Earlier this year, Ethics and Education published a special issue (vol. 13, no. 1) on Critical Philosophy of Race and Education. The issue is guest edited by Judith Suissa and Darren Chetty. Here is an excerpt from their editors' introduction to the issue:
In the UK there is a long tradition of activist scholarship concerning the existence and effect of racism in the education system. Scholars such as C.L.R. James, Claudia Jones, Ambalavar Sivanandan, Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, Barry Troyna, Heida Safia Mirza, Bernard Coard and Gus John have addressed and explored many of the themes found in this special issue –how underlying racialised relationships of domination in society have shaped and influenced educational policy and practice and the extent to which they continue to do. The black British intellectual tradition has often operated outside of ‘the ivory tower’ both out of commitment to community struggles and, at times, out of necessity. Indeed Paul Warmington notes ‘it might be argued that black British intellectual life and academia have intersected only fitfully’ (
This volume is an attempt to build on and extend these intellectual conversations within the community of philosophy of education and philosophy more broadly, which, as Michael Peters put it in his recent Editorial for a special issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory, ‘of all disciplines, [] has seemed most resistant to taking race seriously’ (
Likewise, while sounding a powerful warning of the very real dangers of contemporary racist currents in our educational institutions and in society more broadly, the contributors to this issue also recognise and celebrate the significant contributions and pedagogical interventions achieved by social movements such as Black Lives Matter, ‘Why is My Curriculum White?’, and ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ – whose voices form part of the critical discussion so necessary if we are to challenge the increasing resurgence of racist and xenophobic narratives about our past, our present, and our future.
In drawing together contributors from different cultural and disciplinary contexts, working within different intellectual traditions, we hope to show how philosophical conversations on race and racism, in dialogue with sociological research and historical enquiry, can inform and contribute to the endeavour to fight the structural racism that permeates the societies in which so many of us live, through an understanding of how it manifests itself in our pedagogical practices, curriculum, educational policy and institutions. The contributions range across the whole spectrum of educational practice. Winston Thompson, Kristie Dotson and Shirley Anne Tate and Damien Page all situate their discussions within the context of further or higher education, whether focused on issues of curriculum, institutional policy or pedagogy, and drawing on philosophical work on diversity, decolonisation, memory and knowledge. Sophie Rudolph, Jessica Gerrard and Arathi Sriprakash focus on the conceptualisation of knowledge and power that underlies so many debates about what and how to teach; Melissa Fitzpatrick and Amy Reed-Sandoval, Darren Chetty, Jack Bicker and Michalinos Zembylas all discuss particular aspects of classroom pedagogy, drawing on broader work to do with issues of identity, inclusion, dialogue, empowerment and affect.
The seminal work of Charles Mills informs many of these discussions. Zara Bain’s opening article offers, for readers perhaps less familiar with this work, a systematic account of some of Mills’ central ideas, and, for the first time, an explicit analysis of their relevance and implications for the British context. As Mills’ own work has demonstrated, and as reflected in the discussions by Sriprakash et al., Dotson, Bain and Chetty, understanding the history of our educational, philosophical and social ideas and practices is a crucial element in developing a critical perspective on current debates. Indeed, reflecting on the electoral victory of Donald Trump and the Brexit campaign, Stuart Jeffries, in a recent interview about the relevance of the work of the Frankfurt School theorists for our contemporary age, notes the ease with which populist leaders speak and lie to voters, pointing out that ‘this is a way of controlling people, especially people who don’t have a sense of history’ (Illing, S. 2017)
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