How the West Indian Child is Made Educationally Sub-normal in the British School System: The Scandal of the Black Child in Schools in Britain

by Bernard Coard

50th Anniversary Expanded 5th "Back in 1971 when this booklet was first published, the principal Weapons of Mass Suppression, or WMS, of Black Caribbean children’s educational and life prospects were the ESN school, ESN streams and ‘Remedial’ classes in regular schools. New versions of WMS appeared over the ensuing decades, as the original model, and each replacement, met with Black Caribbean resistance and even open protest. In each case, the objective of these ‘new’ iterations was not to concentrate more resources and more experienced and skilled teachers to meet the needs of the children designated as ‘in Special Educational Need (SEN)’, but rather to assign less of these resources, and less experienced teachers to their care. It was a dustbin solution, not a lifting-the-child-up operation. It was a life sentence, not a life-line to greater opportunities. The last 50 years has taught us not to rely on pleas to or the goodwill of those running the system to effect the changes our children need. Just as we did a half-century ago and since, we have to accept that future progress for our children on all fronts depends on our actions, our initiatives..." — Bernard Coard (Extract from the Preface) This Edition also • PART "50 Years On" Essay by Hubert Devonish, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics, The University of The West Indies, Mona, Jamaica Bernard Coard taught at his secondary school in Grenada on leaving at 18 and at Brandeis University’s ‘Upward Bound’ Summer Programme at 20 and 21. He studied at Brandeis University (Massachusetts, USA) and then Sussex University (UK). During the late 1960s and early '70s, Bernard ran youth clubs in Southeast London for children attending seven so-called ESN schools and taught at two others in East London. He subsequently taught at The University of The West Indies and at the Institute of Higher Studies, Netherlands Antilles. For 20 years, Coard set up and ran the Richmond Hill Prison Education Programme, Grenada (basic literacy to London University postgraduate degrees). He continues to teach at university level as a guest lecturer, in person and online.

Genres: Nonfiction

51 pages, Mass Market Paperback

Published May 1, 1971

Reviews

[Diane Gabriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great slim read! It is a classic in these here parts (Britain).
I have learned a lot in very few pages about minority education of Black Caribbean students, and the history of discrimination against many generations of then termed “West Indian” children. Bernard Coard understood the infrastructure that makes this possible incredibly well- and he lays out his ideas in a way that make it easy to catch on. I think it is an important read for the un-targetted audience as well, those who are parents of minority children, and educators interested in anti-racist practices.
As a takeaway for my particular ethnic group: (American Mexicans) I really thought about how resistant to supplementary education this community is (in my exp), and how to change this cultural trend, so to raise the overall success in educational enterprises of this group in general, all others as well!

[sahiba · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read for my coursework - was very insightful wow
#fthesystem

[Mark]

If you've seen Steve McQueen's Small Axe quintet on Amazon Prime through to its end, the fifth film Education has already exposed you to this book, which began its life as a pamphlet for parents in Britain whose children had been wrongly assigned to schools for the "educationally sub-normal." At one point in that moving film, one of the characters supplies another with the first edition of the primary text republished here in 2021, 50 years after its original publication.

Bernard Coard began a movement with this work, and children of all ethnicities in Britain have benefitted from that movement. If you work in education, especially with struggling students in inner-city schools in the United States, you will recognize many of the strategies used to sideline and generally limit the horizons of Black and Brown children. And this book may remind you that their struggle is your struggle, and that we owe it to children to work harder for and do better by them. That's the message of this book, and it should depress any thoughtful citizen that this message appears to be timeless.