Checking Out Me History — John Agard — AQA GCSE English Literature

Checking Out Me History — John Agard

The cluster's most formally inventive poem — a Caribbean-Creole attack on the curriculum that taught a colonised child everyone's history but his own, and the act of recovering it.

SPEC 3.2.2 • POWER & CONFLICT

Context — John Agard

John Agard (born 1949 in British Guiana, now Guyana) moved to Britain in 1977. His poetry consistently uses Caribbean Creole and the rhythms of oral tradition. Checking Out Me History appears in his collection Half-Caste and Other Poems (2007).

The Argument in One Line

Agard grew up in a British colony, taught a curriculum full of British figures and almost none of his own. The poem intervenes in the live debate about decolonising the curriculum — whether and how schools should teach the histories of empire and resistance.

AO3 — Use With Care

Examiners warn that essays are "not history lessons." Use context sparingly, anchored to a specific moment — don't dump biography or empire facts onto the page.

Key Terms

Definition · Creole

A language variety formed from contact between European colonisers and African / indigenous languages. Agard uses Caribbean Creole spelling and grammar deliberately, as political assertion.

Definition · Anaphora

The repetition of the same words at the start of successive lines or stanzas. The hammering "they told me" refrain is built on it.

Definition · Allusion

A reference to a historical or cultural figure. Agard alludes to figures the British curriculum excluded — Toussaint L'Ouverture, Nanny of the Maroons, Mary Seacole.

Definition · Italics (Lyric Inserts)

Stanzas set in italics that step out of the curriculum critique to celebrate the erased figures in a different, reverent register.

The Poem's Argument

Agard argues that political power's most lasting victory is the curriculum — the version of history a society teaches its children.

What's Taught vs What's Erased

By choosing what to include (British imperial figures) and exclude (Black and Caribbean figures of resistance), the education system shapes what the colonised speaker is allowed to know about himself. The selection is not innocent — it decides who he is permitted to be.

The poem doesn't just complain about the gap; it fills it. By naming the erased figures, Agard performs the recovery the curriculum refused — restoring them to the historical record in the poem itself.

The Language Is the Politics

The single most important thing to notice: the whole poem is written in Caribbean Creole — non-standard phonetic spelling — from the first line to the last. This is not occasional flavour; it is sustained and deliberate.

Why It Matters

The standard English of the curriculum was the medium of the exclusion. By writing the entire poem in Creole — and dropping nearly all punctuation — Agard refuses that medium and claims the literary register for Caribbean English. The form is an act of the recovery it describes.

Common Misconception

It is not "Standard English for British heroes, Creole for Caribbean heroes." The British-curriculum lines are in Creole too. The contrast is carried by italics and register, not by a switch of language.

Two Registers, One Creole Voice

The poem alternates between two kinds of stanza. The contrast between them is the argument.

The Refrain — Rote Learning as Accusation

Each curriculum stanza opens with the same hammering phrase — a repeated "they told me," driven home through anaphora.

What the Repetition Does

"They" is the unnamed institutional voice that has been delivering history. The relentless repetition mimics rote learning — the rhythm of facts drummed in — and builds an oppressive, cumulative accusation. By the time the phrase returns yet again, the reader has felt the weight of being told only what an external power chose to tell.

The Grammar of Power

Notice the speaker begins as the object of the sentence — the one being told. The whole poem moves him toward becoming the subject — the one doing the telling.

Mocking the Curriculum

Look closely at what the curriculum stanzas actually list. Agard blends genuine British history with nursery rhymes and folk tales.

Real History

1066 and the Battle of Hastings, Lord Nelson and Waterloo, Florence Nightingale "the lady with the lamp," Robin Hood.

Nursery Rhymes

Dick Whittington and his cat, the cow that jumped over the moon, the dish that ran away with the spoon.

Why Mix Them

By folding real history into childish nursery fiction, Agard implies the Eurocentric curriculum is as much fairy-tale as fact — and just as trivial. The mixing is a put-down: this is the "history" he was made to learn by heart.

The Wounding Metaphor — WHW+C

Agard's central image presents education itself as an injury. Run it through WHW+C.

WHAT

The speaker says the curriculum has bandaged his eye with history and blinded him to his own identity — history used not to heal but to cover over.

HOW

The metaphor is exact and violent: a bandage is presented as treatment but functions as occlusion. "Bandage" and "blind" become interchangeable — the thing that claims to teach him is the thing stopping him from seeing.

