The Student Room Group

Cambridge University agrees to Decolonise the Curriculum

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Original post by Quantex
It is one of those articles designed to elicit ire among the easily offended and generate advertising revenue.

The Telegraph has had to issue a correction, not that it is going to stop the faux-outrage.

Screenshot_20171026-103940.jpg


Admittedly I cant see yhe whole article but the original article is still up and there is no clear indication that it has been retracted online.

I bet the retraction qas buried right in the middle of the printed paper as well.

Newspaper retractions are meaningless.
Original post by the bear
i feel ashamed for using Greek theorems

:emo:


It's not the fault of the Greeks that the Romans were too busy surpressing dissenting views and conquering Europe, the middle East, and North Africa to make meaningful contributions to philosophy and the sciences
Absurd, writers should be selected on the educational merit of their work.
Original post by Jammy Duel
I somehow doubt all those 100 we're English students, I imagine they were mostly black humanities students but not English



White students wanting this would've made up pretty much all the support. Simply due to the sheer volume of them at the uni. So if you want someone to (unreasonably) get mad at, there you go.

This is the same issue the movie industry faces. The world was significantly more racist 60-100 years ago. Few people will have supported books written by or starring black people. In fact few black people would've got the opportunity to go to university and get an education. Let alone publish a book and be well renowned.

So in the current day, even though society is better, virtually all curriculum will be by white authors. So they're trying to force a fix which is debatable better than doing nothing at all.
(edited 6 years ago)
Original post by Good bloke

The irony of this storm in a teacup is that the demand for 'decolonising the curriculum' will have the opposite effect to what the SJWs want. The black authors that will be studied would have been writing in a different language entirely if it had not been for colonialisation, and this merely emphasises the colonialisation of their native lands.


Yes, it had occurred to me as well that there must be some irony in their branding this campaign as being for 'decolonisation' when it seems that their chief complaint is that the curriculum is too heavily based on traditional domestic culture, and their chief aim is to replace this with other stuff they want.

This is perhaps comparable to saying that the British Empire aimed to 'decolonise' India by replacing traditional means of travel with rail infrastructure.
Original post by SuperHuman98
They could have just kept the white authors, but also include the Black authors. Maybe I am unreasonable lol -.-


They have, the story as reported in the tabloids/Telegraph/Mail is utter tripe. Basically all that's happened is a petition leading to a recommendation, nothing even compulsory about adding them to reading lists.

Great PR job by the student concerned though, she has made her mark!
Original post by Fullofsurprises


Great PR job by the student concerned though, she has made her mark!


It is not exactly hard for a person of African extraction studying at Oxbridge is it?

You just have to attack dead male whiteys ( call for a statue of one to be toppled or say their presence on a literature course is institutionally racist) and Bob’s your uncle...
When will this joke end? I have never read a book and gone "Great book but Ugh it was written by a white person" this is just insanity yet some people are actually taking this forward,

my German heratige is really insulted, I think we need to get some German writers in there. People that actually think like this dont even deserve the time of day, they are racist and idiotic
Original post by AperfectBalance
When will this joke end? I have never read a book and gone "Great book but Ugh it was written by a white person" this is just insanity yet some people are actually taking this forward,



It really doesn't mean that. It's about having a complete dearth of books that aren't by white people, or from the colonial/imperial perspective. It's about trying to introduce some wider reality. The modern world has voices from all over, not just Europe and N. America.
Original post by paul514
I just got a warning for posting a picture of the nazis burning Jewish books in satire of this story.

TSR moderators logic


And yet here you still are. Just fancy.
Original post by Fullofsurprises
It really doesn't mean that. It's about having a complete dearth of books that aren't by white people, or from the colonial/imperial perspective. It's about trying to introduce some wider reality. The modern world has voices from all over, not just Europe and N. America.


Who in their right mind honestly gives two hoots about what colour the writer is.

If we are reading historical literature most of the readable and decent stuff is going to be written by "white" people, this totally ignores the fact that white people could be anything from Austrialian to Swedish to Russians.

And how are the books from a "colonial perspective" unless the book is directly about colonialism then that is just bull. I am currently reading a book about a cross dressing woman stuck in a love triangle, sounds pretty progressive to me oh but who wrote it a evil white man. few or none of the books on the current and past reading lists are directly about colonialism.

