Educational Grief

Abstract

ABSTRACT Taking recent public concerns from historians about ‘decolonising the curriculum’ as its starting point, the article explores how grief over empire - and the inability to recognise and comprehend its impact - is shaping every aspect of the English education system. Moving across events at Pimlico Academy, Highgate School and larger institutions such as the Historical Association and the police, it suggests that a possible way forward is to accept that educators and education are, regardless of the political positions taken, deeply implicated in perpetuating inequalities. By accepting this implication, and understanding the role of grief in this dynamic, the piece argues that individuals and institutions might then establish a new foundation to reason on a more open intellectual and social terrain.