This deep dive covers 🔍 Stage 1 — The Imposed Curriculum: “Dem Tell Me” 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 2 of 19 in this topic. Use this deep dive to connect the idea to the wider topic before moving on to questions and flashcards.
🔍 Stage 1 — The Imposed Curriculum: “Dem Tell Me”
Agard opens with a drumbeat of repetition: “Dem tell me / Dem tell me / Wha dem want to tell me”. The pronoun “Dem” is not named — it refers to the system of British education, a collective authority that speaks but does not listen. Agard’s choice of Creole spelling throughout the stanzas about imposed history is a political act in itself: the curriculum demanded standard English; the poem refuses it. Every non-standard spelling is a small act of resistance built into the poem’s texture.
The figures the curriculum offered are deliberately trivial or mythological. Dick Whittington is a folk hero; the cow that jumped over the moon is a nursery rhyme; 1066 is a date without human consequence as Agard presents it. Agard positions these not as worthless in themselves but as what was given instead of the history of the Caribbean, Africa, and the struggles of enslaved and colonised people. The contrast is not accident — it is curriculum design. What gets taught is a choice about whose story matters.
Quick Check: Why does Agard repeat “Dem tell me” three times rather than just once at the start of the poem?
Agard uses anaphora — the repeated phrase at the start of each line — to mimic the relentless imposition of a curriculum that repeated the same version of history without allowing alternatives. The repetition is both a protest and an imitation: Agard shows the reader what it felt like to hear this message over and over. In essays: “Agard uses the anaphoric structure of ‘Dem tell me’ to enact the sense of an identity being overwritten by repeated exposure to a single, partial history.”
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]