Colonized Curriculum

Abstract

Although U.S. scholars have long documented the stereotypical appearance of Africa in textbooks, scant research does so in the Netherlands. The Dutch, internationally recognized for generous aid, contributed to Africa’s historical underdevelopment by kidnapping, trading, and enslaving Africans. In this study, the author uses content and discourse analysis to examine how Africa, African independence, and European, particularly Dutch, aid organizations operating in Africa are represented in all Dutch primary school history textbooks published since 1980. A Eurocentric neocolonial master narrative homogenizes and essentializes Africa as a poor, primitive, and violent continent; discursively denies Dutch historical responsibility for African underdevelopment; excludes African nationalist efforts; and depicts the Dutch engaging in benevolent aid efforts toward African nations and peoples unable to help themselves. These textbooks, in constructing and perpetuating racialized conceptions of Africa and African peoples, constitute a continued legacy of colonialist conceptions that justify neoliberal intervention and exploitation. Given the denial of race and racism among both academics and the general populations in the Netherlands, these findings have critical implications for contemporary conceptions of Africa, Africans, and Afro-Dutch people living in the Netherlands today.

Toward a DuBoisian theorization of school curricula

“…Third, education scholars argue school curricula and knowledge are hierarchically organized and ideologically significant (Apple, 1996; Giroux, 1983; Ladson‐Billings & Tate IV, 1995; Yosso, 2005). As I will elaborate, empirical studies generally agree with Du Bois that students are exposed to dominant race‐class ideologies through textbooks (e.g., Anyon, 1979; Araújo & Maeso, 2012; Loewen, 2007; Morning, 2008; Robinson, 2022; Swartz, 1992; Weiner, 2016; see Apple, 1992 for a critique) and school lessons (Lewis, 2001; Morning, 2011; Salas Pujols, 2022; Teeger, 2015). While these studies emphasize the ideological dimensions of schooling, they often overlook systematic discussions of Du Bois' theorizations.…”

Addressing the “Why” in White privilege: The limits of mere evidence confrontations and the potential of contextualizing White privilege in national colonial history

“…This invisibility is maintained through a systemic exclusion of colonialism from collective memory (Krüger, 2004. For example, colonialism has for a long time been circumvented and misrepresented in German school textbooks (Marmer et al, 2010); so-called "colonized curricula" (Weiner, 2016). The collective avoidance of a discourse on racism and the racialization of German (and European) identity as White has remained unchallenged to this day (Arndt, 2020;Nedelsky, 2023).…”

Sociocultural theory for academic literacy research involving argumentation in institutions of higher learning

“…Ontologically, lifeworlds embody the cultural, agentic and epistemic visions of individuals and communities (Kalantzis 2006). However, in an era where protests against racial inequality, police brutality, along with scholarly agitations for decolonised education that values epistemologies from the Global South, language practitioners are more challenged than ever before (Weiner 2016;Chaka, Lephalala, and Ngesi 2018). Previously marginalised voices in higher education are demanding inclusive pedagogy that incorporates the lived experiences and aspirations of the poorest among us.…”