These people need to stop being racist and judging on the colour of the skin
Original post by astutehirstute
It is not exactly hard for a person of African extraction studying at Oxbridge is it?

You just have to attack dead male whiteys ( call for a statue of one to be toppled or say their presence on a literature course is institutionally racist) and Bob’s your uncle...


She has had her facebook, e'mail and other contacts bombarded with sexist and racist hate mail because of completely bogis article that billed her as erroneously wanting to erase white people from the historic record.

Sounds like a totally swell life to me.
Reply 52
I'm not black but I am British Indian and I honestly disagree with the rubbish. I think it would be fair to try and 'add' some black / BME writers but not replace. Imo this kind of stuff just stirs up more tensions between races and is just stupid. However it is normally black people who are always saying things like this ( I don't mean to generalise, and I apologise if any offence is taken) but you don't really see other races doing things like this. How many Indians or Chinese people are complaining about silly issues like this?
It's just wrong and really counterproductive, as I said it just stirs up tensions between different races.
Original post by peeked
I'm not black but I am British Indian and I honestly disagree with the rubbish. I think it would be fair to try and 'add' some black / BME writers but not replace. Imo this kind of stuff just stirs up more tensions between races and is just stupid. However it is normally black people who are always saying things like this ( I don't mean to generalise, and I apologise if any offence is taken) but you don't really see other races doing things like this. How many Indians or Chinese people are complaining about silly issues like this?
It's just wrong and really counterproductive, as I said it just stirs up tensions between different races.


They are adding rather than replacing, so you can breath easy. The story that they are dumping white authors is 100% a Daily Mail / Daily Telegraph fabrication. They should be ashamed of themselves, making up stuff that way.
How the Telegraph made this story up and baited a black student, pump-priming racist attacks on her.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/media/2017/10/cambridge-university-condemns-trolling-and-bullying-telegraph-front-page

Servile boot-lickers to UKIP and other assorted far right extremists - what the Telegraph now is.
Original post by FriendlyPenguin
Cambridge University’s English Literature professors will be forced to replace white authors with black writers

The proposal is idiotic, and I'm rather sick of these whiney snowflakes. A black student at Cambridge is not an oppressed person. The fact that such privileged people are capable of buying into this reveals how far the cult of victimhood has spread.

Having said that, these are just proposals from some extremist idiot. The university has said it does not plan to do this.

For the first time, lecturers and tutors will have to β€œensure the presence” of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME)


Black people are around 3% of the population. It is important to take into account BME views but the idea that everything has to be done with black racial awareness in mind is madness. That's out of all proportion to their actual numbers


The correction is strange. Is it completely made-up, or did that person really make these "recommendations"?

Everyone agrees there is no plan to do this, but the question is what was proposed?
Original post by sizzlelikeasnail
So in the current day, even though society is better, virtually all curriculum will be by white authors. So they're trying to force a fix which is debatable better than doing nothing at all.


What is wrong with a little bit of patience? Identity politics is rather ugly and arguably is demeaning to those who it alleged to help, for instance given the recent crusade for discrimination against cis-hetro-white men, or in SJW speak "positive discrimination in favour of the BME, LGBTQ(insert other million letters here), and females to correct historical injustice" the question always has to be asked "did I/they achieve x through merit or a leg up?" The attitude implies that the group in question is worse than other cohorts, cannot operate on the same level, and needs support to do anything.

In this particular instance short of being able to prove institutional racism it just shouts that black authors are weaker than white ones, if they weren't they wouldn't need to be forced onto the course.

A quick Google of "black authors" brings up a whole host of people, almost all 20th or 21st century and mostly post war (and none that I have heard of in their capacity as an author, but it would probably be similar with a list of white authors). The question that comes from that is: is there much non white reading suitable for an English course? With the obvious answer being "probably not" on the basis that it is a minority of output for less than a century; give it time and short of institutional racism the amount of non white content should increase on its own.


It's "pathetically small" because it isn't an apology, it is a correction on page 2. What is the point of a correction? To correct an error. Does this do so? Yes.

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