WHY

Agard stages the exclusion as deliberate political method, not passive neglect. The curriculum actively wounds — it does not merely fail to mention his history; it covers his eyes with it.

+C

Writing from a Guyanese-British position, Agard names the cruelty of a colonial education that taught the colonised child to see the coloniser's world and not his own.

The Recoveries — Naming the Erased

The italicised stanzas restore three figures the curriculum left out. Each is a leader of resistance against the same colonial power the curriculum celebrates.

FigureWho they wereThe point

Toussaint L'OuvertureAn enslaved man who led the Haitian Revolution against French rule, defeating Napoleon's forces — the revolution that gave birth to the first Black republicThe colonised defeating the coloniser — the opposite of the curriculum's Waterloo

Nanny of the MaroonsA far-seeing Jamaican Maroon leader who led armed resistance against British colonial forcesBlack resistance to the very empire the curriculum glorifies

Mary SeacoleA Jamaican nurse who funded her own way to the Crimean War to tend wounded soldiers after Britain refused herSet against the curriculum's Florence Nightingale — the same war, the erased nurse

The Pattern

Three figures get full italicised stanzas, but the contrast couplets name more — Shaka the great Zulu, and the Caribs and Arawaks (set against "Columbus and 1492," challenging the "discovery" narrative). Each recovery answers a curriculum point: Toussaint against Waterloo, Seacole against Nightingale.

Blindness vs Light

The poem runs on two opposed metaphor systems — and noticing how they answer each other is a top-band move.

The Curriculum Blinds

The history he was taught is a bandage over the eye — it covers his sight with a false picture and leaves him unable to see his own identity. The curriculum is darkness, occlusion, blindness.

The Recovered Figures Bring Light

Every recovered figure is a source of light and vision: Toussaint is a visionary, described as a beacon; Nanny is far-seeing and linked with fire; Mary Seacole is likened to a star and to a sunrise bringing light to wounded soldiers.

The Connection That Scores

The curriculum took his sight; the recovered figures give it back. Recovering this history is literally how the speaker learns to see again — which is why the poem can end with him making something. The bandage comes off, and only then can he carve.

The Closing — From Object to Agent

The poem ends with the speaker taking control of the verb. The connective "but" turns the whole poem toward agency: now he investigates his own history and makes his own identity.

"Checking Out"

The title's phrase has two senses: investigating his own history — and checking out of the curriculum's version, leaving it behind, as you check out of a hotel.

An Act of Carving

The closing verb is carving — making the identity by hand, like woodwork, not passively receiving it. It is deliberate, effortful, ongoing: the labour the curriculum refused.

The Turn

The poem ends with the speaker as agent, not victim. He began being told; he ends doing the telling and the making.

Form — Refusing the Rules

Checking Out Me History is in free verse with almost no punctuation, organised by oral rhythm — it is meant to be heard, even sung. The Caribbean Creole spelling is sustained throughout.

Form Is the Argument

Dropping punctuation refuses the rules of formal Western verse — the same authority that set the curriculum. The curriculum stanzas use a sing-song, nursery-rhyme rhyme (childish, list-like); the italicised recoveries break into freer, more lyrical lines. The shift in rhythm is the shift from rote learning to living memory.

Don't Feature-Spot

Saying "there's no punctuation" earns nothing. Saying "the refusal of punctuation rejects the formal authority that also set the curriculum" earns AO2.

Key Moments to Revise

Copyright Note

Agard is a living poet, so this lesson does not reproduce the poem. Use your AQA anthology alongside this map — find each moment, mark it, and rehearse the analysis.

Moment in the poemWhere to find itWhat to analyse

The repeated "they told me" openingStanza 1 onwardAnaphora; rote learning; cumulative accusation

Real history blended with nursery rhymesCurriculum stanzasTrivialising the Eurocentric syllabus as fairy-tale

The bandage-over-the-eye metaphorEarly onEducation as deliberate wounding, not neglect

The italicised stanza on ToussaintItalicised insertThe colonised defeating the coloniser; register shift

The light/vision imagery of the recovered figuresItalicised insertsBeacon, far-seeing, star/sunrise — vision answering the curriculum's blinding bandage

The italicised stanza on Mary SeacoleItalicised insertThe erased nurse set against Nightingale; same war

The closing turn to carving his identityFinal linesObject becomes agent; identity made, not received

Best Pairings for Checking Out Me History

Section B (30 marks, no AO4, ~42 minutes) asks you to compare the named poem with one other from the cluster. Choose by the question's axis.

