now'. If you tell people what to think, you make them unthinking. You tell them what to think, but not how.
If you approach history as a way to apply the moral judgments of today as if this were some kind of long-overdue reckoning, you end up doing exactly the thing you profess to oppose: equating your values with 'progress' as if they were set in stone and everything that preceded it was a mistake.
History should be the tool of a skilled worker, not a blunt instrument. And even Neolithic people managed to build Stonehenge.
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Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Yahoo
A woman tried to call her mom in Iran. A robotic voice answered the phone
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — When Ellie, a British-Iranian living in the United Kingdom, tried to call her mother in Tehran, a robotic female voice answered instead. 'Alo? Alo?' the voice said, then asked in English: 'Who is calling?' A few seconds passed. 'I can't heard you,' the voice continued, its English imperfect. 'Who you want to speak with? I'm Alyssia. Do you remember me? I think I don't know who are you.' Ellie, 44, is one of nine Iranians living abroad — including in the U.K and U.S. — who said they have gotten strange, robotic voices when they attempted to call their loved ones in Iran since Israel launched airstrikes on the country a week ago. They told their stories to The Associated Press on the condition they remain anonymous or that only their first names or initials be used out of fear of endangering their families. Five experts with whom the AP shared recordings said it could be low-tech artificial intelligence, a chatbot or a pre-recorded message to which calls from abroad were diverted. It remains unclear who is behind the operation, though four of the experts believed it was likely to be the Iranian government while the fifth saw Israel as more likely. The messages are deeply eerie and disconcerting for Iranians in the diaspora struggling to contact their families as Israel's offensive targeting Iranian nuclear and military sites pounds Tehran and other cities. Iran has retaliated with hundreds of missiles and drones, and the government has imposed a widespread internet blackout it says is to protect the country. That has blocked average Iranians from getting information from the outside world, and their relatives from being able to reach them. 'I don't know why they're doing this,' said Ellie, whose mother is diabetic, low on insulin and trapped on the outskirts of Tehran. She wants her mother to evacuate the city but cannot communicate that to her. A request for comment sent to the Iranian mission to the U.N. was not immediately answered. Some of the messages are bizarre Most of the voices speak in English, though at least one spoke Farsi. If the caller tries to talk to it, the voice just continues with its message. A 30-year-old women living in New York, who heard the same message Ellie did, called it 'psychological warfare.' 'Calling your mom and expecting to hear her voice and hearing an AI voice is one of the most scary things I've ever experienced,' she said. 'I can feel it in my body.' And the messages can be bizarre. One woman living in the U.K. desperately called her mom and instead got a voice offering platitudes. 'Thank you for taking the time to listen,' it said, in a recording that she shared with the AP. 'Today, I'd like to share some thoughts with you and share a few things that might resonate in our daily lives. Life is full of unexpected surprises, and these surprises can sometimes bring joy while at other times they challenge us.' Not all Iranians abroad encounter the robotic voice. Some said when they try to call family, the phone just rings and rings. It's not clear who is behind this — or what the goal is Colin Crowell, a former vice president for Twitter's global policy, said it appeared that Iranian phone companies were diverting the calls to a default message system that does not allow calls to be completed. Amir Rashidi, an Iranian cybersecurity expert based in the U.S., agreed and said the recordings appeared to be a government measure to thwart hackers, though there was no hard evidence. He said that in the first two days of Israel's campaign, mass voice and text messages were sent to Iranian phones urging the public to gear up for 'emergency conditions.' They aimed to spread panic — similar to mass calls that government opponents made into Iran during the war with Iraq in the 1980s. The voice messages trying to calm people 'fit the pattern of the Iranian government and how in the past it handled emergency situations,' said Rashidi, the director of Texas-based Miaan, a group that reports on digital rights in the Middle East. Mobile phones and landlines ultimately are overseen by Iran's Ministry of Information and Communications Technology. But the country's intelligence services have long been believed to be monitoring conversations. 'It would be hard for anybody else to hack. Of course, it is possible it is Israeli. But I don't think they have an incentive to do this,' said Mehdi Yahyanejad, a tech entrepreneur and internet freedom activist. Marwa Fatafta, Berlin-based policy and advocacy director for digital rights group Access Now, suggested it could be 'a form of psychological warfare by the Israelis.' She said it fits a past pattern by Israel of using extensive direct messaging to Lebanese and Palestinians during campaigns in Gaza and against Hezbollah. The messages, she said, appear aimed at 'tormenting' already anxious Iranians abroad. When contacted with requests for comment, the Israeli military declined and the prime minister's office did not respond. Trying new ways to contact relatives Ellie is one of a lucky few who found a way to reach relatives since the blackout. She knows someone who lives on the Iran-Turkey border and has two phones — one with a Turkish SIM card and one with an Iranian SIM. He calls Ellie's mother with the Iranian phone — since people inside the country are still able to call one another — and presses it to the Turkish phone, where Ellie's on the line. The two are able to speak. 