Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire

by Akala

What tensions are brought into being when a child’s natural proclivity to question everything in their own unique way comes into contact with a one-size-fits-all mode of education? State schooling in Britain both today and when I was a child seems stuck in a Victorian-era paradigm, guided by notions of discipline, obedience and deference to ones betters, of becoming a good worker and getting a good job. The idea that we go to school to find our passions, our calling, to learn to be happy, to ‘draw out that which is within’, as the root meaning of the word ‘educate’ commands, is almost entirely absent. Let alone any sense that we plebs should contemplate participating in the governing of the country.