Sara Salem argues that decolonising is not simply about adding different viewpoints to an already-constituted classroom or course. It is equally about the way we frame the course, and the pedagogical methods we use inside the classroom.

This blog post explores some of the possibilities and challenges in teaching on empire in the contemporary English classroom, and connects this to debates around the British educational curriculum and calls to decolonise the university, particularly in the context of the LSE, much like other research-intensive British higher education institutions. Important work is happening around this, for example around  gender and diversity in the curriculum, decolonising the LSE as an institution, and questions of pedagogy and diversity. In particular, I think along the lines of a piece written by bell hooks entitled Teaching to Transgress, that explores what it means to teach critical perspectives in educational curricula that are not designed to include them. I engage specifically questions of viewpoint diversity, noting that much of the curricula and what happens in the classroom does not seem to take seriously histories of empire that are intimately connected to current political, economic, and social realities, raising questions around how diverse our teaching really is. Ultimately, I argue that while reading lists are important, pedagogy is equally crucial.

Much of my teaching method has focused in bringing in voices, ideas, and student experiences that can sometimes be marginalised in other classrooms, or that are marginalised in society more broadly. While the inclusion of different viewpoints within reading lists is a welcome and important step, it may not be enough to achieve an educational experience that speaks to all students. I take my cue from an article on repressive tolerance: “An alternative idea, concept or text can be inserted into a curriculum of familiar, mainstream materials in such a way that serves only to underscore the normality of the center while positioning the alternatives as exotic others. As long as the dominant Whitestream perspective is included as one of several possible options for study, its presence inevitably overshadows the minority ones, which will always be perceived as alternatives, as others/never as the natural center to which students should turn.”

This debate around viewpoint diversity led me to think about bell hooks’ writing on creating classrooms that are open and exciting. hooks touches on various aspects of teaching that I find useful in thinking through the contemporary classroom. One is her belief that the classroom should be an exciting place. What she means by this is not necessarily that the tempo of teaching or the material must always be exciting to everyone, as this would be impossible; but rather that the space or community created through teaching excites students, something that is part and parcel of engaging all students and viewpoints: “As a classroom community, our capacity to generate excitement is deeply affected by our interest in one another, in hearing one another’s voices, in recognizing one another’s presence. The professor must genuinely value everyone’s presence.”

Here, hooks speaks of inclusion in a different way, where a space is created in which we all hear one another’s voice, and recognize each other’s presence. What does it mean to become interested in one another, and for the professor to value everyone’s presence? In my own case, what kind of work can I do to ensure that students whose own family histories are deeply connected to histories of empire and racism feel seen in my classroom? This led me to think much more about pedagogy, rather than just teaching material, and I turn to this in the next section. Viewpoint diversity in and of itself does not de-centre Eurocentrism, even if it appears to be doing so. This is precisely why I find bell hooks’s text so crucial. For her, education is not just about the viewpoints we bring into the classroom, but how we bring them in and how we talk about them.

In my own teaching, I have tried to think of ways to bring in pedagogical practices that centre empire and its afterlives beyond a non-Eurocentric reading list. In one class, I ask students to visit the British Museum and choose an object or exhibition to write about from the perspective of empire and race. What alternative stories could we tell about the British Museum and objects within it if we thought about it from the vantage point of Britain’s imperial past and present? Importantly, I ask students to reflect on how they felt in that space, and what it means to see something we’ve seen before through a new lens. This exercise highlights the ways in which the city we teach and learn in, is a postcolonial city, built on the afterlives of British empire. It is easy, sometimes, to think that the theories of colonialism that we discuss in the classroom belong to the past or to other parts of the world; with this exercise, I wanted students to think about what happens in the classroom in relation to London and to the spaces all around us. This ties into Mbembe’s piece, where he touches on the question of material objects such as statues, and why they very much matter in understanding racism in higher education spaces.

Another pedagogical practice that I hope to integrate into my own classes is one I came across in an article about kindness in the academy. The post detailed how an academic takes 10 minutes each class to write emails of appreciation with students to send to the authors the class had read that week. This strikes me as another example of a pedagogical practice that creates a different kind of classroom space, in which students are encouraged to think about readings differently. Viewpoint diversity, then, is not simply about adding different viewpoints to an already-constituted classroom or course. It is equally about the way we frame the course, and the pedagogical methods we use inside the classroom.

In Teaching to Transgress bell hooks writes, “I have not forgotten the day a student came to class and told me: “We take your class. We learn to look at the world from a critical standpoint, one that considers race, sex, and class. And we can’t enjoy life anymore.”” Reading this made me smile, as just a few weeks ago a student made a similar comment about one of my courses. Perhaps this is part and parcel of teaching to transgress: making visible histories that have been marginalised through the cultivation of classrooms as spaces of freedom.

Note: A version of this post first appeared on 2 March 2020 on the Contemporary Issues in Teaching and Learning Blog, part of the PGCertHE programme at the LSE.

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 This post is opinion-based and does not reflect the views of the London School of Economics and Political Science or any of its constituent departments and divisions.

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Image credit: Nicole Baster on Unsplash