'The last time we spoke to her, we told her about the AI voice that is answering all her calls,' said Ellie. 'She was shocked. She said her phone hasn't rung at all.' Elon Musk said he has activated his satellite internet provider Starlink in Iran, where a small number of people are believed to have the system, even though it is illegal. Authorities are urging the public to turn in neighbors with the devices as part of an ongoing spy hunt. Others have illegal satellite dishes, granting them access to international news. The messages are making relatives feel helpless M., a woman in the U.K., has been trying to reach her mother-in-law, who is immobile and lives in Tehran's northeast, which has been pummeled by Israeli bombardment throughout the week. When she last spoke to her family in Iran, they were mulling whether she should evacuate from the city. Then the blackout was imposed, and they lost contact. Since then she has heard through a relative that the woman was in the ICU with respiratory problems. When she calls, she gets the same bizarre message as the woman in the U.K., a lengthy mantra. 'Close your eyes and picture yourself in a place that brings you peace and happiness,' it says. 'Maybe you are walking through a serene forest, listening to the rustle of leaves and birds chirping. Or you're by the seashore, hearing the calming sound of waves crashing on the sand.' The only feeling the message does instill in her, she said, is 'helplessness.' ___ El Deeb reported from Beirut
17 hours ago
A woman tried to call her mom in Iran. A robotic voice answered the phone
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- When Ellie, a British-Iranian living in the United Kingdom, tried to call her mother in Tehran, a robotic female voice answered instead. 'Alo? Alo?' the voice said, then asked in English: 'Who is calling?' A few seconds passed. 'I can't heard you,' the voice continued, its English imperfect. 'Who you want to speak with? I'm Alyssia. Do you remember me? I think I don't know who are you.' Ellie, 44, is one of nine Iranians living abroad — including in the U.K and U.S. — who said they have gotten strange, robotic voices when they attempted to call their loved ones in Iran since Israel launched airstrikes on the country a week ago. They told their stories to The Associated Press on the condition they remain anonymous or that only their first names or initials be used out of fear of endangering their families. Five experts with whom the AP shared recordings said it could be low-tech artificial intelligence, a chatbot or a pre-recorded message to which calls from abroad were diverted. It remains unclear who is behind the operation, though four of the experts believed it was likely to be the Iranian government while the fifth saw Israel as more likely. The messages are deeply eerie and disconcerting for Iranians in the diaspora struggling to contact their families as Israel's offensive targeting Iranian nuclear and military sites pounds Tehran and other cities. Iran has retaliated with hundreds of missiles and drones, and the government has imposed a widespread internet blackout it says is to protect the country. That has blocked average Iranians from getting information from the outside world, and their relatives from being able to reach them. 'I don't know why they're doing this,' said Ellie, whose mother is diabetic, low on insulin and trapped on the outskirts of Tehran. She wants her mother to evacuate the city but cannot communicate that to her. A request for comment sent to the Iranian mission to the U.N. was not immediately answered. Most of the voices speak in English, though at least one spoke Farsi. If the caller tries to talk to it, the voice just continues with its message. A 30-year-old women living in New York, who heard the same message Ellie did, called it 'psychological warfare.' 'Calling your mom and expecting to hear her voice and hearing an AI voice is one of the most scary things I've ever experienced,' she said. 'I can feel it in my body.' And the messages can be bizarre. One woman living in the U.K. desperately called her mom and instead got a voice offering platitudes. 'Thank you for taking the time to listen,' it said, in a recording that she shared with the AP. 'Today, I'd like to share some thoughts with you and share a few things that might resonate in our daily lives. Life is full of unexpected surprises, and these surprises can sometimes bring joy while at other times they challenge us.' Not all Iranians abroad encounter the robotic voice. Some said when they try to call family, the phone just rings and rings. Colin Crowell, a former vice president for Twitter's global policy, said it appeared that Iranian phone companies were diverting the calls to a default message system that does not allow calls to be completed. Amir Rashidi, an Iranian cybersecurity expert based in the U.S., agreed and said the recordings appeared to be a government measure to thwart hackers, though there was no hard evidence. He said that in the first two days of Israel's campaign, mass voice and text messages were sent to Iranian phones urging the public to gear up for 'emergency conditions.' They aimed to spread panic — similar to mass calls that government opponents made into Iran during the war with Iraq in the 1980s. The voice messages trying to calm people 'fit the pattern of the Iranian government and how in the past it handled emergency situations,' said Rashidi, the director of Texas-based Miaan, a group that reports on digital rights in the Middle East. Mobile phones and landlines ultimately are overseen by Iran's Ministry of Information and Communications Technology. But the country's intelligence services have long been believed to be monitoring conversations. 