ABSTRACT
My impressions are that in many ways, things have improved in a large number of schools and colleges in the UK since I was at school and university in the 1950s1970s. I grew up in a small village in Scotland and saw one Black person and, I think, one Chinese person, until I became a university student and went to live in Glasgow. Even then, no Black or Asian students were in any of the classes I took – English, French, German and history of fine art. As a white person of a vaguely Protestant upbringing in central Scotland, the most obvious targets of prejudice for someone of my background tended to be Catholics or tinkers. Fortunately I did not behave badly to the former, since I liked art and enjoyed looking at books with pictures of saints and other holy people, to the extent that my parents were worried that I might convert to Catholicism, but I, along with many others in my school, gave the occasional visiting tinker/traveller children a bad time due to my ignorance. When I consider the much more open attitudes of my own children, and the opportunities they have to make friends from a wide range of cultural and geographical backgrounds in state schools, I see a huge improvement compared to educational culture in Scotland in the post-war period. Of course there are many things which remain to be done, but it is worth pointing to the importance of such general improvements. However, these should not be taken for granted. Many steps forward are due to the attitudes and efforts of ordinary people, rather than those with state responsibility. It is important to remember that the state is not just a provider of education and healthcare, the things most people care about, but the police and the army, where it is doubtful if ‘multiculturalism’ has made much of an impact.
