My friends would tell me:
“You seem like such a history girl”
“Wait, you don’t do history?”
“But you love writing?”
I mean it’s not that I have a bitterness for historical inquiry. Or a deep rooted hatred for analysing the systems that have built our world. Far from it to be honest. My aversion to the UK’s educational approach to history stems from a conversation I had at eleven years old. It has stuck with me since.
Being the ‘good’ wasian daughter I was, my Year 7 parents’ evening slots were all copy and paste: “she’s a delight in class”, “always willing to speak up”, “can be talkative but always keeps her work to a high quality”. Pretty standard for someone who grew up on academic validation, pork floss and parental pressure. But my history teacher had deviated a little from the script. Her words were:
“It’s great to see her thinking through our study of William the Conqueror. To engage the class, I’ve added interactive activities. One of our class games includes finding information in the corners of the classroom, giving the students five minutes to write it down and come together to see what they’ve missed. They seem to really enjoy it. So Ellie, I wanted to ask if there is anything you would like to add to class?”
Looking back on the conversation, perhaps my teacher was expecting me to address more practical additions like:
“more computer time”,
“more documentaries”,
“more of the same admiration towards colonisers but packaged in a bitesize way to keep the attention of mindwandering eleven-year-olds”,
“more group projects”,
(okay the last one is a joke. no stressed out daughter wants a group project)
but I guess that day, I was feeling angry about only being fed white narratives and white cultural capital* (Bourdieu, 1977):
“Yes. I was just wondering if we could learn more about other cultures., We've only learnt about British history and I was wondering if for the rest of the term we could look at other parts of history? Yesterday I was looking at Chinese history and why the terracotta army was made. How come we don’t get to learn about that? Or any other cultures? It seems so interesting.”
To be fair to my teacher, she didn't decide to only teach an ethnocentric curriculum.
But her quick response, “Oh yes, I’m not sure! I took a Chinese history module at university and it was fascinating. It would be great to explore more cultures”, left a type of desire in my heart that I haven’t been able to let go of.
We said our niceties and moved on to the next parents’ evening table. We never learnt about Chinese history in that class.
It still lingers in my mind that the lack of effort to decolonise the history taught to children continues to impact both white and non-white students to this day.
In university settings, acknowledging the need to decolonise reading lists has been on the rise. Additionally, addressing research from an intersectional lens has been growing in popularity. Although it is a mediocre attempt to fully decolonise the way in which higher education is taught in the UK, it is a step in the right direction. Thus, I can’t help but selfishly relive the longing my eleven-year-old self to at least have the opportunity to explore non-white narratives in school and truly rethink the knowledge systems British schools had fed me. The desire to understand and address how the history of the global majority has been carved by the legacy of colonial settlers. It’s clear that for a girl who wanted to learn about far more than the white, colourist curriculum, having to wait until university felt agonising.
The symbolic violence* (Bourdieu,1977) that non-white students in the UK experience is planted at such a young age that applying decolonising practices to only university is far little too late. What we learn and how we learn, how we exist,gets brushed under the rug and covered up as teachers must uphold a “legal duty [of] political impartiality” (UK Department of Education, 2025).
But while “political impartiality” depicts itself as unbiased, it continues to reinforce the system that leaves non-white students disconnected from spaces of knowledge. The feeling that you do not belong in classrooms that are plastered with the glaring laminated faces of white men on horizontal timelines. The perpetual battle to just exist in these spaces of insularity meant that I never saw history as the subject that I felt like I could study and be valued. This was especially felt when white boys in my class were so rewarded for their in-depth knowledge of World War 2 tanks. But my desire to leave the trappings of the classroom, go outside and learn about the histories of indigenous cultures or understand traditional ecological knowledge (Wall Kimmerer, 2013) felt useless in high school. This also highlights the way in which the UK education system still upholds imperialist values that only promotes British history.
Moreover, the way in which discussions of colonialism in the younger years of school often fell short to truly address atrocities. This often resulted in a vague analysis that never condemned colonialism to the extent it should have been.
It still hurts my eleven-year-old self that her dreams for other non-white students to not go through this experience is still not reality.
