A Short Case Study: the next Generation of Future World ...

A short Case Study: the next generation of Future class World-Writers

1

A Short Case Study: the next Generation of Future World-Class Writers

Introduction:

To advance the education of ALL children, young adults and parents, by the provision of a community hub, that seeks to create ‘professional pupils’, and ‘confident parents’. We adhere to the British Christian ethos/values of: faith, love, service and resilience.

“At Bright Futures 4 All, with the help of parents, we have created a strong body of exceptional writers among our primary-aged students.

The below pieces of writing represent Year 5's (age 9), writing about social justice issues, around the time of George Floyd and the Black Lives

Matter movement in 2020. The children's writings left an indelible impression with the editor of Lankelly Chase. This led to their work being

published alongside adults in October 2020. I hope you enjoying reading these articles as much as we did.

Mrs Karen M Bryson (Founder/Lead Teacher) (P.S: I also wrote an empowering piece for parents on the importance of networking. See if you agree with my opinions - Pages 6-7).


2

FUTURE WORLD-CLASS WRITERS

AMARE

MY DREAM

I have a dream, to live in a world where all lives will truly matter. A world where there is equality, justice and peace for all. A world with no stereotypes, where people are free to be whoever they want, without fear of being judged by others.

Recently, there has been a series of protests across America and the world, in response to a death of a man called George Floyd. George was a black male who died on the 25th May 2020, after being arrested by a number of police officers. George was treated unfairly by the police and this resulted in his death. Many of the protesters are upset because George is not the first black person to have died as a result of police violence.

People should not be treated unfairly due to the colour of their skin because we are all part of one race; the human race. We have been created in God’s image and we need to love one another, just like Jesus loves us.

I want to live in a world that is kind, caring and sympathetic. A world where we can all unite as one and face all challenges together. For example, during the Covid-19 pandemic, people from all different backgrounds have come together across the world to support and care for one another. Why did it take a pandemic for people to wake up and realise the importance of being kind?

As Martin Luther King once said, individuals in society, should be judged by their character, not by the colour of their skin.

Until, black lives matter and all people of different ethnicities are treated fairly in society, how can all lives really matter?

By Amare Gonzales (https://lankellychase.org.uk/my-dream/)


3

FALLON

UNITY IN DIVERSITY

You may be wondering what is unity in diversity? Unity in diversity means forgetting that we are different and uniting as one!

Examples: If you are being nice to someone despite that they are different then you are displaying unity in diversity; If you are being mean to someone (as they are different) then you are certainly not unifying in diversity.

Why is it important? Unity in diversity is important as people may feel left out if they are treated badly because of things they cannot change or don’t want to change: The country they were born in; their family, their skin colour; their beliefs (e.g. Gods, Goddess)

And none of which is fair just because you are different. I have experienced being left out because of my hair and skin colour. Although I am not quite Rapunzel, I deserve the same amount of respect as those who are white with long hair. This segment of cruelness is called racism. Racism is when people judge you because of your race (normally if you are non-white). Racism is very common and needs to be put to a halt.

Martin Luther King – has a famous speech called ‘I have a dream’ about how black and white people should and can come together as one. This is ‘unity in diversity’!

My conclusion is that everybody should be treated the same, even if we are different and we have feelings too. Now, to finish, I have written a special poem reflecting these thoughts and feelings.

Where there is a will. There is a way! My will that someday my race will find a way, the bells would sing and heavens rejoice. But until that day hope still strays. My will is that someday, this madness will stop and that people will be judged by the way their true hearts take them and not because of their race. My will is that someday, all the leaders of the past (who stood up for me and inspired people) will rest knowing they did a good job. My will is that my friends will respect me and find things to bring us closer not pull us apart. My will is that someday my race will find a way, the bells will sing and heavens rejoice. But until that day hope still strays. Where there is a way there is a way!

