De-colonizing classrooms?

[Johnny Au]

The decolonization of educational curricula helped lead to Poundmaker being pardoned (along with attention from the inclusion of Poundmaker as leader of the Cree in Civilization VI's expansion pack).

I support the pardoning of Poundmaker.

 

[Admiral Beez]

What? Are they going to banish all the immigrant children?

A requisite part of the opening post should be context.

 

[MisterF]

So does anyone want to share what de-colonizing the classroom means exactly? Is it teaching the history of colonization differently? Or not teaching it at all?

Sort of how Czechoslovakians who escaped during the communist era of disaster are so anti-communist that it borders on paranoia. For example, anything remotely socialist scares the hell out of them, because they're truly psychologically scarred from previous experience.

I should add: in spite of my current siggy, I'm not one of them.
Though, I am related to some.

You just described my parents perfectly.

 

[Jasmine18]

Well considering teachers dont know to teach their kids math due to a lack of training, I can see why they spend so much time on politically indoctrinating our kids.

 

[buildup]

I'm going to make a massive generalization here. Educators are often protected from market forces. If they are lousy at what they do, they are difficult to fire and they have great pensions and union protection. They often interact with children & youth who cannot challenge their views. They often over value the importance of their own credentials. That is a recipe for mischief.

 

[lenaitch]

I love that story, the 'black night of Culloden' since I'm of Scot descent. I assumed it was a virtual holocaust, it seems like about 7 people were killed.

Some accounts say a couple of thousand killed. Certainly not huge, but it marked the end of the uprising, the scattering of the clans and a period of British repression of the Scottish culture.

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

So does anyone want to share what de-colonizing the classroom means exactly? Is it teaching the history of colonization differently? Or not teaching it at all?

I am a bit more in touch with all these terminologies, having received my liberal arts degree in recent years. It is the newest buzzword for pushing for a de-europeanization of the classroom curriculum. It goes beyond truth and reconciliation with First Nations past and ongoing trauma. It is about desiring the systematic removal or whitewashing of Western-based histories and knowledge, since it is oppressive and inherently racist, in favour of some combination of secular internationalist education, with an emphasis on "different truths" not derived through western methods. See bolded below:

"CIARS is pleased to announce that it is holding its X1 Decolonizing Conference for critical dialogues on the theme of “Dialoguing and Living Well Together: Decolonization and Insurgent Voices”. Using a Decolonizing perspective, the conference hopes to explore new meanings of “living well together” outside of White mythology (in Derrida’s terms) and the capitalist paradigm. We ask: how do we bring non-Western epistemologies to a terrain that has existed through a long-exercised White Mythology? What Indigenous experiences speak to the possibility of living well together in new futures? What additional dimensions of the above can be gleaned from the constant mobility of bodies, identities, subjectivities and relations?" [link]

Which I think is bollocks, given the indisputable contribution to world knowledge that has come from the West, and that the proponents have no intention of switching our curriculum to learning about Chinese civilization and Confucianist epistemology if their thought-process were for a moment entertained.

These people just hate the Western society that they live in, that much is obvious. Detailed description of that conference is available here and they have no qualms in describing our Western civilization as "sickening" and "bloodthirsty". These guys are 5th columnists that have a luxury of living in a western style liberal constitutional capitalist democracy that protects their rights and freedoms and even grants government funding for a platform to share their ghastly ideas.

//////

An aside comment, I really think their original premise as it relates to Truth and Reconciliation is faulty to begin with. The goal should not be the removal of eurocentric curriculums. It should be the integration of First Nations culture, history and knowledge into our curriculum. New Zealand is the model that should be followed, not South Africa.

 

[lenaitch]

^ Great post.

"Different truths". Where have I heard that before?

This sounds like a bunch of 6 year olds in school yard - 'my myth is better than your myth'.

Edit: I read the link to the conference. Clearly, I no longer belong in this brave new world. I now understand my daughter when she switched out of her university 'eddy' program, stated they're all nuts.

 

[SunriseChampion]

Different truths.....

If anyone ever uses that term and believes in its validity......walk away, quick.

