Decolonizing the Curriculum: Who Were the Ancient Europeans?

Abstract

The current international decolonizing debate is floundering. Despite well intentioned optimism that the debate would lead to an interrogation of the current schooling system and deepen the taught curriculum beyond “Black history month” and the slave trade, this is not happening. “They (power structure/policy makers) don’t want you to study ancient history because they want you to study slavery and colonialism to lock down your first frequency. The deeper they dig the blacker the planet.”. The two focal points of this paper to address this theme are inter-related and analyze interpretations of the phrase “decolonizing the curriculum.” They are, firstly, the European (white1) socially engineered paradigm which still dominates global education conceptualization, curriculum content, and teaching and learning models, and secondly, evidence of the natural migrations of Melanated populations out of Africa into Europe, including the United Kingdom. The paper draws upon the author’s research of ancient material culture to provide the primordial evidence of advanced geometry in the British Isles, supported by Mazama’s concept of a paradigm, its function, and change in worldview.