34 years ago Grenadian scholar Bernard Coard caused a social and political storm by telling it how it was in his seminal study How the West Indian Child is Made Educationally Sub-Normal in the British School System. The title alone speaks volumes, but Coard's booklet did so much more. Not only did it expose the plight of Black children in the education system, it also kick-started the Supplementary Schools System and many of the anti-racist and multicultural policies of the 1970s and 80s. Three decades on, our schools are still failing Black children. He identified three factors that were causing black boys, in particular, to fail: "Low expectations on his part about his likely performance in a white-controlled system of education; low motivation to succeed academically because he feels the cards are stacked against him; and low teacher expectations, which affect the amount of effort expended on his behalf by the teacher and also affect his own image of himself and his abilities".

Author: Bernard Coard

ISBN: 9795703252703

Publisher: McDermott Publishing