Let's talk about: Empire and Conflict

This is Let's Talk About, a digital CPD series for teachers. Over the next few weeks, our topic is: Let's Talk About Empire And Conflict. My name is Dan Lyndon-Cohen, and I'm the lead practitioner for humanities at Parkview School in Tottenham. I've been teaching history for over 25 years, and throughout my career have been passionately committed to diversifying the curriculum to include stories that have been marginalized for too long. This series is for anyone who wants to develop their teaching practice on the First and Second World War, by identifying, sharing, and discussing diverse sources which focus on the contribution of the individual nations who once formed the British Empire. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working with Imperial War Museums and talking to different experts. I hope you'll find these conversations offer you practical guidance on approach, language, finding sources, and inequality, race, and representation.  

Here I am in the Imperial War Museum, surrounded by objects that tell stories about conflict since the First World War. We know that sometimes in hidden ways, or sometimes in very explicit ways, every one of these objects also tells a story about the British Empire and conflict. In this video, with help of some expert colleagues, I’m going to talk about two of the key challenges facing teachers who want to include British Empire histories in their teaching of the First and Second World Wars. The first challenge we often hear about is, “there's no room on the curriculum for this”. The second, “there aren't enough readily available resources out there”. Throughout the series, we're going to think about how to manage these topics in classrooms with students who have very different experiences. 

Earlier this week, I spoke to Funmilola Stewart, a brilliant teacher in Bradford, about teaching Empire and conflict within the national curriculum:  

[In video call] 

[Dan Lyndon-Cohen] Hi Funmi, it's great to talk to you. Today, we're going to be talking about teaching the history of Empire when we teach the First and Second World Wars, and what from our experience we do when we hear that, uh often repeated phrase, “I’d love to teach this but there's just no room on the curriculum”. So, we're both going to be answering some questions which are going to pop up on the screen, but before we do that can you just tell us a little bit more about yourself?  

[Funmilola Stewart] Hi, I’m Funmi Stewart, and I’m head of history at Dixons Trinity Academy in Bradford. I’ve been teaching history for two and a half years now, and I became head of history in August 2020. Since taking on the role, I’ve identified some areas of our curriculum that are lacking in diversity, and I’m really passionate about changing that. My key priority this year has been on decolonizing the way that we teach the British Empire and slavery, in order to ensure that students have been provided with the true depiction of events. One key thing that stood out to me was this idea that in order to truly understand the implications of Empire, students would first have to be exposed to pre-colonial history. 

[On Screen: What are the barriers to including Empire histories in popular curriculum topics like the First and Second World War?] 

[DLC] The biggest barrier that most teachers would identify is subject knowledge. They simply were never taught these topics themselves at school or university, certainly not at teacher training - or a limited amount of teacher training - and this links to the second barrier, which is the fear of stepping into sensitive and/or controversial topics without having the experience and the knowledge and the confidence to navigate through these challenges. So, in order to address these interconnected issues, you know, it's important to approach these stories in exactly the same way you would with any topic that you have to teach in your history curriculum. You know, do your research, do your reading, tap into the history education community, you know, find people that are willing to bounce around ideas and support your learning.  

[FS] Additionally, I think that currently there are genuine fears about what are the ‘right things to teach’.  There seems to be this perception that, in order to incorporate new information about Empire, entire topics or schemes of work will have to be removed. It's really important for people to understand that actually these histories can be easily integrated, rather than completely replacing huge chunks of the existing schemes of work.  

There's also the more complex side of engaging with issues that are not fully understood by everyone. For example, some teachers might think that they're teaching a detailed enough scheme of work by teaching a scheme that looks at the problems with recruitment in World War One, considers the difficult experiences of soldiers at war, looks at the contributions of women and so on. I think that people have this attitude that this is a balanced approach to teaching, and that so long as these stories are being told, who they are told about and where they're from doesn't necessarily matter. I’ve realized that it's difficult for some people to understand that experiences, both past and present, do differ as a result of race, ethnicity, and heritage, and so they find it difficult to empathize with the necessity of more representation of these experiences. Lack of representation is a completely new phenomenon for some people because they've never had to experience it themselves.  

Also, I think it's really important to engage with the teachers that are doing this already, because they'll be able to provide an insight into the hugely positive impact that this can have on students. I think it's so important for students to learn about diverse histories, and maybe even more so in classrooms that are lacking in diversity. If students are only ever taught about histories that directly relate to themselves, then they're likely to find it difficult to empathize with and to understand the lived experiences of other people. Through learning about the histories of people from different backgrounds, students are likely to be able to learn acceptance, which just means so much more than tolerance in the current climate. And actually, I think that teaching about these things can lead to kind of much needed validation for staff and students with lived experiences of racism. Obviously, we need to be incredibly careful with the way these things are taught, because we're not in a position that we want to develop trauma amongst staff or among students. However, I am a firm believer that ignoring a problem does not necessarily mean solving it, and I think avoiding teaching about these topics does not equate to protecting students. Obviously, it's so heart-breaking and so unsettling to learn that racism has been around for so long, but by addressing it within the classroom it allows us to explain the origins of racism, and also to really heavily condemn it. I hope that unpicking and challenging racism within the history classroom will be instrumental in kind of equipping students to do that outside of school, as well.  

[DLC] Yeah, as I’ve become much more explicit in the teaching of race and racism in my classroom, I’ve become increasingly aware of the power of these stories, which can be very, very triggering for some students. This year, I had two students in tears when I showed a video about the transatlantic slave trade, and I had to reflect really, really hard on the appropriateness of that clip. And I, I really wanted to talk to the students as well, about their feelings and their emotions as that went through, and we together collectively came to the conclusion that I shouldn't really show that clip anymore. You know, there are alternative ways of presenting this knowledge, and that was the challenge for me to find those alternatives.  

[On Screen: The First and Second World War are taught in nearly every school in this country. What are the curriculum links with teaching the history of these conflicts through the lens of the British Empire?] 

[DLC] I mean, for many years I’ve been able to integrate a diverse range of histories throughout my Key Stage 3 teaching, and there's a real opportunity here to build progression in student knowledge across the key stage. For example, where we teach our students about the start of British Empire in India in Year Eight, this makes it much easier for them to understand why over a million men were part of the British Indian Army during the First World War when we look at that in Year Nine. And when we look at the different aspects of the First World War, we look at it through the lens of Walter Tull, the first black officer in the British Army to be able to take command, uh, give command to white soldiers. And we follow his experiences through the letters that he wrote to his brother, and at one point he reveals that he's asked for a transfer from the Middlesex Regiment to the British West Indies Regiment, and that opens up many fascinating questions about his lived experience in the British Army. So, there are lots of individual stories that can easily be covered in one or two lessons And you know, if you want to focus on the Second World War for example, you can talk about Noor Inayat Khan, who spied for the British. If you want to go back to the First World War you can look at Khudadad Khan, the first Indian soldier to win a Victoria Cross. 

[FS] So Dan's examples sound amazing, and I’ve got some other examples from our schemes of work this year. So, this year we have incorporated case studies on the Mughal Empire and the Kingdom of Benin, and I think that teaching the pre-colonial history of Africa and, in this case, India is a really important way of building pupils’ knowledge and understanding of the different cultures and societies that existed prior to British involvement. I think it makes it clear to students that real people with real lives and real culture existed long before Europeans had ever set foot in these areas. In terms of teaching Empire soldiers, it also helps to pave the way for students to recognize that actually during the world wars, colonial soldiers sacrificed a lot to contribute towards a nation that had already taken so much away from them, and as well this emphasizes how contemptible the wartime racism was. I think otherwise there is this risk of painting the narrative that colonial soldiers were kind of returning a favour to the British for rescuing them, which we know is not the case.  