 

[JGHali]

Some accounts say a couple of thousand killed. Certainly not huge, but it marked the end of the uprising, the scattering of the clans and a period of British repression of the Scottish culture.

You mean English repression?

 

[Towered]

I am a bit more in touch with all these terminologies, having received my liberal arts degree in recent years. It is the newest buzzword for pushing for a de-europeanization of the classroom curriculum. It goes beyond truth and reconciliation with First Nations past and ongoing trauma. It is about desiring the systematic removal or whitewashing of Western-based histories and knowledge, since it is oppressive and inherently racist, in favour of some combination of secular internationalist education, with an emphasis on "different truths" not derived through western methods. See bolded below:

"CIARS is pleased to announce that it is holding its X1 Decolonizing Conference for critical dialogues on the theme of “Dialoguing and Living Well Together: Decolonization and Insurgent Voices”. Using a Decolonizing perspective, the conference hopes to explore new meanings of “living well together” outside of White mythology (in Derrida’s terms) and the capitalist paradigm. We ask: how do we bring non-Western epistemologies to a terrain that has existed through a long-exercised White Mythology? What Indigenous experiences speak to the possibility of living well together in new futures? What additional dimensions of the above can be gleaned from the constant mobility of bodies, identities, subjectivities and relations?" [link]

Which I think is bollocks, given the indisputable contribution to world knowledge that has come from the West, and that the proponents have no intention of switching our curriculum to learning about Chinese civilization and Confucianist epistemology if their thought-process were for a moment entertained.

These people just hate the Western society that they live in, that much is obvious. Detailed description of that conference is available here and they have no qualms in describing our Western civilization as "sickening" and "bloodthirsty". These guys are 5th columnists that have a luxury of living in a western style liberal constitutional capitalist democracy that protects their rights and freedoms and even grants government funding for a platform to share their ghastly ideas.

//////

An aside comment, I really think their original premise as it relates to Truth and Reconciliation is faulty to begin with. The goal should not be the removal of eurocentric curriculums. It should be the integration of First Nations culture, history and knowledge into our curriculum. New Zealand is the model that should be followed, not South Africa.

Exactly this. This de-colonization movement is the worst kind of attempted revisionist history possible. One cannot ignore or change the past. I'm in favour of including more diverse aspects of history in the curriculum, but to pretend that the past 500 years of world history have not been dominated by Western Europeans is delusional.

 

[lenaitch]

You mean English repression?

Oops - you are correct.

 

[TrickyRicky]

I would go further and suggest that the thesis is arrogant and ironically Eurocentric. Why? Because most of humanity and ancient history is not European and even more of the future of human history will be non European as Europeans in the old and new world become a shrinking and increasingly less relevant segment of humanity as a whole. Why re-write history and accomplishment of the dominant European powers of the era, it is likely a blip in the overall arc of human history

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

Exactly this. This de-colonization movement is the worst kind of attempted revisionist history possible. One cannot ignore or change the past. I'm in favour of including more diverse aspects of history in the curriculum, but to pretend that the past 500 years of world history have not been dominated by Western Europeans is delusional.

I would go further and suggest that the thesis is arrogant and ironically Eurocentric. Why? Because most of humanity and ancient history is not European and even more of the future of human history will be non European as Europeans in the old and new world become a shrinking and increasingly less relevant segment of humanity as a whole. Why re-write history and accomplishment of the dominant European powers of the era, it is likely a blip in the overall arc of human history

Yeah. It is not even like Western Europeans are the traditional dominant global force. The past 500 years are more like a historical exception or blip compared to the real centres of global power, southern and eastern Asian. For most of history, Europe was the backwater.

Looking at how rapidly those countries in East and South East Asia have developed and are developing over the past quarter century, while infrastructure here in the West declines, I am not quite so sure who is deserving the moniker of "First World" anymore.

 

[Towered]

I would go further and suggest that the thesis is arrogant and ironically Eurocentric. Why? Because most of humanity and ancient history is not European and even more of the future of human history will be non European as Europeans in the old and new world become a shrinking and increasingly less relevant segment of humanity as a whole. Why re-write history and accomplishment of the dominant European powers of the era, it is likely a blip in the overall arc of human history

That remains to be seen. The evidence speaks to the contrary.