Curriculum and pedagogy in the development of colonial imagination: a case study

Edutocracy: The New West Indian Plantocracy?

“…A former Registrar at CXC declares that the postcolonial project in education has never fundamentally questioned its colonial inheritance; hence, he advocates that education in every historical epoch continually interrogates the purposes of education (Jules, 2015). As a WI researcher and educator, I believe that I owe it to the system to explore this question of failure more deeply through the more unconventional lens of curriculum as cultural practice in shaping the colonial imagination (Bacchus, 1994;London, 2002), as the more conventional means as previously described have failed to produce definitive answers for effective solutions. Education under the colonizer shaped a colonial imagination to their advantage.…”

“…The recent literature on globalization and education centralizes the concept of a global imagination, that is, ways of seeing the global world which connect us as global citizens. Drawing on logic, London (2002) reasons that just as the current global world depends on a global imagination to achieve its objectives, so too did the colonial world require a colonial imagination to build its empire. He contends that this colonial imagination was developed for and internalized by the colonized through curriculum and pedagogical practices, so that the curriculum was deliberately designed and dispensed to achieve a favorable objective for the colonizer, that is, continued subjugation of the colonized to maintain the status quo.…”

“…Such a conclusion, even if philosophically skewed, is certainly not implausible or illogical. In addition, there is a plethora of literature which establishes, from the perspective of colonized people, the true impact of colonial education (see Bacchus, 1994;Bewaji, 2008;Bhabha, 1994;Kanu, 2007;London, 2002;Meena, 2015;Samaddar, 2007;Thiong'o, 1986). In practice then, education as cultural assimilation looks very much like the image formed by the very eloquent words of Thiong'o (1986), himself a product of colonized education who laments that the process annihilate[s] a people's belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves.…”

International student migration and the postcolonial heritage of European higher education: perspectives from Portugal and the UK

“…Driven by post-enlightenment values of 'progress', the historical expansion of HE across the colonised world was characterised by the proliferation of everything that is advanced, good, and civilized measured in European terms. This 'colonial imagination' (London 2002) was driven by educational interventions and lingers on in prevailing 'development' discourses in which economic, social, and political change in former colonies are still measured against 'western' standards. Researching the legacies of colonial HE in South Africa, and drawing on Spivak's notion of 'epistemic violence', Heleta (2016, 2) writes that, …one of the most destructive effects of colonialism was the subjugation of local knowledge and promotion of the Western knowledge as universal knowledge.…”

Girls and special education in the Caribbean

“…(Millette, 1985, p. xv) Millette's statement resonates with the assertion that identity, and its relationship with colonial ideology, is historically based and has psycho-emotional dimensions implicit within internalized oppression. Empire building therefore thrived on establishing for the 'other' a world view and concept of self and community (London, 2000).…”