Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Empire and ethnocentric education
- 2 Internal colonialism and its effects
- 3 Ending empire: Education for ignorance, 1945-1960s
- 4 Post-imperial anxieties and conflicts, 1970-90
- 5 Inequalities, a European Union and education markets, 1990-97
- 6 New Labour: Wars, race and education, 1997-2005
- 7 Not so New Labour: Race and education, 2005-10
- 8 A divided society: Race, class and education, 2010-16
- 9 A dog’s breakfast Brexit, 2016-18
- References
- Index
9 - A dog’s breakfast Brexit, 2016-18
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 April 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Empire and ethnocentric education
- 2 Internal colonialism and its effects
- 3 Ending empire: Education for ignorance, 1945-1960s
- 4 Post-imperial anxieties and conflicts, 1970-90
- 5 Inequalities, a European Union and education markets, 1990-97
- 6 New Labour: Wars, race and education, 1997-2005
- 7 Not so New Labour: Race and education, 2005-10
- 8 A divided society: Race, class and education, 2010-16
- 9 A dog’s breakfast Brexit, 2016-18
- References
- Index
Summary
We cannot be a colony of the EU for two years from 2019 to 2021…. That is not leaving the EU. That is being a vassal state of the EU. (Rees-Mogg, 2017; see also Mackie, 2017)
Britain should turn to Saudi Arabia after Brexit for new trade and investment opportunities, and not a backward looking Commonwealth, a Saudi Minister said. (Wintour, 2018)
Comic Relief this year focused on Malawi and Uganda. I didn't see any acknowledgement that Britain had been the Colonial power in the past.… Thanks for the gold, lads, Thanks for the diamonds. We had a whip round and got you a fishing rod. (Boyle, 2015)
There can be no conclusions to this book, as negotiations continue on what sort of United Kingdom, if the four nations stay together, will develop after it leaves the European Union, assuming that in some form it will. Nor can there be conclusions as to whether and how the nations’ education systems will change to incorporate the new circumstances. It will take a decade or more before the reality of a Britain on its own in a globally trading world, with government instability and one of the highest inequalities of wealth in the developed world, becomes clearer. One certainty is that Britain cannot rely on its imperial past or on the fidelity of a Commonwealth. Even as a divided government planned to take the country out of the EU, it became obvious that there had been a massive failure to educate several generations about what the British Empire and the EU actually were or what they did. What did the Empire do for its subjects and how are the consequences of empire now affecting the future of a Britain out of the EU? It took a comedian to make a suitable ironic comment on the failure to acknowledge that former colonial countries had their wealth stripped under imperialism and are now regarded as places for charitable enterprises (Boyle, 2015). How inclusive is our national sovereignty when long-settled citizens are still not acceptable, people from European countries are no longer welcome, and refugees and asylum-seekers are treated with suspicion and hostility?
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Education and Race from Empire to Brexit , pp. 201 - 224Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2019