Edutocracy: The New West Indian Plantocracy?

Abstract

Despite pedagogical, technological, and curricular advancements in the West Indian education system, there has been little success in constructively addressing the pervasive regional English language examination failures. I contend that most researchers address these second language acquisition failures by focusing on symptoms rather than causes. However, this study seeks a novel way of tackling the problem, by employing the WordTree design by analogy method, typically used in the engineering field, but adapted for this social science enquiry. The method is used to generate a fitting analogy for the current failing language education system to provide insights into underlying issues, which assist in better understanding and addressing this failure. This method finds that the failing system is analogous to that of the plantocratic system of colonial times based on their strikingly similar ideologies, practices, and attendant outcomes. Resultantly, I term this language education system, an edutocracy.1 This study expands on scholarly works in the advancing areas of curriculum as cultural practice and colonial imagination to provide a different, deeper perspective of this West Indian problem, while exploring the implications of the analogous relationship.

Edutocracy: A Model of the New West Indian Plantocracy in Barbados

“…I propose therefore to rectify the obscurity of this relationship between ideology and WI educational practice by foregrounding these seldom discussed issues of colonial ideologies in the discourse. I contend that there can be no effective reform until the impact of edutocracy (Denny, 2020) on educational practice is clearly understood and adequately addressed. The goal of this research is therefore to develop a theory of edutocracy by conceptualizing a model of this construct with trifocal input from the lenses of dependency theory (Best, 1968), inner plantation (Brathwaite, 1975;Lavia, 2012), and plantation pedagogy (Bristol, 2010).…”

“…This article therefore explores a new educational theory, edutocracy (Denny, 2020). This is not the same as the power wielded by bureaucratic administrators in local school districts in America (Erskine, 2013).…”

“…This is not the same as the power wielded by bureaucratic administrators in local school districts in America (Erskine, 2013). It is most recently applied to the WI context as a fusion of education and plantocracy to describe education officials at the highest decision-making levels who unquestioningly support plantocratic ideologies, policies, and practices that promote deleterious policies like European monolingual education in predominantly bi/ multidialectal Afro-WI speech communities (Denny, 2020). However, plantocracy is more than the sum of its planters, and so I argue that edutocracy should not amount to the faces of education, the decision-makers within the system; hence, I am also using this research to reshape/redefine this construct.…”

“…My thought processes provided clarity and context for the methodology. In my attempt to develop the edutocracy model, I started with Denny's (2020) description. The analyses of the varying documents then led to the three categorizations.…”

“…In this study, the practice of WI education refers to the minimalist conception of education (Bewaji, 2008), rooted in schooling and institutionalization. It is largely an academic monolingual Standard English (SE) school system operating in a primarily bidialectal/multidialectal setting, which is characterized by high-stakes assessment in the school language, academism, textbook-driven curricula, teachercentered approaches, and passive learners (Denny, 2020). It is therefore reduced to classrooms, teachers, syllabuses, exams, inspectorates, certificates, ceremonies, and so on (Bewaji, 2008, p. 6).…”