Caribbean Studies Seminar Series

CLACS Caribbean Studies Seminar Series actively promotes intellectual engagement and knowledge exchange by providing scholars - including postgraduate students and early career researchers - with the opportunity to present their interdisciplinary, comparative and integrated research on the Caribbean.

‘Many See The Problem. Only Some Want Changes’: The changing philosophy of education in 20th Century Jamaica

Speaker: Deanna Lyncook (School of History, Queen Mary University of London)

Chair: Sabrina Bowen (Birkbeck, University of London)

The foundational philosophy of education in Jamaica, born out of the emancipation era, primarily reinforced class but also racial and gender based distinctions. Educating children to the standard they were supposed to occupy. This paper will track the philosophical changes through the 20th century from a system that educated children to fit their perceived station to an attempt to create a system that gave all children an opportunity to receive the best education where their advancement was based on their ability to succeed rather than their parents ability to pay.

This paper will be taken from my developing PhD research which explores the experiences of Caribbean children migrating to Britain in the 1960s. Using oral testimony alongside education policy to explore the experiences of these children in a transnational context. Ultimately, I will explore whether the philosophy of education impacted educational outcomes for children that were educated during this time; using archival information from the Jamaica National Archives and UWI Mona library and oral histories conducted in both Britain and Jamaica.

Deanna Lyncook is a PhD History student at Queen Mary University of London. Her research takes a transnational approach to the experiences of Caribbean children in the British education system in Britain and its Caribbean colonies, in the second half of the 20th Century. It explores the migration experiences of Caribbean children through oral history. She is the founder host of the podcast The History Hotline where she has discussed events and individuals that have shaped Black history in Britain and the Caribbean.

Deanna has worked in public history and heritage spaces as an oral history and project officer at the Museum of Methodism, curating an exhibition on Black and Asian leaders in British Methodism. She has also worked on historical research projects for the Society for Caribbean Studies, the University of Leeds, SOAS, BBC Radio London and the Times Radio. She also co-organised ‘The Issue of Truth’ a Black British History Conference funded by the IHR and Northwestern University with Olivia Wyatt.

Sabrina Bowen is a 3rd year PhD Student at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research explores the inter-generational roles of the Caribbean diaspora in the development of their homelands. She is a freelance Sensitivity Reader and Fundraising and Development Manager at Action for Global Health, an influential membership network convening more than 50 organisations working in global health. As the CHASE EDI Ambassador, Sabrina co-organised Birkbeck's first Global Majority Doctoral Conference.

All are welcome to attend this free seminar, which will be held online via Zoom at 16:00 GMT (UK time). You will need to register in advance to receive the online joining link. Please click on the Book Now button at the top of the page to register.