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The term 'Educationally sub- normal' (ESN) was formally introduced in the Education Act in 1944 in England and Wales to describe children considered to have very limited intellectual abilities and which were thought unlikely to benefit from mainstream education. The term ESN replaced earlier terms such as "mentally defective" and was applied to children who scored poorly on intelligence tests or were otherwise deemed "defective" in their educability. 

During the 1960s and 1970s British Education activist Benerad Conard revealed there was a disproportionate amount of immigrant children placed in ESN schools, with a massive case of West Indians being placed in ESN schools - with a minimal amount to return to mainstream school.  

Such placement of Black Caribbeans within these schools sparked racial conversation in Britain, highlighting the most important contribution to these placements, the psychometric objectivity in IQ Tests conducted by and educational psychologist.  

The conversation revealed recurring biases: cultural bias, middle class bias, and a tendency to misread emotional expression as disturbance. Conard concluded that the vocabulary and style of test were favoured towards white, middle-class children, since they were conducted entirely in Standard English, a linguistic form fundamentally different from the English spoken by West Indian children. 

In response to Conard's findings, British society attempted to demonstrate that its education system was not institutionally racist by developing anti-racist pedagogy – introducing "cultural work" into English lessons, and in some schools, experimenting with Patois in poetry as a form of inclusion. But how far did that take us? 

How the system worked

From the moment they entered British schools, West Indian children were told - implicitly and explicitly - that their language was second rate, "the wrong way" to express joy, pain or anything in between.  Because of this it extended into how identity was portrayed in the classroom: history's great figures were white, heroes were white – while Blackness was disproportionality associated with criminality or caricature. 

Maureen Stone noted that this was not incidental and the system did not solve the problem but created one. 

Turning to Sound 

Language and identity were the terrain on which Black Caribbean children were told they were deficient; however, it has also been acknowledged as the terrain that forced resistance to their oppression. Dread Talk, Dub Poetry, and Sound Systems culture did not survive the label but worked to actively counteract it. The community utilised the language that had been dismissed as evidence of intellectualism to cultivate a society where they topped the music scene. The community was stigmatised with a label that never should have been associated because they were different and that is what my project will display. 

The Sonic Archive is my way into a neglected conversation about what language means to identity, and what identity means to a community written off by the systems meant to educate it.  

I chose a community deeply rooted in Black British history — Black Caribbeans, and their treatment within education — because of my own experience within the education system. Despite not being Caribbean myself, the relationship between the system and the Black diaspora has never been one that favoured us. I wanted to validate a community too often reduced to stereotypes, and validate the language used by Caribbeans during the 1970s scandal — to show that our language is not a barrier, and that being placed within a system that favours monolingualism over multilingualism does not mean our culture should be treated as second-rate or inferior. To embody this goal, I have put together posters detailing this erased past, alongside an opportunity for staff and students to share their thoughts on the topic — for example, which piece of research they found most pivotal — via Slido. 

A second aim of this project is to recognise sound systems as intellectual archives in their own right — not just as the backdrop to dub poetry and Dread Talk, but as the actual mechanism that published and circulated them. Long before this language reached a page, sound systems broadcast it: selectors, MCs, and dub poets used the sound system itself as a live publishing platform, carrying dialect, rhythm, and resistance directly to a community that print culture had largely excluded. Written knowledge was never the only way to be published — it was simply the only way Britain chose to recognise. English schooling was never built to teach us that intellect could be broadcast through a speaker stack as legitimately as it could sit on a library shelf. 

Overall, this project aims to celebrate the intellectual art and knowledge Black Caribbeans have created and contributed to British society, sharing that celebration with a broad range of students and across Loughborough. 

During the curation process, I designed an Excel model to store and highlight potential themes — for example, Sound and Resistance, or ESN — that each resource might relate to. This led me to scan resources on a continuous basis, shortlisting them by their relevance to the project, or by whether they could provide background knowledge to set the scene for my readers. 

Difficulty arose in accessing materials across all themes — whether ESN, dub poetry, Dread Talk, or sound systems — largely due to resources being time-bound and, in some cases, inaccessible, particularly ESN-era records. I also faced challenges finding poems written in Creole or Patois that captured the creativity of the language, locating a limited number of resources specifically on sound systems, and being blocked from certain papers by journal firewalls. 

Nevertheless, the list I have curated — one that also supports further background reading — is not exhaustive, but a starting point for anyone intrigued by the topic who wishes to explore further. It offers readily available materials to work through, alongside further resources to explore in the library's collection and beyond. 

The newly purchased materials for the library and this project were mostly physical books, such as , which offers a comprehensive exploration of Linton Kwesi Johnson's life and poetry. It shows readers how significant Johnson's voice was in political engagement, functioning as a tool for social change. With reference to reggae and Rastafari themes, the book stands as a testament to being a voice in the dark for Caribbean political, cultural history, and oppression. 

Another readily available addition is , which takes sound as its standpoint to discuss the history of reggae in 1970s Britain. It offers readers a deep dive into how sound travelled from Jamaica to the UK's Afro-Caribbean community, showing how reggae's impact captured the experiences of Black youth in inner-city London. The book presents sound as a system Black youth used as both a shield and a weapon. 

Finally, while the reading list itself is not exhaustive, plenty of other resources remain available in different formats — journal articles, videos, documentaries, and music — each contributing to different interests and learning styles, and together building a more insightful understanding of the relationship between the Educationally Sub-Normal scandal and sound systems as intellectual archives. 

Here's a list to get you started on archival research to learn more about this topic: