Decolonisation ‘needs more scholarship and less politics’

What a complete waste of time and energy with our most prominent (South African) politically involved academics immersing themselves in this trite matter. Rather get involved in finding real solutions to real human suffering than pontificate about the factious issue of decolonization. Perhaps in the UK we should start with the Roman colonization of Britain or the Viking Danelaw!

'Decolonisation' should be seen as a way of enriching the curriculum by adding more diverse voices, not as an chucking-out of everything that went before... Take as an example the issue of medical diagnosis. Traditionally this has included the assessment of skin colour, but looks at the effect of various conditions on white skins... the information can be misleading, useless or downright dangerous if the patient in front of you happens to come from the darker end of the cline of skin pigmentation. Encouraging medical schools to broaden teaching to cover the diagnosic uses of skin colour changes in people of all hues actually improves teaching for all medical students. In a diverse world, both doctors and patients come from a diversity of heritages, after all.