But my craving for learning about more than white British history shapes the way I want to move forward into undergraduate studies. In fact, my relationship to this conversation has changed over the years. I now see a complex mix of gratitude, frustration, and sadness towards the interaction. On the one hand, it made me understand how and why I felt isolated when learning about history in school. But on the other, it has pushed me to find academic disciplines that at least try to make an effort towards cross cultural analysis. This is why I have started my undergraduate applications to social anthropology and combined social science courses.
Generally, the earliest moment British students are able to critically analyse and challenge the way British history and culture is taught is in undergraduate studies. These are often but not limited to courses that value cross-cultural analysis (such as social science disciplines like anthropology). Thus, I still long for the days where UK students can experience history outside of British narratives from the very start of their education journey.
But for now, we must continue to protect social science and humanities disciplines that promote and value critical thought. Additionally we must not let those who scrutinise these disciplines erase the space for students to think critically about colonialism, neo-colonialism and white narratives. There should always be room to allow students to rethink colonial legacies and explore the complex history of our world.
So maybe I’m not a history girl. Or at least in the way secondary education would have valued it. But my persistence means that I will continue to expand my knowledge of non-white cultures and histories, starting with my undergraduate studies. I intend to start learning about social anthropology and cross cultural analysis. Albeit it is a small start, I am excited and optimistic for my education and the journey to dismantling the UK’s ethnocentric curriculum.
Bibliography
| Bourdieu, P., 2018. Cultural reproduction and social reproduction. In Knowledge, education, and cultural change (pp. 71-112). Routledge. |
| GOV.UK Department of Education Political Impartiality Guidance Pamphlet |
Hello, my name is Ellie Paul and my Thai name is Bua. I was born in Bangkok Thailand and moved to the UK when I was two years old. I am 19 years old and currently on a gap year before my undergraduate studies. I have an interest in decolonising methodology in the social sciences, revolutionary politics, and eco-feminism. I was drawn to the re:wave open call as it was the first time I’d seen an open call aimed at queer people from ESEA backgrounds. I am so excited that my work has been chosen to be shared and I am very honoured. When I was writing this piece I felt it was a space for me to both experiment and develop my writing style and come to terms with past experiences that have shaped me. Thank you to the re:wave team for all the support during the editing process. I hope to continue developing my writing style in the future.
Hello, my name is Ellie Paul and my Thai name is Bua. I was born in Bangkok Thailand and moved to the UK when I was two years old. I am 19 years old and currently on a gap year before my undergraduate studies. I have an interest in decolonising methodology in the social sciences, revolutionary politics, and eco-feminism. I was drawn to the re:wave open call as it was the first time I’d seen an open call aimed at queer people from ESEA backgrounds. I am so excited that my work has been chosen to be shared and I am very honoured. When I was writing this piece I felt it was a space for me to both experiment and develop my writing style and come to terms with past experiences that have shaped me. Thank you to the re:wave team for all the support during the editing process. I hope to continue developing my writing style in the future.
Hello, my name is Ellie Paul and my Thai name is Bua. I was born in Bangkok Thailand and moved to the UK when I was two years old. I am 19 years old and currently on a gap year before my undergraduate studies. I have an interest in decolonising methodology in the social sciences, revolutionary politics, and eco-feminism. I was drawn to the re:wave open call as it was the first time I’d seen an open call aimed at queer people from ESEA backgrounds. I am so excited that my work has been chosen to be shared and I am very honoured. When I was writing this piece I felt it was a space for me to both experiment and develop my writing style and come to terms with past experiences that have shaped me. Thank you to the re:wave team for all the support during the editing process. I hope to continue developing my writing style in the future.
Hello, my name is Ellie Paul and my Thai name is Bua. I was born in Bangkok Thailand and moved to the UK when I was two years old. I am 19 years old and currently on a gap year before my undergraduate studies. I have an interest in decolonising methodology in the social sciences, revolutionary politics, and eco-feminism. I was drawn to the re:wave open call as it was the first time I’d seen an open call aimed at queer people from ESEA backgrounds. I am so excited that my work has been chosen to be shared and I am very honoured. When I was writing this piece I felt it was a space for me to both experiment and develop my writing style and come to terms with past experiences that have shaped me. Thank you to the re:wave team for all the support during the editing process. I hope to continue developing my writing style in the future.
You can find Ellie or Bua here :
Instagram @ell1e_paul_