Additionally, I’m adapting our World War One scheme of work at the moment, and I realised that when schools teach World War One, or certainly when I was at school and training, there's a lot of emphasis on the recruitment of British soldiers. So, schools are well versed in teaching recruitment methods, and analysing the Kitchener poster, and teaching Pals Battalions and so on, but there's actually much less insight into how soldiers from the Empire were recruited. For example, Santanu Das tells the story of how one and a half million men were recruited from the villages of India and to serve for the Empire in World War One. He explained examples of coercion, including water supplies being cut off, and women being kind of kidnapped if their husbands were reluctant to fight. And I think it would be really easy for schools to incorporate knowledge of this alongside their existing lessons on recruitment.  

Finally, I’ve been reading about Sarojini Naidu, who played a huge part in the Indian independence movement, as well as campaigning for women's rights. Lots of schools teach the suffragettes in Britain, and it could be brilliant to explore the campaigns of women from different areas as well at the same time. All of these examples just demonstrate that teachers don't have to completely transform their existing long-term plans and schemes of work, and it's about including a more diverse range of stories that show different experiences from the same periods of history.  

[DLC] But also what's interesting, and what's often left out, is the post-war experience of African, Caribbean, and Asian migrants in Britain. So, we look at the end of our unit on the First World War, we look at the race riots that took place in Cardiff and Liverpool and London in 1919, and we ask our students to explore the reasons for racial tension in those cities. You may even be able to draw on the family histories of your own students. You know, I’ve worked in schools recently with very large Turkish populations and have done some amazing projects around Gallipoli or Çanakkale. One student who I taught this year had been taken there by his parents. He was able to show us the photos of the trenches, he was able to share the stories that he learned, and it was an absolute fascinating insight into the event which was just so much more powerfully enriched by the direct link to that story.  

[FS] Some of these students are likely to have knowledge of this from home anyway, and I think it's really important that this knowledge is legitimized and expanded upon in the classroom. For students who might not be introduced to the stories of Empire at home, being exposed to these sources within school is kind of the best way of challenging misconceptions about who contributed to the wars. And then seeing these sources in person, I think makes the experience feel more real for all students. 

[End of video call] 

[DLC] Funmi and I agree that if you want to teach histories of Empire and conflict. it is possible to make room on the curriculum; these stories are everywhere. The next challenge is to find appropriate resources Next, you're going to hear from Vikki Hawkins, an Imperial War Museum historian who's going to introduce us to the IWM collections online and point out a few particularly relevant sources.  

[Vikki Hawkins] Hi, I'm Vikki, a curator at imperial war museums in London. IWM’s collections online is a great resource for anyone looking for real sources to support their teaching. Today I'm going to tell you about some of the different types of objects and stories we have in our collection that can tell us more about the experiences of people from the former British Empire during the Second World War. Each of these sources are accessible to key stage 3 and 4 audiences and can be used to teach history through many different lenses.  

I'm going to start with a photograph, IWM WA14. It's a photo which is described as showing African recruits in British West Africa pointing at a recruitment poster, which is called the British Commonwealth of Nations Together, at a recruiting centre in Accra, Gold Coast which is now present-day Ghana. WA14 is one of the thousands of photographs taken during the Second World War by official photographers. This photo was taken on behalf of the Ministry of Information, the government department for publicity and propaganda during the Second World War. Many of the captions that describe these photographs on the IWM website use language that was used at the time to describe people places or events. This language is historically accurate, but it is often outdated, and sometimes can be offensive. This can cause challenges to finding material, but also when viewing and using it. So, when using photographs from historical archives such as IWM’s collections online as primary sources, here are a few things I suggest you consider:  

Number one: who took the photograph? Were they asked to as part of their official duties, or were they a civilian onlooker? Are they also from Accra, and do they know the people in the photograph, or are they a soldier perhaps from Britain? How might that affect the perspective of the gaze?  

Number two: for what purpose was the photograph taken and used? There are many motivations to take photographs, from candid photos of your friends, documenting events, artistic practice, and this can also dictate where they end up or how they are used. Perhaps in a personal photograph album, or in a newspaper for example.  

Number three: who or what can be seen in the photograph? Think about who is in the photo and what are they doing. Does it look staged or is it a natural pose? Do you think they knew that they were being photographed, and did they consent? Are there any clues in the photograph that give an indication of what is happening, and what does the caption say?  

And number four: who or what is missing from the photograph? It is always interesting to think critically about what you can't see, as well as what you can. For example, although this photo is in black and white because the film was in black and white, we also have the poster that the boys are looking at in the collection in its original colour form. So, ART IWM PST 8457. Now looking at the two together may change the way that you view the photograph. Now that we have a closer look at the poster you can see that the Indian and African soldiers are on the back row, behind the white soldiers and slightly hidden from view. Does that suggest that the artist or the commissioner of the poster believed that the contribution of these soldiers wasn't as important? Photographs can show us a huge amount about the experiences of people during wartime; however, it is useful to remember that there's always someone behind the camera making conscious or subconscious decisions about who or what is shown, and it's useful to consider their motivations. In this case, Britain desperately needed men from across its Empire to join the armed forces, and this photograph suggests that the young boys pointing at the soldier in the poster were interested in the prospect of going to war. Perhaps they saw it as an opportunity for adventure, as many volunteers did, or a chance to receive a good wage or have better prospects when they returned home. Many felt loyal to the British and saw Britain's enemies as their own. But this image does not show us that men were also forced to fight and to leave their homes, or the fact that Britain did not always treat soldiers from across the Empire equally.  

IWM has a broad range of collections material: photographs, film, objects, sound, documents, and art that might help you build a clearer picture of what is being seen, or the wider context of events. While this photograph tells us one of the ways in which men and women from the former British Empire were recruited, it doesn't tell us anything about the individual experiences they had during times of conflict. That is why at IWM we also collect the stories and objects of individual people so that we can build a more detailed picture of what life was like.  

Let's take Billy Strachan for example. At 18 years old, Billy was eager to fight in the Second World War. He sold his saxophone and his bike to pay for the voyage from his home in Jamaica to Britain. With only two pounds ten in his pocket, and one spare change of clothes, Billy arrived in Britain in March 1940. Once he arrived, Billy joined the Royal Air Force and trained to be an air gunner. Flying over enemy territory was very dangerous, and many men were wounded or died. Once Billy completed 30 missions, he was entitled to spend six months away from the frontline fighting, but instead Billy asked to retrain as a pilot. He flew Lancaster bombers until the end of the war. Now Billy donated his flying goggles and his helmet to IWM. Objects are very important for museums, because they give us a better understanding and appreciation for the complex lives of the people who interacted with those objects. We can see from the padding in the helmet that the temperatures inside the aircraft were freezing. Some men wrote the names of their family members across the front of their helmet or the ear flaps for good luck. Billy also kept a logbook of his flights, and it shows us that the bad weather often made it very difficult for him to see the target at night. Billy also shared the fear that many aircrews had of being caught in enemy searchlights and being targeted by anti-aircraft guns from the ground below.  