'It would be hard for anybody else to hack. Of course, it is possible it is Israeli. But I don't think they have an incentive to do this,' said Mehdi Yahyanejad, a tech entrepreneur and internet freedom activist. Marwa Fatafta, Berlin-based policy and advocacy director for digital rights group Access Now, suggested it could be 'a form of psychological warfare by the Israelis.' She said it fits a past pattern by Israel of using extensive direct messaging to Lebanese and Palestinians during campaigns in Gaza and against Hezbollah. The messages, she said, appear aimed at 'tormenting' already anxious Iranians abroad. When contacted with requests for comment, the Israeli military declined and the prime minister's office did not respond. Ellie is one of a lucky few who found a way to reach relatives since the blackout. She knows someone who lives on the Iran-Turkey border and has two phones — one with a Turkish SIM card and one with an Iranian SIM. He calls Ellie's mother with the Iranian phone — since people inside the country are still able to call one another — and presses it to the Turkish phone, where Ellie's on the line. The two are able to speak. 'The last time we spoke to her, we told her about the AI voice that is answering all her calls,' said Ellie. 'She was shocked. She said her phone hasn't rung at all.' Elon Musk said he has activated his satellite internet provider Starlink in Iran, where a small number of people are believed to have the system, even though it is illegal. Authorities are urging the public to turn in neighbors with the devices as part of an ongoing spy hunt. Others have illegal satellite dishes, granting them access to international news. M., a woman in the U.K., has been trying to reach her mother-in-law, who is immobile and lives in Tehran's northeast, which has been pummeled by Israeli bombardment throughout the week. When she last spoke to her family in Iran, they were mulling whether she should evacuate from the city. Then the blackout was imposed, and they lost contact. Since then she has heard through a relative that the woman was in the ICU with respiratory problems. When she calls, she gets the same bizarre message as the woman in the U.K., a lengthy mantra. 'Close your eyes and picture yourself in a place that brings you peace and happiness,' it says. 'Maybe you are walking through a serene forest, listening to the rustle of leaves and birds chirping. Or you're by the seashore, hearing the calming sound of waves crashing on the sand.' The only feeling the message does instill in her, she said, is 'helplessness.'
Chicago Tribune
a day ago
- Chicago Tribune
Alexander Polikoff, public-interest lawyer behind landmark CHA segregation case, dies
Public-interest lawyer Alexander Polikoff spent decades fighting powerful interests, most notably in a case he filed on behalf of Black public housing residents against the city of Chicago that spanned most of his career. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 agreed with Polikoff and his clients' contention that the city had discriminated against Black public housing residents and had selected housing for them based on race. Polikoff spent the next 43 years holding the city accountable until federal oversight over Chicago public housing was lifted in 2019. 'Alex was not motivated by money, fame or life's comforts,' said Hoy McConnell, who succeeded Polikoff as the executive director of Business People and Professionals for the Public Interest, the small public-interest law firm that Polikoff joined in 1970. 'Rather, he dedicated his life to making change to improve the lives of those burdened by poverty and discrimination.' Polikoff, 98, died of natural causes May 27 at his home in Keene, New Hampshire, said his son, author Daniel Joseph Polikoff. A longtime Highland Park resident, Polikoff moved to New Hampshire in 2022 to be near his daughter. Born and raised in Chicago, Polikoff was the son of attorney Julius Polikoff. After graduating from Senn High School in 1944, he briefly attended Purdue University before joining the Navy. After his discharge, he earned a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in English from the University of Chicago. He then received his law degree from the Hyde Park school in 1953, and worked for the next 17 years at the firm that became Schiff Hardin. Polikoff performed extensive pro bono legal work, representing clients alongside the American Civil Liberties Union. 'I don't remember a time when my dad wasn't doing some pro bono work with the ACLU, taking on various causes,' Polikoff's son said. 