Teach Secondary -Issue 15.1

TeachingSlavery:NewApproachesto Britain’sColonial Past (KatieDonington,AbdulMohamud,RobinWhitburnand NicholasDraper,UCLPress,£37.69paperback/freePDF viatinyurl.com/ts151-B1 ) The British Empire’s involvement in the slave trade has come under increased scrutiny of late, in the wake of the Black Lives Mattermovement and protests that famously saw the forceful removal of statues honouring the likes of Bristolianmerchant and slaver Edward Colston. It’s a fascinating time to be a history teacher, but also a time in which broaching the topic of slavery in the classroomcan be a fraught endeavour. ‘Teaching Slavery…’ opens with a helpful historical overview of how our collective understanding of the wider context for Britain’s role in the slave trade has steadily evolved froma straightforwardly positive narrative hinging on the passing of the 1807 ‘Abolition of the Slave TradeAct’ to one that’smore nuanced and complex.The book’s later chapters then zero in on the history of how the topic has been taught in schools,while offering up thoughtful insights into whose stories are getting told as a result, the difficulties of conveying the sheer scale of human suffering that occurred, and the pedagogical realities that history teachersmust now grapple with, complete with useful case studies. Despite being a scholarlyworkwith a very specific readership inmind, it’s elegantly written, gently persuasive in the points it put forward, and an easy book to recommend – even for non-history specialists,whomight be keen to find out more about an important, yet contested chapter in our nation’s account of itself. Giventhenatureofthe researchyou document inthebook,weretheschoolsyou visitedhappyforstudents toengagewith yourquestions? JessicaRingrose: It wasmore a case of us being unable tovisit all the schoolswanting to participate.Thiswas in 2019,when schools were genuinely interested in hosting researchers, improving their sex education provision anddigging into the issues surrounding their students’use of social media,which perhapsweren’t aswidely discussed as theyare now.We certainly didn’t encountermuch critical pushback fromteachers. KaitlynRegehr: Wewere also operating against the backdrop of‘Everyone’s Invited’ – this online-driven awareness of sexual violence in schools that was emerging at the time. It’sworth remembering that widespreadpublic awareness of how technology, and social media in particular, can facilitateviolence and harms is still relativelynew.The AnxiousGeneration book [ by JonathanHaidt ] that somanycite now onlycame out in 2024; Jessica’s been doing thiswork since 2011. It was a different landscape – therewas this hunger for information. Thebookshows largegapsbetween students’awarenessofonlineharms,and responses fromofficials thatdon’t address theunderlying issues.Arethosegaps still there? JR: One shocking finding in the bookwas that only5%ofyoung peoplewould tell their parents about incidents, and 2%would talk to their school,pointing to a huge divide.A lot ofwork and awareness raising has happened since then, though – such as newRSE guidelines that cover digital harms, and the CurriculumandAssessment Review’s calls formore teaching arounddigital literacy. KR: One promising development in theUS is the proposedAlgorithmicAccountabilityAct, which, if it goes through,would essentially strip social media companies of section 230 protections.At present, they’re recognised as housing content,but not being responsible for that content.Removing those protections wouldmean that they’re culpable for harms taking place on their platforms. It’s still early days,but the advocacyand lobbying behind those efforts is all down to research projects like this. ProfessorJessicaRingrose isProfessorof SociologyofGenderandEducationatUCL InstituteofEducation; DrKaitlynRegehr isan AssociateProfessorofDigital Humanitiesat UCL’sDepartmentof InformationStudies ON THE RADAR Meet the authors JESSICA RINGROSE & KAITLYN REGEHR The IdeaMachine:HowBooks BuiltOurWorldandShape OurFuture (JoelJ.Miller,GlobePequot,£30) It’s hard to imagine a time when books were once precious objects, and libraries an indicator of formidable power and influence; an era when just the very idea of a book – as opposed to a scroll – was considered remarkable.Miller traces the development of books right back to the origins of writing itself, and then onwards, through to the development of the worldwide web and beyond, past AI.What emerges fromMiller’s telling is essentially a history of problems in search of solutions. Howdo we knowwhat information is available? Howdo we find it quickly? Howdo we then use it? Underlying the book’s insights is a simple, yet profound notion – that the act of writing something down enables others to respond to that information and think about it, hence the title.The written word has endured for millennia, and herein you’ll discover why. ReviewedbyTerry Freedman Teens,SocialMediaand Image-BasedAbuse (JessicaRingrose&KaitlynRegehr,Palgrave Macmillan,£27.99paperback/freePDFvia tinyurl.com/ts151-B2) Oneday,cultural historianswillmarvel at how adolescentswereencouragedbymultinational corporations to recordthemselves andothers usingcompact computers,andsharethe resulting footagewithdigital audiences that could potentiallynumber inthemillions,all withminimal systemicoversight.Fornow,wehaveRingroseand Regehr’s account oftheir2019 researchproject to examineyoungpeople’suseofsocialmedia,which went onto informtheUK’sOnlineSafetyAct.The bookbreaksdown inunflinchingdetail the observationsofstudents at sevenverydifferent schools (ranging froma selective independent school toan innercitycomprehensive),and is required reading foranyonewantingtounpack howculturesofonline-drivenmisogyny,sexting andvictimshamingcametotake root inour schoolsovertime. It’s the storyofhowwegot to whereweare,the lessonsofwhichwe’veonly just startedtoproperlyabsorb. 41 teachwire.net/secondary B O O K R E V I E WS