We also have an oral history available on IWM's website that was recorded with Billy after the war. You will find the link to it, and all the sources I have talked about, in the description of this video. The oral history gives us the opportunity to hear in more detail about his life, and the interviewer asks him to reflect on specific themes issues or events. When asked how he dealt with racist remarks during the war, Billy said that although he did receive some racist comments, he was always treated well and felt welcome wherever he went.  

Not everyone from across the British Empire who fought during the war volunteered or had the same relatively positive experiences as Billy. As I mentioned earlier, some men were forced to fight, were treated differently to white soldiers and were desperate to return home. These stories are not always readily available. Not all participants of the war wrote down their experiences in diaries or letters; many were illiterate, most people could not afford cameras, or had the money or means to develop the film. Some people didn't record their experiences because they didn't want to remember the awful things that had happened during the war.  

We must also consider the different ways that history and memory are recorded around the world. The final example I want to share with you, of how we can use IWM’s collections online to discover more about the experiences of British Empire recruits, is a marching song recorded by members of the Nigerian Regiment of the West African Frontier Force. In the second track, ‘Salaam Alakum’, which means ‘peace be upon you’, the men sing about being forced to fight for the ‘man with a moustache’, which refers to British officers. These Nigerian soldiers have been sent to Burma to fight the Japanese. In Burma, soldiers endured hot humid days, freezing nights, and torrential rain; many men got sick. The song is sung in a repetitive pattern and includes the lyrics: “We are leaving Lagos and that is not a good thing, we battle the Japanese, going into the jungle is not good.” 

[Extract of marching song plays] 

This range of examples shows us that by critically examining the wide range of photographs, documents, film, and sound we have in the IWM collection, we can make sure that stories from people across the British Empire are brought to the surface, and we can find out more about the lives of people who live through the Second World War. My top tips for looking at photographs can be applied to all of these sources:  

Who took the photo or collected the object?  

For what purpose was it used?  

Who or what can be seen or heard?  

And who or what is missing?  

Now if you're unsure about accessing IWM’s collections online, look out for the useful ‘How to access’ section on iwm.org.uk/collections. 

[DLC] I'm really interested in what Vikki said, her helpful tips and resources she talked about. It does leave me thinking though that some of these resources may be felt to be inappropriate for the classroom, especially if they include racist language or we today regard as hate terms. But is there a way we can have these conversations in the classroom, when connections to inequality and racism are different for everyone? In the next episode of Let's Talk About Empire And Conflict, we will be talking about how to talk about Empire and conflict histories. 

[Dan Lyndon-Cohen] This is Let's Talk About, a digital CPD series for teachers. I’m Dan Lyndon-Cohen. In the first episode on the topic Let's Talk About Empire And Conflict, we talked about where there's room on a curriculum to teach the First and Second World War and Empire stories, and how to choose resources to support that teaching. In this episode, we're going to hear from Imperial War Museum historian Alan Wakefield about two sources in the IWM collection that could be used to support the teaching of many First World War lessons. These resources challenge us to think about how exactly we would talk about them in a classroom, and what concerns we have when we talk about resources that highlight explicit inequalities. Alan will meet with Funmi, and renowned equality expert Dr Halima Begum from the Runnymede Trust to decide on three top tips for teachers to keep in mind when talking about these kinds of resources in the classroom.  

[Alan Wakefield] My name's Alan Wakefield and I’m Lead Curator of First World War History at the Imperial War Museums, and today I’d like to introduce to you two object-led stories from the IWM collections that you might consider using if you are teaching British Empire history in the context of the First World War. Later I’ll be joined by a panel of experts, and we'll talk about actually using these resources in the classroom.  

The first story is outlined bodies two posters, and these are an English and a Burmese language version of the same poster, and they outline the support available for wounded Indian servicemen who served in the First World War, their families and next of kin; and this is in terms of pensions that are available, medical support, and retraining for those badly wounded - for new jobs. And at first sight when you look at this, it’s very, very generous provisioning by the government of India and the Indian army, and it does tend to show a real sort of duty of care to these ex-servicemen and their families.  

But we sort of need to look behind this for the for the sort of true story, so we need to consider what was the political situation like in India in 1919? Well following the First World War, and some broken promises on greater Indian representation in government, there was a growing resistance to British rule in India, and the Indian army was a great part of the mechanism for maintaining British control. So, the British authorities needed to keep the Indian army and army families on side, so by offering this support to ex-servicemen it showed that the Indian army was important, and it was looking after them. So, it was sort of tying them to the colonial system, and this is part of the whole ‘divide and rule’ idea, which was an integral part of the whole colonial system that Britain and other countries ran: to keep, basically, minority rule against the majority population.  

Secondly, we need to look at well, who was actually offering this support? Well in terms of the training facilities, these weren't offered by the government they were offered by voluntary organizations and philanthropic individuals, who were actually putting the money into these associations. So, the government really wasn't having anything to do with that, but it was it was trading off the back of others’ work. We also need to look at, well, how much actual provision was given? I mean, this is India-wide, so there's 65,000 badly wounded Indian servicemen after the First World War, and many of them live in remote rural areas, and it would be very difficult for them to travel to places where these very few training institutions are actually available. So, for many, it was not a proper sort of offer - it was impossible for these men to go.  

And also, we need to look at what was actually been given to them in terms of, say, prosthetic limbs. Were they being offered the most cutting-edge limbs that were available, as was being offered to badly wounded British servicemen? On the whole no, because there was a belief that the modern prosthetics of the day were not suitable for the rough, tough Indian rural lifestyle, and it was also a belief that that the Indian ex-servicemen wouldn't look after them properly anyway. And that was just a thought by the authorities; there was no evidence behind that. Again, it's just basically a thought that they weren't worthy of these things because they wouldn't appreciate them. So, there was also a lack of repair facilities, which was another issue, so even though these men were given prosthetics, actually keeping them workable was impossible. So, this is really a story where you have to look behind the glossy headlines to actually interpret what is available, and to find out the truth.  

The second story revolves around this jacket. This isn't a standard British Army jacket of the First World War, it’s a different colour, different material. It's the kind of jacket worn by African labourers who were working in support of the British army behind the lines. Chief amongst these were the South African Native Labour Corps: about 25,000 men who joined and were serving behind the lines on the Western Front, doing lots of vital work. Unloading ships, building camps, cutting timber, and quarrying stone for road repairs; all vital work to keep the army functioning. Now the fact that these men wearing a different uniform probably means they had a different sort of military wartime experience, particularly the case for the South African Native Labour Corps. It was raised by South Africa for the war effort and run along very strict segregation lines. You've got to remember, South Africa at the time was ruled by the white minority and what they didn't want is white and black South African serving side by side in a fighting, combat role, as this would undermine the idea of white supremacy on which the government was based. So black South Africans joined this labour corps, which was never armed, and the South Africans ensured that they ran the show and made sure that these men were living in segregated camps, so they were kept away from Allied soldiers and even French and Belgian civilians. Again, they didn't want any new ideas coming back into South Africa which might undermine the ruling system.  