By Fallon Terry (https://lankellychase.org.uk/unity-in-diversity/)


4

GAIUS

I HAVE A DREAM For years people like Rosa Parks and Malcom X have fought for change, to end racial segregation and, for the rights of black people. But today I am going to talk about Dr. Martin Luther King, arguably known as one of the most influential civil rights activists. He strived to create the change across the United States (and beyond) where people would be treated equally, regardless of their race. Dr. Martin Luther King started his journey as a minister, however due to social injustice, racial discrimination and segregation in the United States, it cultivated a desire within him to speak out and do more to aid the civil rights movement. His voice and passion helped him to try and bring people from different races together in equality. He marched through the streets with thousands of non-violent demonstrators. Sometimes the people walking with him got beaten, shot and even murdered. He helped to organise a major protest on the Montgomery Bus. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a civil rights protest during which African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating. The protest lasted a year. I reflect and question myself about what would I be willing to sacrifice to stand up for social injustice at 10 years old. In our world today when you do the right things not everybody appreciates it. Dr. King was incarcerated 29 times simply because he stood up against those victimized and treated unfairly. He was one of the significant voices for the oppressed and even after going to jail he kept protesting. The fight for equality was not over, victory was not won. Despite change being slow, Dr. King fought on. He was prepared to lose his life to share the truth and help others to gain their rights. He kept going all the way up to his death [in 1968] when he was assassinated simply because of the positive difference he and his supporters made. There is still racism and social injustice in our world today. As a child, I am most vulnerable when it comes to the evil effects of racism, discrimination and intolerance. A recent example is the murder of George Floyd by four white policeman. He was just one victim of a very long list of unjust killings by the police and hate crimes. Other examples can occur as a result of stereotyping. We need to stand up for our rights and become a new Martin Luther King, and we need it now more than ever. The impact of Dr. King’s life and legacy directly shapes my reality. He reminded me, that what he did and stood for was no extraordinary feat. I, and we, must rise to our own greatness for the betterment of all mankind. We need to do our part to drive true change that our country and world desperately needs. Dr King states ‘Unity is the great need of the hour, and if we are united we can get many of the things that we not only desire but which we justly deserve’. When we come together, we can overcome anything and make this world a better place. Every individual has the capacity to make our world a better place. By Gaius Miller (https://lankellychase.org.uk/i-have-a-dream/)


5

GABRIELLA

REACH YOUR GOALS

Don’t let people put you down. Please don’t be a loser and listen to them. Let someone talk some sense into you. Reach your goals, reach, reach your goals. You’re not done, yet you have a goal to reach. Reach your goals, reach your goals, man or woman, black or white, reach your goals, reach your goals.

Your opponents may arise, but you’ve got something, they haven’t spark inside of you. Reach your goals, reach your goals, man or woman, black or white, reach your goals, reach your goals.

Don’t be depressed and make a mess, be good. Be nice you’ll make the future a surprise. Who knows one day they’ll show kindness to you.

Reach your goals, reach your goals, man or woman, black or white, reach your goals, reach your goals.

Happiness and love, love and happiness we should all

be in… H-A-R-M-O-N-Y Harmony! Harmony!

Harmony!

By Gabriella Rose Miller


6

KAREN M BRYSON

WHY EVERY BLACK PARENT SHOULD JOIN NATIONAL NETWORKS

Three decades on from my first child (a son) entering the education system, still small progress has been made in the number of African-Caribbean men and women from the BAME communities to take seats at the top table of the UK’s leading institutions, and the correlation between society’s top roles and these institutions is clear. Sandra Kerr (OBE) is the director of the national initiative ‘Race for opportunity’ (based in Business In the Community – BITC). This initiative analysed and tracked BAME representation across British industry (2014). They discovered 1-in-10 of the UK workforce came from a BAME background, yet only 1-in-16 were in senior management positions, concentrated in merely 3 main areas. The chronic BAME shortage in senior roles was most pronounced in the legal sector, politics and media. All areas that hold great influence in any society, especially when wanting to effect change in addressing systematic inequalities. Even more frustrating was how I have personally witnessed and experienced the challenges that young BAME boys and girls face, trying to secure ‘quality’ work placements in their ‘dream’ industry. So often, it is the case for all children, that their parent’s personal connections or place of employment that will open the door. Even when in these workplaces, often African-Caribbean employers do not receive the invites to ‘supper’ and ‘weekend socials and holidays’ as their ‘chummy’ white colleagues. Indeed, when I reflect on my own career path, I did not start to ‘properly be interviewed’ for jobs, until changing careers from the media to education 10 years ago. From 1989 to 2004, my path in media had one door fly open after another. How did a young, shy, unconnected young black woman from the small town of Gloucester manage that? My black networks. My mother was a hardworking entrepreneur with small businesses in the local hotel and catering industry. In the 1980s, her encounter and introduction to a visiting fellow female Caribbean woman, who held a senior role on a national newspaper in London, was a chance meeting that changed my life. Little did my mother or I know that this contact would lead to an important door opening to her daughter, a few years later when I moved to London. That door led to a more than a decade-long career in the media, concluding as a broadcast journalist at both BBC London and the BBC World Service. I kid you not when I say, I never filled out a single application form in my three media workplaces. Instead, informal chats were conducted, where my fellow African-Caribbean media peers, then, as now, had each other’s back. However, I had to be able to do the work, but the door was opened, and I ran through, working hard along the way. Yes, most of my close peers were black and the central London media environment I worked within was relatively diverse. Many of us have now moved on from the industry or have retired, having perhaps not quite made the dizzying heights of the media industry (that is another story, for another time), but the importance of networking and the philosophy helping one another, never left me. In more recent years, I have joined more formal networks. One such network is the African Caribbean Education Network (ACEN). It was set up to address the lack of Black children in independent and grammar


