As the debate regarding slavery reparation gathers momentum, the potential for education to be an ingenious and important part of the response becomes increasingly interesting. In this UKFIET blog, Mike Douse outlines four significant yet feasible areas of prospective action aimed at moving towards more equitable educational outcomes.

What level and nature of reparations should be paid by the countries, institutions and descendants of those who perpetuated the Transatlantic Slave Trade to the countries, institutions and descendants of the enslaved? How much is ‘owed’, and on what basis may that be calculated; in what form should such reparations take, and to whom and how and over what period should the payments be made? [It may be noted that only as recently as 2015, the UK finished paying off the debt of around £20 million it incurred to cover the recompense to British plantation owners for the loss of their slaves.]

Inequity and Identity

In terms of financial reparations, Joshuwa Nevett, a United Nations judge, has calculated that the UK owes more than £18 trillion for its role in slavery in 14 Caribbean countries. The likelihood of the UK, or of any former colonial country, agreeing to, and being able to transfer such orders of funding are remote to the point of non-existent. However, many of the developing countries which suffered from slavery owe large sums to Western countries, with annual payments sometimes more than a quarter of their incomes. The cancellation or reduction of that debt could lift a massive economic burden from a developing country at bearable internal political cost for a donor country – and that is rather more realistic.

The Caribbean community nations impacted by chattel enslavement and colonialism offered a thoughtful reparatory framework to address the historical injustices, intergenerational trauma and enduring disparities in educational levels that date back to the slave trade, calling for a full formal apology, education programmes (for instance, support for capacity-building, curriculum development and resource provision), healthcare and direct monetary payments.

Their ten-point plan noted that “the post-colonial period left a general state of illiteracy in the CARICOM Member States, and, if there were education systems, they tended to be influenced by European standards … colonialism forced the separation of Africans from their homelands and deliberately sought to erase African heritage which has resulted in alienation from identity and belonging.” This historical alienation is, in addition to barriers and disparities, covered in the four broad areas outlined here.

I     The well-informed debate

What the ten-point plan calls the restoration of historical memory might involve, for example, researching, teaching and discussing all aspects of slavery from historical, economic, religious, literature, musical, social sciences and other perspectives. The educational charity Parallel Histories offers one encouraging example of how aspects of this objective may be pursued in a thought-provoking and stimulating manner, involving critical thinking, oracy skills and enhanced learner self-confidence.  

This objective extends to educational institutions acknowledging their own connections with slavery and then, in consultation with their wide communities and society generally, taking realistic responsive action, thereby also contributing to the debate on redress, reparation and mutual benefit.   

II    Grants, loans and their management

The achievement of that first objective might help create a climate enabling former colonial powers to pay off some of their historical debt in order to eliminate educational disadvantage. As already recognised, massive transfers of treasure and technology, sufficient to enable all developing countries to emerge soon from education sector aid dependence altogether, remain unlikely. Accordingly, in addition to raising the level of educational support to as high a level as possible, additional attention may be afforded to optimising the consequences of both grants and low or zero interest loans.

Despite such protocols as the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness articulating goals for an “improved approach that would make it more effective than the inadequate and flawed educational models inherited from colonial times, which continued to be entrenched across the globe”, many development partners still demand that beneficiaries follow its own customised, frequently Byzantine, essentially demeaning processes and documentation. Over the coming decade, educational aid should be increasingly designed and managed by the beneficiaries, letting them design and lead concerted drives to overcome poor educational performance.

III  Developmental sharing

Another possibility is that of planning, structuring, funding and delivering educational activities on international rather than national bases. This has long been occurring in relation to examinations, and thus to curriculum development: learners across the world have been taking ‘Cambridge’ for over a century, for example. This could be extended to embrace, for example, innovatory partnerships in lesson delivery, laboratory practice, individual coaching and extra-curricular activities such as debating, music, drama, chess, virtual contests and all forms of art.         

An extension of this would be that of enabling development through technology, linking the planning, delivery, assessment and international recognition of TVET, apprenticeship, tertiary college and professional preparation with country-specific market priorities – and, of course, with full private sector participation. For example, the demand for clean energy technicians or agricultural technologists could be addressed on an internationally shared basis (to some extent, this is already occurring in professions such as accountancy and law).  

Taking this even further, multinational companies and international organisations could expand their international human resource development activities, levelling up the skills of their employees worldwide. As made clear in a recent OPEC Fund study, “private sector firms often bring advanced technologies, innovation and know-how to developing countries, facilitating innovation and productivity gains across sectors … (which) can drive economic growth through the development of new products, services and business models, while also promoting sustainable industrialisation.” By such means, transformational energy, water and sanitation, tourism, transportation, agricultural and fisheries programmes could be planned, executed and maintained through local skills and entrepreneurship.

Some of these possibilities are readily realisable, especially with the advance of contemporary technology (see below); it is the more ambitious, more costly and more fundamental that will test whether the historic colonialist nations are ready and truly committed to enabling their former colonies to achieve educational equivalence.

IV   Education 2040

 Necessitated and enabled by Artificial Intelligence, education is already beginning to undergo a fundamental transformation. Clearly, its future will not be along the conventional dimensions assumed a decade ago: nothing educationally will ever be the same. These profound developments, albeit as yet still blurry, offer massive potential, in the service of learners with agency rather than teachers with authority, within the educational situation now beginning to emerge. In terms of slavery reparation, the emerging transformation will undoubtedly offer increasingly clear paths towards worldwide parity of educational outcomes and therein lies the real opportunity to redress imbalance and make reparation

Today’s learners already have access to all of the world’s libraries at their fingertips; with inspirational management, each learner may similarly have access to the most appropriate (to their particular needs and aspirations) of the world’s most effective teaching. Every educational institution (from secondary onwards) may be open to any learner anywhere, along with the availability of any curriculum, any course, and any lesson. What might have been perceived as a wild dream a decade or so ago is now entering the realm of the feasible, soon to become the commonplace. In terms of slavery and its present-day legacy, AI makes worldwide equity of educational outcomes achievable – our common humanity makes it imperative.