'That pro bono work was very compelling to him — it was part of his character.' In 1965, he filed a lawsuit in Lake County on behalf of four pupils to force Waukegan's elementary school board to reorganize school boundaries in order to meet integration standards. The Illinois Supreme Court in 1968 ruled favorably on Polikoff's contention that race could be taken into account to redraw school district boundary lines to achieve integration. The longest battle of Polikoff's career started in 1966, when he represented a group of Black Chicago Housing Authority residents in a federal class-action lawsuit. The case is known by the name of one of those residents, tenant activist Dorothy Gautreaux. Polikoff alleged that the CHA had practiced racial segregation by building most of its public housing complexes in Black neighborhoods and had deliberately placed Black residents in those complexes. In 1969, Judge Richard Austin concluded that the CHA had discriminated against Blacks in violation of the U.S. Constitution's equal-protection clause and Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which barred racial discrimination in any program receiving federal aid. Austin also ruled that three public housing units must be built in white areas for every similar unit built in a Black neighborhood. White aldermen refused to approve sites for new construction. The CHA also dragged its feet by simply stopping building instead of following Austin's directives. In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court, ruling on an appeal from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, unanimously concluded that the CHA had practiced segregation. Justices found that the CHA's problems were regional in nature, and that solutions could occur both in the city and the suburbs. Austin then expanded his order to include the entire metro area as an option for scattered-site housing. However, suburbs resisted new construction of lower-income scattered-site housing. A 1981 consent decree in the case placed CHA tenants in existing area housing and gave them federal Section 8 rent subsidies. 'The whole idea was to take the thinking beyond the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that ended school segregation and transfer it to the area of housing,' Polikoff told the Tribune in 1994. '(The) CHA's policy since the early 1950s worked to make each of its 168 high-rise buildings virtually 100% Black. It was illegal, immoral and socially disastrous to pile poor people on top of poor people.' The CHA eventually altered its operations and demolished numerous high-rises such as Cabrini-Green, the Henry Horner Homes and the Robert Taylor Homes in favor of scattered-site housing. The federal government ended its oversight of the CHA in 2019. At 92 years old, Polikoff was still involved in the case. 'It is well-known that the work Alex led changed public housing practices both in Chicago and nationally, and positively impacted tens of thousands of public housing residents,' said attorney Julie Brown, who worked for decades with Polikoff on the Gautreaux case. 'He was brilliant, of course, but always questioning. He had an uncanny ability to put aside extraneous issues and get to the heart of any matter he addressed. He had an innate sense that justice should prevail and insisted on doing everything he could to try to make it so.' Alex Kotlowitz, whose award-winning 1992 book, 'There Are No Children Here,' covered hardscrabble life in the Henry Horner Homes, praised Polikoff for challenging the CHA, 'which had become a kind of warehousing for the city's poor. He challenged the nation's conscience.' 'Alex was one of the first to recognize the profound effects of concentrated poverty,' Kotlowitz said. 'The Gautreaux litigation changed more than just housing policy. It forced us to reconsider how we treat the marginalized. It prodded us to consider our collective responsibilities to those who are struggling economically.' 'Gautreaux laid the foundation for the present-day national conversation about mixed-income housing, a reconsideration of how we think about community,' Kotlowitz said. Polikoff left private law practice in 1970 to join the staff of the public-interest law firm Businessmen for the Public Interest, later named Business People and Professionals for the Public Interest and now known as Impact for Equity. He became the executive director of the group, which provided a full-time platform for continued social justice advocacy, and held that post until 1999. He continued to work as the group's housing director until fully retiring in 2022. Under Polikoff, the group succesffully fought City Hall's proposal in the early 1970s to build a new airport on landfill in Lake Michigan. It also successfully fought plans for a nuclear power plant near Chesterton, Indiana, on the border of the 12,500-acre Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, winning a key court fight in 1974 when a three-judge panel of federal judges halted construction. The utility Northern Indiana Public Service Co. formally abandoned plans for a nuclear plant on the site in 1981. And pressure from Polikoff and his colleagues at BPI and from the Citizens Utility Board spurred utility Commonwealth Edison Co. to announce the settlement of 10 years of rate-case litigation in October 1993 with a record $1.34 billion refund to rate-payers. Polikoff's 'vision and passion inspired many of us,' recalled Environmental Law & Policy Center CEO Howard Learner, BPI's former general counsel and the lead consumer lawyer in ComEd settlement negotiations. 'Alex was always proud that part of his legacy in leading BPI was the multiplier impact from the number of talented public interest attorneys and vital new organizations that were developed at and grew from BPI to make a difference for the public good.' Bob Vollen, who worked alongside Polikoff at BPI from 1972 until 1982, said Polikoff had a 'way of posing a question that it allowed no possible answer other than the one he was seeking.' Polikoff authored five books, including 'Waiting for Gautreaux: A Story of Segregation, Housing and the Black Ghetto,' which was published in 2006. His most recent book, 'Cry My Beloved America,' an examination of anger and frustration in America, was published in 2024. Polikoff's wife of 71 years, author Barbara Garland Polikoff, died in 2022. A daughter, Joan, died in 2016. In addition to his son, Polikoff is survived by another daughter, Eve Kodiak; and five grandchildren. Services will be private.