Also of interest about this jacket is the label and wax seal that's actually attached to the jacket. This shows it was what's called a sealed pattern. So, it was never issued to an individual soldier or labourer, it was actually kept by the army as an example jacket, and it would be issued to any company that won a contract to actually produce hundreds of thousands of these jackets, and it'd have to be produced exactly this style and exactly this sort of quality, and that is what a sealed pattern is. Now interestingly, this label bears a derogatory term used at the time for black Africans, what we call the ‘k-word’ today. And this really shows the attitudes of the authorities towards these men, because this word doesn't have anything to do with the title of any African labour unit, so there's been a conscious decision to use this term as a catch-all term for African labourers. And if we look at the actual name, the South African Native Labour Corps, again the word ‘native’ is being used as a derogatory term towards the indigenous people of South Africa by the white ruling colonial elite in the country. Today the ‘k-word’ that's on that label is enshrined under South African law as a hate term, and you can actually face a term of imprisonment for using that term. 

[Funmilola Stewart] So I’d like to say thank you to Alan for introducing us to two incredibly interesting objects and it was definitely interesting to see sources like this used within the classroom when teaching Empire and Conflict. I feel honoured to be speaking with Alan this evening, and to be able to introduce Dr Halima Begum, who'll be joining us in a discussion surrounding the use of these sources in school.  

[Halima Begum] It's really a pleasure to be here with the Imperial War Museum today. So my name is Halima Begum, as you said. I am the CEO of the Runnymede Trust. The Runnymede Trust is the UK's leading race relations think tank. 

[On Screen: Would you use the jacket as a teaching resource? How would you deal with the hate term?] 

 

[HB] The jacket uses quite explicit racist symbols, if not racist language, and here I think you have to be historically accurate because if you omit that history or the telling of that history, you're somehow favouring the racist basically, so you don't want to do that. So, you do have to be accurate and actually mention that the context of that source was that the, you know, the army existed but perhaps there are hierarchies and segregated ranks and so on for example. So very explicitly this is racist, but we are telling this history so that we have a better understanding of how South African black soldiers contributed to the British Empire. So, I think in in some ways it's actually easier to deal with the explicit racism, because you can name it.  

What's harder I think is the second source with the poster, where we are looking at seemingly positive examples of how the British Empire was supporting Indian soldiers. And it almost looks jovial and positive and great. And it's a little bit like every time you have a conversation about the British Empire with some people they'll say, “Oh but the Brits left their railways behind in India, didn't they?”. And every Indian just sits there quietly, really uncomfortable, thinking “But what about all the trauma that you left behind, how about that?”. So somehow this poster I think, shows a certain view of the British ‘paternal’ way in which they managed administratively the Indian Empire, but what it doesn't show is actually there was a lot of segregation, a lack of support, power differences, different labour terms. So, it seems as though things look paternalistically taken care of, but what we do know is that this is probably indentured servants; this is probably a part of the army that is not enjoying the same rights as British soldiers who are white, in England. So, I think those sources are interesting because they allow you to look at how you deal with a very explicit source that's racist, and how you deal with implicit sources that don't appear to be racist, but it's hidden, it's unconscious, it's there, it's making everyone feel uncomfortable, and it might even be very useful to deal with those sources at the same time, to show the difference.  

[FS] I think at the moment, there is a lot of debate surrounding what we should be teaching about Empire, and what we shouldn't be teaching, and I think it's really important to flip this entire narrative on its head and ask teachers to consider how they can feel confident in teaching lessons that kind of ignore the racism and inequalities of the British Empire; because actually these things really happened and it's something that should be acknowledged in school along with the rest of the subject. I think the very fact that these sources that Alan introduced exist should provide teachers with confidence in knowing that they're acknowledging a really important truth and that these things actually happened. Yeah so, I agree, and I think both of these sources would definitely be really useful to use in the classroom, but I think that before teachers use these they need to think really carefully about the delivery and how they'd incorporate these into lessons.  

So, I’d kind of, in terms of the jacket with the explicit language, I would be thinking mainly about the impact of this and that's kind of two-fold. So, the first question that I’d be asking is: “what could the impact of this source be on students within the class?”. And I think it's really important for teachers to understand that the racist language was always designed to be derogatory, and the impact that it had on individuals was to other and to dehumanize them at the time. And the impact of that language itself hasn't lessened over time, and if anything, I think because of its legacy and because of the understanding of that language, the impact has become more severe for people that it's directed towards. And so, teachers need to consider that if that language is repeated within the classroom, the impact on any students who identify in that way is likely to be the same as the impact it that was designed for, the people it was originally used to describe. And so, I think I’d recommend doing some research into intergenerational trauma, in order for teachers to prepare themselves to have these conversations within classrooms. In my opinion, there's absolutely no need for the language to be spoken out loud, or to even be displayed on kind of the screen in the classroom, and instead as a teacher you can simply explain that horrible, offensive language was sewn into the label. And you can also articulate that language is so incredibly offensive that you, as a teacher, are not willing to repeat it, and I think that it would be much more impactful to see a teacher who's an authority figure actually making a clear stand against using that racist language than to hear them say it. Because I think if teachers are using that language in the classroom, they risk some students thinking that they can repeat that term, which is exactly what we want to avoid. So, I think any emphasis that we can put on kind of the negative aspects of that language is really important in schools. It's really important for these discussions to be had, but by forcing students to endure racist language, you are losing the impact of what's actually a really important conversation. For me, as an adult I still find it really difficult to hear certain racist terms, and I suppose I do have elements of trauma from that myself, so I would hate for kind of students in classrooms to be exposed to that on a regular basis without being offered lots of support surrounding that as well. 

[AW] We shouldn't be airbrushing anything out of history just because it's uh, just because it's difficult to deal with. We have to deal with difficult subjects - history is difficult, especially history of empires, and we have to talk about everybody's contribution. 

[FS] Using these sources will open up difficult conversations about racism and about power structures, and these are really important conversations that I think can be had, and also kind of controlled within school in a really safe environment. 

[HB] It's important I think that we bring the level of sensitivity and awareness to the particular parts of history that we're teaching and having an understanding of who it is in this classroom that may well have been impacted by the history of the sources we're describing.  

[FS] It's really essential to kind of front load your lessons, it's something that I’ve learned, and to acknowledge straight away that students are going to hear kind of difficult topics addressed, and to ensure that from the outset they know that their feelings about this are completely valid. I think we should explain to students that we will be addressing racism and be open in kind of explaining that these conversations are uncomfortable but also really important. And it's really important to also signpost students to the areas in school that they can go to for support after the lesson if needs be. What we don't want is for students to completely shut down as a result of what is a really important but also a sensitive topic.  

[HB] I suppose for me as a South Asian, I find it very difficult to use the ‘p-word’, never mind the ‘n-word’, never mind the ‘k-word’, and I imagine that white educators would feel the same because they're even more removed, I think, from that community than I am. So that's appreciating I suppose, the impact that we feel. You know, I am a grown up, I’m not a child, I’m not impressionable but it has an impact on me still and that's important. And, you know, children's faces are no different from adult’s faces when they hear that word, so that trauma is very real. And I suppose, if we were to have an educator who clearly says that this is unacceptable language and it's absolutely appalling that this happened, but we will talk through the historical context of why that happened could be quite powerful. But equally without saying that this was unacceptable, this was dehumanizing, the purpose of that language was to demean, without doing that but going into the kind of displaying of something that's offensive could be quite problematic, I think. So right from the outset I think we have to stand up against that, and say why was so inappropriate, but then show that the historical context was such that it went unchallenged; this was seen as everyday practice, but it wasn't okay, it was designed to hurt and dehumanize. 

