identity today in the uk

The UK has left the EU - so, we are no longer 'European':

Britain feels less European than anywhere else in the EU – What UK Thinks: EU

So, what is the UK's identity?

No Longer European, a Divided Britain Seeks a New Identity

Two years ago, we had this:

Jay Doubleyou: big british asian summer

And an interesting song at the time looked at 'identity':

The words are particularly interesitng:

 

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Sarathy Korwar - Bol (feat. Zia Ahmed & Aditya Prakash) (Official Video) - YouTube

Sarathy Korwar - Bol - music video on Vimeo

Bol (feat. Zia Ahmed & Aditya Prakash) - YouTube

The words are particularly interesting:

“HOME”
i‘m running running like thoughts running from
thoughts rattling from the constant battling broken pieces
floating tokens token gestures token jester open sesame
ali baba forty thieves forty grievances nothing to pledge
allegiance with trapped in a box ballerina chopped off
for bhangra man dance monkey dance to the music of the
snake charmer i am karma i am kama sutra i am ni tu hune
hune hoi mutiyar mundian to bach ke rahin i am your gap
year you said you were lost i hope you found yourself i am
slumdog millionaire downward dog eight headed god i am
shiva al-qaeda i am auditioning for the role of terrorist
one yes i can do that in an arabic accent i am dhalsim i am
bollywood season on channel four at two in the morning
i am ganges i am gandhi i am jinnah i am five pillars i am
sinner i am cinnamon i am cardamom i am not invited to
the houses of parliament i am sharif don’t like it rock the
casbah stop the fatwa allahu akbar allahu akbar la illa ha
illalah i am england no you’re not mate look at your face i
am england shirt made in bangladesh i am brick lane i am
curry house of the year two thousand and five i am rogan
josh i am so damn lost i am so damn lost just looking for a
place that’s home
looking for a shape that’s whole mera joota hai japani
home is where your heart is yeh patloon inglastani nah
home is where your heart lifts sar pe lal topi russi nah
home is where your arse fits phir bhi dil hai nah home is
where you’re ok to stay till you leave in a casket
phir bhi dil hai...
Poems to help make sense of the world around us | Dazed

Sarathy Korwar – Bol Lyrics | Genius Lyrics

Here's a little more:

Protest Song Of The Week: 'Bol' By Sarathy Korwar

Bol (feat. Zia Ahmed & Aditya Prakash) | Sarathy Korwar

Back to British identity in a post-Brexit world:

Voting for Brexit doesn’t make you a Little Englander | Comment | The Times

Don't forget curry is the national dish:

Post-Brexit immigration laws could kill British curry restaurants | Watford Observer

With the view from China:

Trying to contain China won't restore the UK's long-lost Asian Empire - CGTN

And a view to the future:

What will the UK look like a decade after Brexit? | UK | Al Jazeera

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john taylor gatto - rejecting the racist school system

It's now almost two years since the death of educationalist John Taylor Gatto, who "envisioned an education system that placed freedom and justice above technology and efficiency":

Jay Doubleyou: john tayor gatto: teacher, mentor, revolutionary

This is from a piece from last October,

Death anniversaries provide us an opportunity to reflect on the contributions of many great historical personalities, but rarely do we find a figure so recently passed yet so quickly forgotten as John Taylor Gatto.
Gatto was born in 1935 in the working-class Western Pennsylvania town of Monongahela. He passed away on October 25, 2018, in his adopted home of New York City. In his nearly 30 years of classroom teaching, Gatto witnessed first hand some of the most radical experiments in mass schooling that the world has ever seen. After being named New York City Teacher of the Year consecutively in 1989, 1990 and 1991, and New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991, Gatto rejected what he called the “school religion punishing the nation” and left his formal profession of teaching in search of a job where he “didn’t have to hurt kids to make a living.”
From that day in 1991 until his death one year ago, Gatto wrote and spoke about his experiences in U.S. public schools in an effort not just to critique a system which he saw as beyond reform, but also to envision what education could look like in a truly free and just society. While Gatto gained a readership among certain sections of the homeschooling and alternative education movements, his piercing criticism of U.S. schooling and its link to the crisis of Western civilization deserves a much wider audience.

John Taylor Gatto Challenged the Ideas Inherent in US Mass Schooling

What's interesting is how his life and work is relevant to today's discussions on race and society:

It is this connection between schooling and white supremacy which Gatto understood. He taught for years in working-class Black schools in Harlem, and observed that “black kids had caught on to the fact that their school was a liar’s world, a jobs project for seedy white folk.”
Instead of modifying the curriculum for these students in order to prepare them for their presumed subordinate social role, Gatto challenged “the scientific religion of schooling which believes [Black people] to be genetically challenged” and presented a rigorous education focused on strong reading skills and critical discussion of fundamental questions in history, philosophy and literature.
By refusing to lower expectations for Black youth in school and eventually rejecting the racist school system altogether in favor of autonomous institutions such as Marva Collins’s groundbreaking Westside Preparatory School in Chicago, Gatto provided a concrete example of what an educational program for the abolition of whiteness might look like.
A rapidly growing homeschooling movement is reviving a long tradition of family and community-based education, particularly among Black Americans who have been historically barred from or discriminated against in the school system.

John Taylor Gatto Challenged the Ideas Inherent in US Mass Schooling

Here he is teaching black kids - thirty years ago:

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Classrooms of the Heart - John Taylor Gatto - INSPIRATIONAL!! - YouTube

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