🗣️ Anchor Quote: The Absurdity of the Imposed Curriculum

Part of Checking Out Me History (Agard) · Section 6 of 19

Study NotesUnit: Power and Conflict PoetryGCSE

This study notes covers 🗣️ Anchor Quote: The Absurdity of the Imposed 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 6 of 19 in this topic. Use this study notes to connect the idea to the wider topic before moving on to questions and flashcards.

🗣️ Anchor Quote: The Absurdity of the Imposed Curriculum

Dem tell me bout de man / who discover de balloon
Speaker Middle stanzas (imposed history section) Power · Absurdity · Erasure · Colonial Education
Why this quote matters: Agard uses bathos to make his argument sharp: trivial European discoveries were foregrounded while the struggles of enslaved and colonised people were absent entirely. The “man who discover de balloon” is presented with the same syntax as Dick Whittington and 1066 — suggesting these fragments of British imperial education are equally arbitrary, equally disconnected from the speaker’s own heritage. Agard positions this absurdity not as a personal grievance but as evidence of a system designed to make certain histories invisible.
Use this quote when answering: How Agard presents the curriculum as a tool of cultural control; the role of absurdity in political argument; how Agard uses specific examples to build a larger claim; comparison with Ozymandias (power that erases its own contradictions).

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?

  • A. Caribbean dialect and phonetic spelling, asserting cultural identity through language itself
  • B. A printing error in the original publication that was never corrected
  • C. Ancient Egyptian language, connecting the poem to African history
  • D. Deliberately simplified language so younger readers can understand the poem
1 markfoundation

How does Agard use the poem's alternating structure to challenge colonial education? [2 marks]

2 marksstandard

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