269 - Small Axe: Education

Eavesdropping at the Movies · Jan 10, 2021 · 28m

Small Axe ends with what, based on his 2014 profile in the Guardian, we take to be a tale partially inspired by Steve McQueen's own childhood. In Education, a young dyslexic boy, Kingsley, is transferred to a school for the "educationally subnormal", a real practice in the 1970s that disproportionately involved black children. The institution to which he's sent is barely a school, the children left unsupervised by bored teachers and allowed to run riot - but it's covertly investigated by a group of activists hoping to fight and end the system. Mike relates to the film, recognising in…