Dear Mr Cozier,
I am writing to you as a former student of Highgate Wood. I loved my five years at the school and feel that they provided me with an amazing foundation for the future and I hope this letter will encourage you to integrate new topics into your independent curriculum (the enrichment program). Highgate wood is a school strengthened and enriched by the diversity of the students and teaching staff, however I feel more needs to be done to reflect this in the curriculum. Learning about our history is a key way of creating a critical and engaged generation and I believe rather than putting the onus on students to do this in their own time, the school must do more to alleviate the colonial amnesia rife in this country.
 
The fact that this multicultural learning environment left me having to undertake my own learning, reading and research on topics such as British colonialism, systemic racism, white supremacy and identity politics is incredibly disappointing. Understanding the absence of these topics in mainstream education against the current political backdrop, it is not hard to understand why people are struggling to connect the U.S situation to what is happening here in our own country on an everyday basis. The absence of these topics in mainstream education has bred an extremely dangerous ignorance and complacency that Britain is no longer racist or benefitting from colonial structures. Racial micro-aggressions, instutionalised racism and racial killings are not exempt from British history nor our current present and I believe education is the only tool to alleviate these misconceptions and shatter the deafening silence.
 
Highgate Wood has an amazing capacity for independent, extracurricular learning through the enrichment program you run and I feel this, if anything, could be used as a space to dedicate to the topics discussed above. It is not enough to teach civil rights and have a predominantly American focus, when it comes to racial histories British pupils deserve to understand our role in the racial politics that dictate contemporary society. This petition speaks to the need for change, and the signatures I have collated are from pupils and parents’ past and present of the Highgate wood school community.