Call for an expansion of black history curriculum

Two local advocates of the Pan-African movement have highlighted the need for the black history curriculum in the country’s school to be expanded.
Chairman of the Antigua & Barbuda Reparations Support Commission (ABRSC) Dorbrene O’Marde said that lessons on the wider scope of black history are lacking in the local education system.
“We need to broaden it in so many instances and I think that the school programmes here in Antigua & Barbuda are particularly guilty of simply highlighting outstanding individuals and calling that black history,” he said yesterday on OBSERVER AM.
Also contributing to the discussion, journalist Mickel Brann explained that the teaching of black history goes beyond traditional education in schools and should be displayed in everyday family and social activities.
“It’s in the literature and the books that we choose for them to read and we read together and the things we look at, the movies. I don’t think it needs to be confined. This is where we started but it’s what we do to it. How is it being continued in the schools, how is it being put into a continuum so people understand what it is?” she queried.
Brann also addressed the notion that observing Black History Month in a predominantly black society is redundant and is of the view that just because one is of African ancestry does not mean one cannot dedicate a time of reflection and celebration.
(More in today’s Daily Observer)