[AW] I mean, connected with that jacket there is like a hierarchy of sort of demeaning terminology, because if you don't want to use the word that's on the label, the unit - the South African unit was associated - the guys who actually wore those jackets, the official title of the unit was the South African Native Labour Corps. So that, and the idea is that the term native is being used basically to signify black South Africans. There were white officers in that unit, but at the end of the day the soldiers were black South Africans; a white South African would not join that unit as another rank. And that word is not used for any of the other labour units in the British Army. There's the Indian Labour Corps, there was the Egyptian Labour Corps - that wasn't used, because the South Africans named that unit themselves, and the British didn't challenge the name of the unit, and then they allowed it to be run by the South Africans rather than by the British Army, which the other labour units were run by. So, you know, that's the story behind it, but you've also got that hierarchy of language, so perhaps you can introduce the word ‘native’, because it's in the context of the unit, rather than, rather than the word on the label.  

[HB] So, the word ‘native’ is obviously a byword for somebody who's not white, and in that context, we need to say how language can still be divisive when it seemingly seems quite neutral. 

[AW] We used to have a card index which was written up um 1919-1920. It’s in really nice copperplate handwriting, but if you look at the index for soldiers, you have ‘British troops’, you have ‘foreign troops’, who's literally everybody else that's white, then you have ‘Colonial troops’ which are primarily Indian soldiers. Then you have, I think it's ‘Colonial auxiliaries’, who are black African soldiers, and then you just have a card, basically card for ‘natives’, which is a card for like civilians from the colonies. Somebody was indexing those photographs back right at the end of the First World War, and they obviously came up with that hierarchy of that's how they were going to name troops. 

[On screen: The poster has seemingly positive language. What would you need to talk about if you used it as a teaching source?] 

[FS] Okay, so in terms of the kind of seemingly positive language used in the poster, I think that in schools we’re pretty well versed in source analysis, and aside from the obvious caution I’ve described in terms of approaching topics regarding race, the poster source can be approached in a pretty similar way to usual. So, for example, when we teach World War One and World War Two, all schools generally teach propaganda anyway, and this source doesn't necessarily need to be treated differently. So, for example, some schools use anagrams, some schools question the source's purpose or its origin or its nature or its date, and the same thing can apply here to analyse how truthful this depiction of events was. So obviously this would probably involve more teacher input than usual, and we encourage students to come up with a variety of inferences from sources usually, but in this case I think it's important to bring the students back to an understanding that this poster was kind of intentionally designed to be misleading, so if you take it from the kind of viewpoint of it being propaganda, I think it would be really useful for students to pick this apart and kind of question why is this language so positive? And who were these benefits actually for? If this is linked into, as Alan said, the policy of ‘divide and rule’, then we need to encourage students to question that if this was what was being offered to these veterans, then what was simultaneously being denied to the rest of the population?  

[AW] Yeah, I mean I agree with that, it is a divide, it was basically a ‘divide and rule’ thing. I mean if you look at it, it's trying to get an important part of the community to stay on side, to buy into the whole Empire; so, the army, if you, if you served in the army, there were benefits so there are benefits of continuing British rule. And you know, you’re quite right that these services etc were available to people connected with army families, but they weren't available to anybody else. And also, the fact that the posters, you know the posters I think they were printed in September 1919; obviously that's, that's a few months after the Amritsar massacre and various things like this, where basically there is a growing resistance and fight back against British rule, and the idea is what you can't afford is for the army to go. If the army goes, that's the end of that's the end of British rule, and we're dependent on basically local guys in the army to maintain British rule. 

[HB] I think the wider context needs to be introduced around resistance, as you say Alan, because there was a whole load of resistance going on, and why was that resistance going on? Maybe the colonial enterprise and its time was done, it's over, you know it was something that was obviously clearly coming to an end. And to see a poster used in that way during the kind of peak period of the movement around resistance and decolonization, I think it's also part of that critical teaching of history that educators need to tell their students, and if you leave that out then you're kind of going with the kind of dominant narrative and the propaganda. It begs the question when educators ask us, well: “Is there ever any space to teach history and inclusive histories?” I always think, you don't need to artificially create more space, what you need to do is make sure you tell history accurately, and if you do the history accurately, there'll be the space. So, I think we we're colluding with a version of history by leaving out the resistance; we need to make sure that we're critically displaying practically as many of that histories as we can, and history is not singular there are different histories being told of the same period. 

[On Screen: What are your top tips for using historical sources that in their explicit or implicit language highlight inequality?] 

[HB] My top tip is to keep things historically factual and accurate, because by omitting something that is seemingly offensive, I think we will favour the racist, not the anti-racist. So, it's important that we are factual, we are accurate, and by doing so we will actually bring in a more inclusive telling of history.  

[FS] I think that it's our job as teachers to advocate historical accuracy always. It's our job to teach students the truth, and we are not in a position that we can just select bits of history that show Britain in a positive light. We have to be honest in that, and I think it's really, really important for us to acknowledge these instances of racism, because students need to understand that it happened and also to be able to make links to the legacy of that today as well. I also think that we need to be obviously really wary of the importance of this topic, as well as the impact that this could have on students, and we need to front-load our lessons to ensure that we are validating students' feelings about that, of which there will be many. We need to make sure that students feel open and comfortable in kind of discussing the way that these topics make them feel, as well as providing them with signposts for support, and being incredibly careful with the language that we use because as well as historical accuracy, we need to kind of protect our students in some senses as well. 

[HB] In between that, I’d also probably say that it's something about creating a safe space, and an enabling space in which these difficult conversations can take place, and the most effective way to do that I think is by not reinforcing any myth that such language, such sources, were merely a part of their times, and somehow the inference being there, “move on because that was history and that's what it was”. So, I think that by showing that it was unacceptable, as you were saying earlier, by challenging racism in front of our eyes, the way it was used, I think it role models the way in which young learners should be tackling racism in society as they become adults.  

[FS] Some teachers are under this illusion that we shouldn't be kind of bringing topics of racism into school because it can be damaging for students, but actually if we ignore this problem within school that doesn't mean that students won't be exposed to it outside of school, and at least if we address kind of racism in terms of a historical sense, and understand where it came from, and kind of analyse what happened in the past, then we can also have discussions about what's currently happening and we can teach students that it's wrong, rather than them kind of stumbling across racism outside of school and making entirely their own decisions about it. There are some things that we've got a responsibility to teach, and I really strongly believe that this is one of them. 

[HB] But I wonder if there are other ways in which to make that topic less sensitive seemingly for education purposes, so not to take away from the offense and the outrage and the trauma, but to allow the learning process to take place. I just think that it could be an opportunity to also bring in community members who never really had their experiences or their histories ever recounted in this country, and it's a bit about the intergenerational piece isn't it? I think it could be quite powerful. 

[FS] My top tip would be to be wary of the importance of this topic, as well as the impact that you could have on students, so front load your lessons with information about what's going to be covered in detail, and also to validate students’ feelings and provide them with signposted support, and just to be incredibly careful with the way that you discuss this topic. 

[HB] My second tip then is about understanding that whenever we hear the phrase that's reinforced around, “well these were the sign of the times, this is what happened before”, not to reinforce that because it wasn't okay then, there was just nobody there to challenge it. If you take these tips, I think you'll open up a space for a conversation to take place that can actually handle any number of difficult, complex topics. And I think it's a sign of a more resilient kind of society if you're able to open up this conversation, because as you say Alan, this is about historical accuracy - it did happen. How do we now actually try and deal with what has been a contested history? And we're more resilient for it. So, I think it's part of a mature process of you know, a society coming together and healing really. and this is where it starts: in our classrooms, looking at our contested histories. 

