Introduction

This learning resource has been created for use with the travelling exhibition: A North East Story: Scotland, Africa and Slavery in the Caribbean.

The resource draws on information presented in the exhibition as well as a range of objects and images contained in the handling box that accompanies it. It is aimed principally at secondary school students in North East Scotland.

Nonetheless, all the exhibition and handling box content is included on this website. Teachers and schools elsewhere may therefore find that the resource offers them useful learning tools too.

Organisation and layout

The learning resource is divided into four themed sections:

• Enslaving Africans
• Slavery in the Caribbean
• Abolition and Emancipation
• After Slavery

Each theme has three or four topics (adding up to 14 in total), and each topic comes with a set of Things to do and several specific resources, such as objects, documents and pictures.

See the Contents page for the layout of the sections, topics and individual resources.

Printing

There are options to download the entire learning resource or a particular section or topic in pdf format. For resources and individual pages the webpages have been formatted so that these can be printed from your browser directly.

How to use this resource

We suggest that teachers read through the resource in advance and select topics that they feel will suit the abilities of their students.

As a general guide, however, the sections and topics have been structured to begin with some basic, hands-on activities, before moving to more discursive activities that require more complex interpretation skills.

All the activities have been written so as to enable advanced students to work through the material by themselves. But slavery can be a strange and baffling subject, and most children and young people will need the guidance of an adult to comprehend the topics and get the most out of the activities. They will also learn more effectively if they are encouraged to work in groups and discuss their findings and opinions with one another.

The activities under the Things to do headings are, of course, suggestions only. Teachers are welcome to devise extra or different activities and discussion points using the specific resources provided.

Curriculum for Excellence

Both the exhibition and learning resource aim to foster the experiences and outcomes for the third and fourth levels of Social Studies in Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence.

Most obviously the materials relate to People, past events and societies, but there is also considerable emphasis on questions of agriculture, food resources and the history of globalised trade. The history of the abolition and emancipation movements provides a useful introduction to learning about human rights, political campaigning and other issues of citizenship. Questions of local identity and Scotland’s place in the wider world run throughout the exhibition and learning resource.

The learning resource offers strong opportunities for developing the four capacities in the Curriculum for Excellence.

• Developing successful learners
  
  The history of Europeans’ enslavement of Africans stretches children and young people’s sense of time and place and challenges them to imagine themselves in a world with radically different attitudes and experiences to their own.
  
  The learning resource’s provision of original documentary and pictorial evidence also encourages them to use information from unfamiliar sources, and to think critically about evidence and arguments in order to arrive at their own conclusions. Both the sources and the activities are designed to foster skills in literacy and English, numeracy and new technologies.
  
  
• Developing confident individuals
  
  The activities in the learning resource encourage children and young people to place their own local history and sense of identity within the context of wider Scottish, British and global histories. The history of transatlantic slavery and the fight to abolish it are strong but underexploited topics for developing an understanding of the political, economic and social changes that have shaped North East Scotland. The resource therefore encourages children and young people to formulate and articulate opinions about that past, as a step to establishing their own values.
  
  
• Developing responsible citizens
  
  The learning resource helps children and young people to explore and comprehend the values, beliefs and cultures of societies at other times and places. By challenging them to ‘put themselves in other people’s shoes’, it gives them the tools to identify and critique intolerance and prejudice today and also to develop respect for other people.
  
  The resource also asks them to draw parallels between past practice and contemporary situations; in other words, to identify contemporary ethical dilemmas based on what they have learned about the history of transatlantic slavery. Understanding what happened in the past and why, rather than simply condemning it, is crucial to fostering a commitment to active, responsible participation in political, economic, social and cultural life. Learning how things have changed in the past helps children and young people see that they can change things today – in short, that they too can have a productive role in society.
  
  
• Developing effective contributors
  
  The learning resource encourages investigative, creative and critical thinking and the exploration and articulation of that thinking in group exchanges and debates. These are important life skills that have multiple applications beyond the classroom and the study of the past. Helping children and young people to develop these skills enables them to contribute to the wellbeing of society.

Additional resources

There is a wealth of online learning resources for schools on the subjects of slavery, abolition and emancipation and African culture and history. Some of the most comprehensive and well-maintained sites are listed below. Each in turn provides links to further resources.

Understanding Slavery from the Understanding Slavery Initiative
www.understandingslavery.com

Scotland and the Abolition of the Slave Trade from Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS)
www.ltscotland.org.uk/abolition/

Slavery and Glasgow on Scottish Archive Network (SCAN)
www.scan.org.uk/exhibitions/blackhistory/blackhistory_1.htm

Recovered Histories from Anti-Slavery International
www.recoveredhistories.org/

Freedom from the National Maritime Museum
www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/education/slavery/