7

schools, as well as top universities such as Oxford and Cambridge. They also recognised that Black and mixed- ethnicity children face a unique set of challenges, as well as opportunities, as minorities in these environments, and they wanted to be proactive in addressing both. They offer parents of Black and mixed heritage children a dedicated space for sharing information on a range of topical educational issues, from top tips on teaching ideas and resources, to the latest news and updates on schooling and education opportunities and celebrating the communities’ achievements in mainstream British society. It will come as no surprise (if you have been following the statistics coming out of the Black Lives Matters movement), that these parents have their focus on securing places in the country’s so- called, ‘top-schools’ for results. They are pursuing places at the leading grammar and private schools because, as one parent put it … “our children have to be educationally excellent, in order to secure average opportunities in British industries.” This led to me reflect on a documentary broadcast three years ago by, ACEN patron, the British actor David Harewood. Entitled ‘Will Britain ever have a Black Prime minister’; it researched the possibility of how likely it was that like the United States, where Barack Obama became that country’s first black President, what were the chances of Britain securing a Black prime minister in his lifetime? Sub-titled, ‘Where is our Obama?’ Shockingly, it showed that a black child born in 2016, is 12 times less likely to become prime minister than a white child. The document revealed that it is estimated that a Black child born today has a 1 in 17 million chance of becoming Prime minister; whilst a White child has a 1 in 4 million chance; increased to 1 in 200,000, when a White child attends a top public school. Black Parents who are (and aiming to) educate their children in grammar and private schools are not necessarily elitist or wealthy. They have a shared goal and desire to equip their children with the best education, so they might buck the statistical trend, and seize greater opportunities and outcomes as the children of their many white work colleagues and friends. As an educator, with several friends who are parents, I often smile sadly when almost 50 years on, I still hear parents ‘drilling’ their ‘average-grade-scoring’ African-Caribbean children, (as my mother did almost 50 years ago), that they must be ‘twice as good as their white friends’. He who feels it, knows it! Our communities need formal networks across every major black UK conurbation. It should consist of law partners, financiers, medics, teachers, hairdressers, cleaners and unskilled workers. This national network will then harness their contacts, skills, and knowledge to create ‘enviable’ opportunities for African-Caribbean parents and their children from the cradle to the grave. The ACEN and other African-Caribbean networks, must continue a long African-Caribbean legacy of ‘growing our own’ and nurturing the next generation of parents and their offspring on a more formal and large scale. If we all ‘teach-one to reach one’, (to quote a now famous motivational speech by Denzel Washington), eventually our networks will be so extensive and strong, that we no longer need invites from those predominately white, male ‘top tables’ of mainstream industries. We will have built tables bigger, stronger, and as influential, as theirs. So much so, that our table will be asked to join theirs, but on our terms, rather than as the ‘poor cousin’.

Karen M Bryson (https://lankellychase.org.uk/why-every-black-parent-should-join-national-networks/) (Educationalist, founder and director of Bright Futures 4 All)

A big thank you to the selfless dedication and hard work of our Trustees. We pray that

the year will bring the necessary funds for us to fully realise the plans we have to prosper our diverse communities of children and their parents/carers.

A Short Case Study: the next Generation of Future World ...

Documents

Transcript of A Short Case Study: the next Generation of Future World ...