[DLC] Well, thank you Halima, Funmi, and Alan for that fantastic discussion - so many really insightful and useful suggestions for working with sources about Empire and conflict. It was really clear from your final comment that there are some key takeaways that teachers can build upon.  

Firstly, I’d agree with Funmi that it's really, really important to prepare your students effectively before you engage with sensitive materials, and this could be embedded into your practice from year 7 onwards. It's also really important to acknowledge the power of the language that's been used in the past to dehumanize and segregate communities, and how that power still resonates and triggers some students today. So, we have to be very careful to acknowledge the emotional impact on our students. Halima also made a critical point when she addressed the attitude and attempts to minimize the legacy and impact of racism by confining it to a distant time in the past: “that was just how it was done in those days”. This attitude needs to be challenged for a number of reasons: it ignores the many acts of resistance that challenged these racist attitudes across communities and across time, and this links to Alan’s tip about the importance of teaching a history that is accurate, and a narrative that has omitted significant chunks of the story, wittingly or unwittingly, cannot be deemed worthy of study, especially in schools. 

[Dan Lyndon-Cohen] Hello and welcome to the final film in the Imperial War Museum's Empire and Conflict CPD program. Today I’ll be hosting a roundtable discussion to reflect on and dig deeper into the pertinent issues raised in the first two films in the series. 

[On Screen: What is your role in the teaching of Empire and Conflict?] 

[Susie Thornberry] Thanks Dan. So, I'm not a historian. My job usually involves asking questions, sometimes simple and sometimes difficult, of our world-class experts to help non-historians like me access our subject matter. I think everyone that's part of this discussion is part of the ecosystem of public history and we've each got an important role to play in that. Imperial War Museum, we have these sources and the specialist knowledge. Teachers like Funmi and Dan are specialist educators, and you know the individuals in your classrooms. And equality experts like Halima can help us to think about broader issues raised when it comes to some of the sensitivity of this material. I really believe that all of us coming together will result in better conversations in classrooms, and IWM having the national collection of war and conflict allows us to support teachers in the teaching of this history, but also to convene conversations like this. 

[Funmilola Stewart] I think obviously, as Head of History, my role is pupil focused, and it's just to ensure that students are provided with the most full and honest understanding of Empire possible within school, but also to instil them with the curiosity to learn more about the Empire, as well rather than just focusing on one fixed narrative. I think that regardless of the amount of curriculum time we have available, as teachers we have to avoid presenting a narrow view of Empire and a narrow view that's been delivered for far too long. And I think particularly at the moment it is a responsibility for teachers because it doesn't seem like this is necessarily going to ever be a compulsory part of the National Curriculum to look at it in a broader sense, and so as teachers it's our job to ensure that that fuller reflection of the past is presented to students in lessons. 

[Halima Begum] Thanks Dan. So, the Runnymede Trust works on a research and evidence lens perspective, and what that usually means is that we're interested in providing accurate information, accurate evidence, to enable practitioners and other stakeholders to do their work well on anti-racism. And we produce research and evidence in different spheres: education, sometimes in employment, sometimes in the criminal justice system. Because if we do want to make the right progress it should be informed by evidence, it shouldn't really just be in the realm of anecdotal evidence – sorry, opinions - it should be driven by facts, and that's what we do, facts don't lie. More recently we've been working on the teaching of history and Empire and colonialism, and you might be asking, well why would you be doing that? This actually predated the current interest in history and migration and the teaching of Empire. For us, you know, teaching the history of migration and Empire is fundamental to the anti-racism work that we need to see happening in Britain and in our schools. The anti-racism narrative is very much a British narrative; our migration story in Britain is very much the British story so we're very interested in creating a more inclusive sense of what that British story is, and we make sure that we speak to different stakeholders so that you can actually have a sensible, safe, honest conversations about how we progress and become more inclusive. 

[ST] Can I, can I add to that if I might? Something that Halima said really resonated there, and I think for too long we've seen the history of the British Empire as separate from the history of Britain, and I think this is, this is a moment where we're all taking some reflection to think about those things as linked, and I'm very happy to see momentum and progress in that direction.  

[DLC] Yeah, also I think what's, I think another point that Halima made was really important which is, you know, this isn't new work actually. In many ways this work has been going on for many years. We kind of stand on the shoulders of giants who have been, you know, doing a lot of ground-breaking work, you know. For example, the Black And Asian Studies Association was formed in 1991, and was pioneering in terms of pushing this work onto the curriculum. So, it is important for teachers to be aware that there's a good body of work which they can tap into, and not feel that they have to kind of reinvent the wheel.  

[On Screen: How do you prepare your audience for this subject matter?] 

[FS] I mentioned in a previous video this idea of front-loading your lessons to make sure that students are prepared for the topic ahead, and so I would always start my lesson surrounding difficult topics with an explanation of some of the sensitive topics that we're about to discuss, just so that students aren't kind of caught off guard with an unexpected area that they might find difficult to comprehend without prior explanation. And you know, some schools spend time communicating the learning objectives at the start of the lesson, and so it would be easy to incorporate just some acknowledgement of sensitive topics too. And on reflection actually, I think this is something that we could do with any topic; so we might not know the individual triggers for individual students, but we can try to address as many areas as possible at the start of the lesson. So, for example, if I was going to be exploring the racism within the British Empire then I would just signal to students that this lesson is going to involve discussions of racism. But also, within our school one of our key drivers communicated to students is this idea of purpose, and I think this could be useful to everybody, just kind of to explain to students the reasons behind us studying these topics, and discussing these sensitive issues, so that students understand why we're doing it as well, just before engaging with the lesson.  

[DLC] Yeah, I think that's so important, just to kind of set that grounding and that groundwork, kind of preparing the students. And as you say, that could be a whole range of different topics in which this approach is really appropriate for. One of the things that we've tried to do at Park View [School] is to widen some of the kind of ideas around race, and racism, and anti-racism, and we've brought in the work of Michel-Rolph Trouillot, who wrote an incredible book called Silencing The Past, in which he talks about the numbers of different ways in which silences have been created in the curriculum. And so, we're very explicit about teaching that right from the start of Year 7 to our students, so that they understand that history is a construct, that the way in which history has been certainly taught in my 27 plus years of teaching has been within that kind of western construct - dominance on the written source for example - and that has marginalized so many voices. So, we are making it very, very clear to our students that there are different ways in which you can navigate the past, and that should raise lots and lots of questions for them, and we encourage them to kind of ask as many questions, dig deep as much as they can. And through those conversations, we begin to certainly unpick the ways in which different aspects of the past have been interpreted, and reported on, and memorialized. And so that's the way in which we try and do our front-loading, by just really kind of engaging right from the start of their arrival in secondary school. 

[HB] There's a couple of things here that I think we need to talk about foregrounding, because we're about to expose children, young people, and also educators to a conversation that's potentially sensitive and complex. So, there's an issue around well-being and just making that space not only safe, but bold. But – you know – just creating a space for anti-racist conversations to happen. Now, whether you're in the workplace, whether you're in a school, I think we need to go in with that kind of approach that this is going to involve a degree of sensitivity. So, prepare for that but I also think, just, it's also important to foreground, for the reason that you mentioned Dan. Which is that if you silence the past, you're essentially privileging the oppressor and I think that was the point about silencing the past. If you if you skip over something, if you omit it, you silence the past. You're actually doing a service to the oppressor. You're actually sparing the racist narrative. So, I think even from a position of critical historian’s lens and how we approach this subject, foregrounding isn't just about the well-being of the student population or the educator's capacity to take us through that journey, it's also about understanding that history needs to be accurate. 

