Slave Route Project: The beginning of the teaching of black history in the classroom

ZIZ News…February 25, 2010 – The introduction of the Slave Route Project in St. Kitts is timely, as it coincides with the era of education reform, resulting from the drafting of the Education White Paper, the Secretary General of the National Commission for UNESCO, Mr Antonio Maynard has told ZIZ News.

Mr Maynard says the White Paper has many stipulations; one being the teaching of black history in the Federation’s schools.

“What we are doing now is establishing the framework. We will put a slave route national scientific committee together and within that framework will have the educational material produced within the same project for the students in the schools; of course, we will have teachers training as well. Out of that particular project we’ll have the eventual erection of a slave monument. A couple years ago we had the first phase where we broke the silence of the issues of slavery in St.Kitts. So by establishing this committee, we’ll be taking an inventory of all the slave sites and will be producing educational material. The third and final phase is the erection of the monument.”

Presently, the scientific committee is in the process of producing the respective publications, which will be significant to school children.

The Slave Route Project was implemented by UNESCO in 1994; under the project UNESCO established an International Scientific Committee to create and authorize the different projects and programmes.