Pair withOn the theme ofWhy it works

London (power axis)Power as control of consciousnessBoth name the most damaging oppression as the kind that shapes what the oppressed can know or see

The Emigrée (identity axis)Identity / cultural memoryBoth stage a speaker holding an identity the host society tries to deny

TissuePower and what survives itBoth favour what is light, mobile and persistent over what is heavy and institutional

Rehearsed Primaries

London for a power question; The Emigrée for an identity question. Learn both.

Worked Example — Checking Out Me History × London

Constructed example in AQA's question format — not from a real past paper. Agard is a living poet, so this answer paraphrases him; Blake (1794) is public domain and quoted.

Compare how poets present resistance to power in Checking Out Me History and in one other poem from Power and Conflict. 30 MARKS

Both Agard and Blake present resistance as the work of seeing what institutional power has hidden. Blake walks through "each charter'd street" and hears in every cry the "mind-forg'd manacles" — chains the people forge in their own minds. Agard's speaker, blindfolded by a curriculum that bandages his eye with a selective history, refuses it and ends by carving out his own identity.

Blake uses anaphora — "In every cry of every Man, / In every Infant's cry of fear" — to register the totality of what the city has internalised: there is nowhere the chains are not. Agard uses his own anaphoric refrain and sets the rote-learned curriculum against italicised, reverent recoveries of erased figures, making the exclusion visible on the page. Blake's "I hear" registers the manacles; Agard's closing act of carving begins to cut them off.

Both argue the worst oppression is the one its victims cannot see — and that resistance begins with naming it. Blake names the manacles as "mind-forg'd"; Agard names the curriculum as a bandage. Each poet gives his speaker the act of naming as the first move toward freedom.

Blake wrote in 1794 attacking institutional power in industrial London; Agard wrote in the mid-2000s attacking the cultural power of the British curriculum. Across the gap, both identify the same mechanism: institutional power survives by colonising consciousness, so resistance must begin in the head.

The Level 5/6 Move

The mark scheme rewards reading the poem as a designed whole. The structural alternation is not decoration — it is the argument performed on the page.

The Structure Is the Argument

The poem doesn't just describe a recovery; it enacts one. The italicised stanzas physically interrupt the curriculum's list, forcing the erased figures into the same space. The imagery tracks the same arc — from the curriculum's blinding bandage to the recovered figures' light and vision — and the grammar moves the speaker from object ("they told me") to agent ("I carve"). Naming the erasure is itself the first act of resistance.

In Comparison

Set this against London, where the speaker only gets as far as hearing the manacles. Agard's speaker moves further — from hearing to making. Comparing how far each poem's resistance travels lifts a response into the top band.

Common Errors

Students often writeCorrect versionWhy it matters

"The poem uses bad English.""Agard's Creole is its own linguistic system; choosing it — against the standard English the curriculum used — makes the language itself the site of resistance."Respects the choice

"He's just angry he wasn't taught his history.""Agard stages the exclusion as political method, not educational accident — the curriculum actively wounds (a bandage over the eye), it does not merely neglect."Captures the argument

"Standard English for British heroes, Creole for Caribbean heroes.""The whole poem is in Creole; the contrast is carried by italics and register — nursery-rhyme triviality vs lyric reverence — not by a switch of language."Corrects the misconception

Checkpoint

You should now be able to:

Explain the argument : power's lasting victory is the curriculum — what is taught and erased shapes who the speaker is allowed to be.

Read the language accurately: the whole poem is Creole ; the contrast is italics and register, not Standard English vs Creole.

Analyse the curriculum stanzas' blend of real history and nursery rhymes as a put-down, and the bandage metaphor as deliberate wounding.

Name the recoveries — Toussaint, Nanny of the Maroons, Mary Seacole — and connect the curriculum's blinding bandage to their light and vision imagery.

Track the move from object to agent , and deploy London (power) or The Emigrée (identity) as the rehearsed pairing.

Summary — Checking Out Me History in One Screen

The Argument

Power's most lasting victory is the curriculum. By teaching British figures and erasing Caribbean ones, the education system shapes what the colonised speaker can know about himself. The poem performs the recovery — in Creole, by hand, on the page.

Three Things to Remember

1. The whole poem is Creole — contrast is italics + register.

2. Curriculum = real history mixed with nursery rhymes.

3. Object ("they told me") becomes agent ("I carve").

The One Trap

Don't call it "bad English" or claim a Standard-English/Creole split. The Creole is the resistance; the contrast is typographic and tonal.