[DLC] Yeah, 100% I mean, I think that whole question of creating that environment which feels safe and nurturing and sensitive to the needs of the students within the class is fundamental.  

[ST] I just wanted to make two points around what we've been discussing. I totally agree that this is about how we approach our history – the history of the British Empire is our history and I think we need to embrace that. Funmi, you spoke in an earlier episode about covering pre-colonial history and I think understanding the lineage of this is so important and I see that as preparation for these lessons. Your whole terms, and actually your whole education needs to need to prepare you for encountering this history, and I really strongly believe that by broadening conversations like that, we start having conversations about equality, injustice, and about young people creating a fairer world. We know, we know that that is how often these lessons go with young people, and that's, that they become very engaged on the subject matter.  

When it comes to well-being, we do so much work with veterans and eyewitnesses of trauma so it's something I'm thinking about constantly and I actually wonder if we might learn even from the ‘social story’ in these lessons and actually really laying out expectations really clearly. I think front-loading is such an important aspect of any work that deals with trauma. I also think it's worth thinking about whether you need an additional code of conduct for specific lessons. How long are the lessons going to be? How much will students need to participate? Is there a moment for them to debrief? How do you yourself debrief and how can, how can us as educators be a bit kind to ourselves when things went in an unexpected direction? And actually, we have to face that we learnt something from what's come up. We've spoken about evidence, and facts, and opinions, and emotional responses, and all of those need to be part of how we interpret our history. So, I'm really keen that we acknowledge that we can have a very emotional response to this. We know that students sometimes become angry or upset and that can cause them to disengage, or they feel the injustice of some of the inequalities that we're talking about. As an adult, I experienced that and as an adult who's a person of colour and has experienced racism, I experienced that, so I just want to acknowledge the fact that that's an important thing to do in that lesson planning.  

[FS] I was just going to add that I think that there needs to be an understanding as well for teachers, that there might be conversations that come up that they don't know how to respond to, and I think acknowledging that's really important because whilst we need to prepare the subject knowledge, as we always do, and we need to be prepared to answer questions about the history, these lessons might open up some conversations with students linked into racism that teachers find quite difficult. And there can be different reasons for that; so as we've said ethnic minority staff might find it kind of difficult to open up into those conversations, because it brings back episodes of their own trauma, or people who don't have that lived experience just might not know how to respond, and I think it's really important for teachers to acknowledge that when those conversations arise, they can say “that's an excellent question, you've raised a really excellent point. Right now I'm not sure exactly how to respond to that but we'll come back to it later or I can signpost you to speak to this person about it,” if there's someone else in school that you can go to. I think it's just acknowledging the importance that students are opening up to teachers about these things, acknowledging that their kind of traumas and lived experiences are valid, but also having the confidence to say, “I'm not the best person to have this conversation with you.” Because the worst thing that you could possibly do is try to kind of respond and end up perpetuating the negative feelings that they're feeling, or kind of perpetuating any stereotypes if you're concerned about that. Because I know that for some for some teachers it's genuinely just a lack of understanding of how these things can make students feel as well, so it's having the confidence to be open about that, but making sure that you then refer them to somebody else. And whilst it's important to kind of view history as a construct, I think you should acknowledge that in a monocultural setting as well, I think that within those settings it's all the more important to make sure that students are just seeing history, and they're seeing a diverse history from day one.  

[HB] That's why the integration is so important, because then you don't create divisions about ‘our histories’ versus ‘somebody else's history’, and I think that's a more responsible way of teaching a more inclusive history, rather than saying that's black history, or that's Asian history, or that's history in the month of October because it's black history. It has to be integrated as part of your regular teaching of critical history. 

[On screen: How do you address the systemic inequalities people faced, whilst also recognising their contributions to these conflicts? 

 

[HB] I think it is really important to talk about the structural inequalities that existed right from the beginning, but equally show that um the contribution of black soldiers or Indian soldiers, on the face of all that inequality, shows how much loyalty and commitment they have to the British Empire. Because it's not about them and us, it's about us wanting to create a common British future. And if you don't teach that history well, then you cannot appreciate the sacrifices and the contributions that many of our ancestors made.  

[ST] How we teach this history which inevitably raises inequalities and yet value contributions of human beings, it's so complex and so nuanced. When it comes to, when it comes to, the First World War I'm going to quote our head of First World War collections Alan, who always says it was called the first, it was called a ‘world war’ for a reason. There were global contributions. Britain needed troops from across the Empire and their work was vital, but that doesn't mean that they were always treated fairly. If we take the British West Indies Regiment, who we created a resource with the BBC about, we tried to cover their lives pre- and post-war, so what they were doing before they volunteered for the First World War, and what happened afterwards, and the reasons that they signed up are complex. We know they volunteered, they volunteered to fight, but on the Western Front they weren't allowed to do so. They experienced various inequalities in pay, sometimes in segregated facilities, and in one example where they were asked to clean toilets for people below their ranks. So by establishing their lives before and after, and the different reasons for fighting and for being there, including they thought that they might gain civil rights; and Marcus Garvey was one of the proponents of that, saying, thinking that that might lead in a greater way towards independence. But these men experience real racial inequality and I think it's really important to underline that, and I hope with that resource which I'd encourage people to go and look at, that we’re able to establish the sense of these men and what their lives were like, and perhaps a little of what their interiors and their context was that differs from that of British troops. 

[FS] I completely agree with Halima and Susie in terms of the things we have to include. We have to include all of the contributions that we gave, but we definitely just can't omit the way that they were treated, regardless of the contributions that they made. But I think a teacher could do all of the work in the world, they could prepare all of this knowledge, they could want to make sure that they're being as honest as possible about history, but then when it comes to the lesson the sequencing of that lesson is equally important. So just to give an example, to use the um analogy for example, teaching about the experiences of black or Asian soldiers, even if I'd done loads of work on this and wanted to highlight all the right things, if I went straight into my lesson with an image for example of black and Asian soldiers, and just bombarded the students with the examples of racism they experienced, then I would be perpetuating the stereotypes that students hear every day without considering the implications. Now I'm not saying we omit that all together, but I just think the sequencing of that in your lesson is really important. So I think you would want to look at the contributions first: look at all the things that they gave, look at all the sacrifices that they made, and then later in your lesson go down the line of “despite these overwhelming contributions, these men still experienced racism”. And I think this could lead to a really interesting discussion which raises thoughts and questions such as: yes, the contributions do make this racism seem even more unfair than it was, but actually even if they hadn't fought in all of these battles, the racism still wouldn't be justifiable. And I just think framing it like that, showing what they've done, showing that they experienced racism anyway, but then saying actually it's not the responsibility of minorities to have to kind of serve people to avoid racism, I think it could open up some really important conversations.  

