LRU-2150, kull-12/13

Assignment 7

In this essay, I am going to discuss how the British Empire influenced British society and discuss how and why you as a teacher should use this topic in a teaching situation.

The British empire influence on the British society

The British Empire has largely influenced how British society is today. At the peak of it’s strength, the British Empire ruled more than 25 percent of the worlds land mass and a quarter of the world’s population. (Nagel, n.d.).  The British Empire also ruled most of the sea, its merchant marine and navy were supreme. Maybe the most famous route that was used by the British Empire was the Triangular trade. The trade route connected the West Coast of Africa, Caribbean and America. Amongst other uses, the trade route shipped slaves to work in the plantation sectors in America. The British slave trade ended in 1807, but the institution of slavery weren’t  abolished from the British Empire until 1833. (Mustad, 2012)

The brits had colonies in most of the world’s continents, and some of the countries under British rule was India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and many of the Caribbean nations. The British Empire was the world’s sole superpower if measured in political, economic and strategic reach. (Jackson, 2013).

Due to the British colonies, the English language has become a world language, around 400 million people in nine countries have English as their native tongue and 30 other countries have English as an official second language. English has also become a lingua franca all over the world, and it’s almost necessary to know the language to travel, do international business, aviation, diplomacy and to get an education all over the world. (Nagel, n.d.).   

The demise of the British Empire begun shortly after World War II, it was in this period of time the British nationality act of 1948 took place.  It made it possible for people who lived in the countries under the Commonwealth society to live and work in the UK. Commonwealth citizens were no longer subjected to Immigration laws. (MWUK). This started a huge immigration from countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the many Caribbean nations.  

According to Migration Watch UK the intake of migrants between January 1955 to June 1962 was about 472,000. Some of the reason behind the massive immigration after the empire dissolved was that Britain needed to rebuild their workforce after the WWII. Many also came to Britain for education. (Nagel, n.d.).  The immigration laws became stricter in the 70s but there were still a lot of immigration, now from Asia and Africa.  Moreover, from the 1980s to this day, the immigrants coming to the UK have been mostly from Eastern Europe, and refuges and Asylum seekers. (MWUK)  

There has always been migration to the UK, but this period is especially important because of the huge numbers of immigrants that came to the Nation. This part of the British history has made the UK to what it is today, a multicultural society. According to Mustad (2012) a Multicultural Nation consist of two or more cultures, so Britain is multicultural to say the least. The slave trade that went on during the British Empire era has influenced some of the less positive sides of the multicultural society in Britain. According to Mustad (2012) this era made racism well established In Britain at the time, something that sometimes is still is a problem in British society. The reason why children use English in school has also its background in the British Empire and this brings me to the next part of the assignment

British Empire as school topic.

In this part of the assignment, I will discuss why and how we should use this as a topic, and there are many reasons why we as teachers should use the British Empire as a topic in school.

First, I want to address the subject of immigration and racism. The situation in the world today concerning immigrants and refugees is not that different from then.  If the pupils learn the history of how people have immigrated from different part of the world, they might learn that bringing immigrants into their own country is not something that is new and dangerous, but something that other cultures have experienced and thrived under, but not whiteout its problems. By learning, what other cultures have experienced by dealing with the difficulties that can arise when a country becomes multicultural very fast, such as racism.  

Second we have language, I have experienced in my practice periods that there can be a lack of understanding from the pupils why they are supposed to learn the English language. In knowing why the English language has become a lingua franca might shed some light on why they are learning it. Also showing them that English is the single most useful language to learn that exists

The British empire good or evil?

First, the pupils would get some work sheets with facts about the British Empire. These facts include both negative and positive facts about the history of the Empire. The first assignment the pupils would get is to read these facts individually, and mark which facts they find good or bad. The facts would be something like this:

“Culture: British customs were seen to be forced on the people while their own local customs were ignored.” 

“Religion: People might argue that the Spread of Christianity prevented people following their own faiths such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam”

“English Language: The English language is almost universal and spoken throughout the world, which makes for good communication between nations.”

“Slave trade: The British Empire created a slave trade from Africa and Caribbean to America”

“Immigration: Britain opened its doors and received a huge amount of immigrants to work and study in their country.”     

When the Pupils have completed this task individually. They will work in pairs and discuss and defend why they think the facts are good or bad. Afterwards we will have a discussion together in the classroom about what the pupils think are good and bad about the British Empire. This method is called IGP (individual – group- plenary) Some of the competence aims that fits this way of working is: “read and understand different types of texts of varying length from different sources” and “express and give grounds for own opinions about familiar topics” (Utdanningsdirektoratet 2006)”

Sources:

Nagel, J-L. (n.d.) NDLA: The Legacy of an Empire. http://ndla.no/en/node/109145  Read 09.04.16

MWUK. A summary history of immigration to Britain. http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefing-paper/6.1 Read 09.04.16  

Mustad, J. E., Rahbek, U., Sevaldsen, J., & Vadmand, O. (2012). Modern Britain: Developments in Contemporary British Society. Cappelen damm.

Jackson, Ashley (2013) The British Empire: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Utdanningsdirektoratet (n.d.) English subject curriculum. http://www.udir.no/kl06/eng1-03/Hele/Kompetansemaal/kompetansemal-etter-7.-arstrinn/?lplang=eng Read 09.04.16