This study notes covers 🏛️ Historical Context: British Colonial Education and the Curriculum within Checking Out Me History (Agard) for GCSE English Literature. Revise Checking Out Me History (Agard) in Power and Conflict Poetry for GCSE English Literature with 10 exam-style questions and 15 flashcards. This is a high-frequency topic, so it is worth revising until the explanation feels precise and repeatable. It is section 11 of 19 in this topic. Use this study notes to connect the idea to the wider topic before moving on to questions and flashcards.
🏛️ Historical Context: British Colonial Education and the Curriculum
John Agard was born in Guyana in 1949 and moved to Britain in 1977. He grew up under a British colonial education system that taught the history, literature, and cultural heritage of Britain as if it were universal knowledge. Colonial education in the Caribbean and across Britain’s empire was deliberately designed to emphasise British identity and minimise or erase the histories of colonised peoples — including their languages, their heroes, and their own accounts of the past.
The figures Agard celebrates — Toussaint L’Ouverture, Nanny de Maroon, Mary Seacole — were real historical people whose stories were largely absent from school curricula in Britain. Toussaint L’Ouverture (c.1743–1803) led the Haitian Revolution, the only successful uprising by enslaved people in the Americas. Nanny de Maroon (c.1686–1755) was a Jamaican national hero who led guerrilla resistance against the British. Mary Seacole (1805–1881) was a Jamaican-born nurse who funded her own passage to the Crimean War when the British government refused to support her.
Practice questions for Checking Out Me History (Agard)
In 'Checking Out Me History', Agard writes 'Dem tell me' rather than 'They told me'. What does this choice of language represent?
How does Agard use the poem's alternating structure to challenge colonial education? [2 marks]