And then on a slightly separate note to that, I just think ways of tackling it to make it seem kind of more human to the children as well. And instead of just referring to this collective experience, I think it's well worth looking at the stories of individuals as some of you have mentioned. So David Olusoga has done some work on the Sikh soldier Manta Singh, and I think looking at that, it allows you to focus on the contributions of these people and their experiences, but as well as kind of connecting that to a real person, who forms friendships, and feels really homesick, because that's an additional layer, they're fighting somewhere they've never been before, getting to grips with new environments, getting to grips with new weaponry. And I think for students to be able to attach that to a real person is really, really important rather just kind of this broad collective experience.  

[DLC] Perfect answer! I can't add to that like that's especially that the role of the individual I think whatever history you're teaching, like that is, like kind of the key way in which you engage people through those individual narratives. Because I'm learning a lot more about the kind of decolonising approach, um, and kind of thinking about bringing in indigenous voices in particular, what I'm trying to do is help the students to be exposed to different voices, and different interpretations, and different narratives of these kind of global events.  

[ST] When you speak about sequencing, I think it's so important and I wonder if you have practical examples of that? Do you at the beginning of the year, if it's not too meta, or the beginning of the term have a conversation about how you're going to approach history over the next set period of time, before you before you lay that out?  

[FS] In terms of, like, how we're going to approach it, I think I do have the benefit of having- I've got a really small department, and so there are only three of us and so when we do get together for department meetings and things, it's like a really kind of- we can have these kind of really rich and focused discussions. But equally I think Dan will have different perspectives to me. I am the least senior person in my department, so weirdly I'm working with two members of leadership at the moment, but it is expanding. We do actually end the year having conversations reflecting on how we've taught things previously, and just acknowledging that actually that wasn't quite right. So for example, I think you had a similar example previously Dan, but with the transatlantic slave trade, all of the previous scheme of work focused on, like, capture the experiences on the middle passage, the experiences on the plantations, and that that took up a huge amount of the scheme of work. And actually for me, kind of delivering that scheme of work I felt it was a little bit uncomfortable afterwards but I just wasn't in a position where I felt comfortable vocalizing that, because it just seemed like we were kind of perpetuating solely a victim narrative. And I thought- we had the discussion that actually yes, it is really important for students to understand that these things happened, but also there was so much that happened before this. Because I think what teachers don't realize is that when we're having these conversations about kind of adapting our curriculum and adapting our schemes of work, we don't just mean bring in some black history, we need to bring it in now. And I don't want teachers to have this perception that they need to just bring in any element of black history and stick it somewhere. So for example, if teachers already teach some aspects of Empire but are now just going to bring in solely that emphasis on slavery, actually is that solving problems or is that making the problem that's already there even worse? So we do, just to go back to your question, we did have a long kind of discussion about the problems with our curriculum already and then how we need to change our scheme of work and the sequences within that, and I think now that we've kind of transformed this unit on Empire, each week we'll review how it's gone with Year Eight and discuss what we need to do with the lessons going forward and exactly how those need to be. And I think it's been interesting for my department to think about things like the language that we'll use and the order in which we teach things, but I would say that's really important for departments to set time. 

[On screen: How important are primary sources in the teaching of Empire and Conflict?] 

[ST] I would say this, but I think museum collections are a great way to start these conversations, particularly if you aren't sure how to integrate the British Empire and conflict into your work schemes. I can give you a really specific example drawn from the BBC resource I referred to earlier that uses resources to look at experiences of the First World War from the British Empire, and it takes three key moments from, from that period that I'm sure you'd be covering anyway. So recruitment, the theatre of war, or the front line as it were, and victory parades. And it looks at those through the lens of the South African Native Labour Corps and the British West Indies Regiment, and by doing that we're able to show that those key moments are different if you are from one of those regiments, and it looks at those key differences. There's an amazing photograph in the resource where we know, because we've got other resources around it, that what looks like a homecoming celebration is surrounded by armed troops, because they were worried about resistance. And you can't tell that unless you've got that primary source, unless you add the knowledge of it - you store into it. 

[HB] So primary sources are really valuable I think to engage and motivate young learners. But also important I think to, to show sources and ask young learners to critically engage, without having that knowledge mediated. Here's a trouble with history and sort of taking an anti-racist approach of it, is that all history has been mediated so you are getting the preferred history of the privileged, or those that were the victors. Well if that is the case, then primary sources is a really good way to counter-balance out any form of mediation that has already occurred in the transfer, creation, production, transmission of knowledge. So that's why primary sources are really important. But I also think that then depends on museums being able to balance the primary sources as well, because if your collection of primary sources is only showing just images or objects from the kind of British Army that is mainly white, so not the South African Native Labour Corps which is black, then even the reliance on primary sources is skewed. So I think there's a kind of onus on museums to think about a more balanced, equitable collection or primary sources that allows educators in school to draw from. 

[FS] I think primary sources are integral, and they do they really do bring that more personal and more human element into the lessons. I think they also encourage students to raise questions that they've never previously thought of, and they would- they are really helpful in kind of raising this awareness in terms of diversity and thought throughout history. Because we know that one primary source or each primary source provides one snippet of the history, and the more sources that you bring in, the more kind of viewpoints that students can access, and the more questions and inquiry questions they can form themselves. So just bringing in one primary source, the students might ask: 

What else was happening during this time period? What is the creator's purpose in making this primary source? What are they saying? Why are they having those experiences? 

And also you can start to ask questions, for example: What biases and what stereotypes can you see through this person's account of history? And I think actually for teachers as well, it would combat some of those concerns that people have about teaching the wrong aspects of history. But having those primary sources in front of them, teachers should feel confident in knowing that they are teaching the truth, and actually if they weren't to use those primary sources they would be omitting something from those lessons and they'd be denying students access to the truth about Empire. And I think in terms of the museum's support, that is really integral in terms of bringing primary sources into school. Because I know that history teachers would all love to trawl through the archives - that's what we all did at uni, we'd love to - and complete our own research, but it's just not possible for everyone and we don't have time to do that. So I think that what the Imperial War Museum are doing is fantastic.  

[DLC] And I think the way in which Vikki talked about in the first film, the oral archive of the Hausa and the Nigerian soldiers, and the way that was cut with that footage as well, the video footage, kind of doubled the impact of that- of those particular sources. But I think the really interesting angle about that is how it fits in with that decolonization approach as well, because we want to find sources which widen our kind of understanding of the past, and we want to move away from the written source and the dominance that that has had for so long. And so listening to those soldiers singing those songs and thinking about that, that kind of the passion and the kind of the motivation behind what they were singing in those songs, and the way in which we can bring those stories into the classroom I think is really, really important. So I would just encourage teachers just to, just step into this journey, because I mean I've learned more in the last 18 months, I think, about my own approach to teaching history, and my own kind of way in which I construct lessons, and the way in which I talk to my students, by embarking on this kind of path down towards decolonizing our curriculum, than I've done in 20 plus years of ‘diversifying’ my curriculum, where I have been happy to kind of bring in as many stories as I possibly could to widen the representation in my classroom. But actually understanding the kind of power structures behind all of this, and the way in which history has kind of contributed to those power dynamics, has been absolutely enlightening for me and very, very exciting and very kind of engaging.  

[HB] We shouldn't kind of underestimate the power and agency of young people. Now I'm not saying that young people should then therefore be the anti-racist champions alone; there's something a little bit punishing about that really. But we should really support young people's voices to ask the questions, and then offer a curriculum that reflects, you know, the 21st century young people that they are. So, it takes a bit more from us as educators, but I think we should always take the cue from young people, always.