Calling out racism
Let’s set the scene -
At the end of term our founder Lizzie’s son brought his textbooks home from school for the summer. This included this AQA approved Psychology text book published by Illuminate Publishing.
He then showed her a cartoon within the book. This is a book published in 2017 and used in schools and settings across the UK. Lizzie took to Twitter to flag it… and things escalated from there…
In a statement on Friday 17th July 2020 Illuminate Publishing said: “We apologise unreservedly for inclusion of the image and have withdrawn the book from sale. We are replacing the image and example and are disposing of existing stock. We are deeply sorry for any offence caused and are reflecting on this moment to ensure we learn from this.’
An AQA spokesperson said: “We have zero tolerance of racism, so this cartoon should never have made it through our process for approving textbooks. There are no excuses, and we’re sorry. Quite simply, when we looked at this textbook in 2017, our approval process wasn’t good enough – but we’ve improved it since then and we do things differently now. We contacted the publisher as soon as we heard about this cartoon, and we’re pleased they’re working very quickly to put this right. We’ve also asked them to review their other textbooks.”
Read the press articles about the story by clicking the buttons below:
Lizzie acknowledges the privileges that she has as an educated, white woman and how her voice was heard. Her son had raised the cartoon’s existence with a teacher but nothing happened. It took Lizzie taking to Twitter, and a prominent educator picking up on it for the story to be truly heard.
‘For those who cast doubt on systemic racism in education: this picture was in a 2017 psychology textbook written by teachers, published by an educational publisher, approved by an exam board and used within schools. It literally doesn’t get more systemic than that.’ Prof Damien Page
In 2018, a similar incident occurred with another AQA approved text book, a story which The Guardian picked up on at the time. A passage in AQA GCSE (9-1) Sociology said that Caribbean men were “largely absent” from family situations, without providing any evidence or context to support the claim. After an online backlash, the book’s publisher, Hodder Education, said it was taking the concerns “extremely seriously” and would stop supplying the book for sale.