Colonial Curriculum Research Articles

RUPTURA: DISCUSSÕES EM TORNO DAS POLÍTICAS EDUCACIONAIS PÚBLICAS BRASILEIRAS PARA UM CURRÍCULO VIVO ANTIRRACISTA

The understanding of identity and the roles of subjects in society is necessary both for achieving subjective satisfaction, typical of being, and for the development of society in relational and productive dimensions. This article is an invitation to discussions and the development of other research and practices, aiming to understand the complexities of the curriculum, decoloniality and teaching. It resorts to the documents that make up Brazilian public educational policies (national and international) with regard to the constitution of the curriculum and teacher training, such as: National Common Curricular Base (BRASIL, 2018), the BNC- Training (BRASIL, 2019) and the Incheon International Declaration (UNESCO, 2016a). The documentary analysis is anchored in Stuart Hall (2016), Aníbal Quijano (2005), José Sacristán (2017), Maria Lúcia Damásio (2008), Eneida Shiroma (2011), Teresa Teruya and Delton Felipe (2018), among others. In addition, the series “Severance”, created by Dan Erickson, with the first season in 2022, aired on the Apple TV+ streaming service, represents a critique of the disconnection of interpersonal relationships from everyday life to the detriment of work in an organization, and demands of Capital. The analysis of the series made it possible to perceive the circumstances of the superficiality of the discourses of educational public policies, which reverberate in teacher training and in the curriculum. Such discourses do not really address the inclusion of minority groups in society, the reduction of distances caused by socioeconomic inequalities and the deconstruction of structural racism, but they present cultural erasures in compliance with a colonial curriculum.

Post-Colonial Time: The Evaluation of Printmaking Practice and Present Time

Printmaking has a long and rich history that dates back thousands of years. The earliest forms of printmaking were developed in ancient china, where the artist would create prints using wood blocks as early as the 7th century. However, in the 15th century in Europe, printmaking began to develop into a proper art form. Johannesburg was a German goldsmith printer and inventor widely credited with movable type printing in the mid-15th century. In 1455 Bible was the first important Book in history. In the 16th century, Goa was the first place in India where printing technology started during the British period. Initially, it was used for religious printing and some commercial printing, like religious posters, pamphlets etc. later 20th century, this printing process transformed into fine art printmaking techniques. It became an educational part of developing printing technology and technician. This printing technology became a curriculum for the Art & Craft College, like Madras art college, Kolkata Govt. Art and Craft College, J.J art college, Lahore art college (now in Pakistan), and another essential college is Kala Bhavana under the Visva Bharati University. From post-colonial to contemporary times, printing to printmaking evolved in many ways. Most places academically followed the colonial curriculum, but commercial printing technology rapidly changed. Academically Visva Bharati University Santiniketan develops new technology for the students.

From Decolonization to Ethnonationalism

The history syllabus and textbooks in the Malaya/Malaysia education system became a matter of interest only within the few years before the country’s independence in 1957 to eventually become a controversy among concerned educationists and academicians. During the British colonial period, the syllabus and textbooks, despite being European-centric/English oriented and far from being Malayan in form and content, were generally accepted without much dispute, perhaps because during this period the number of local historians and educated elites were still small. Education in the country was then under the colonial dominance. Furthermore, history teachers, having been educated under the British colonial system, even after some years of independence were more familiar and at ease with the old colonial curriculum. However, after Malaya (later Malaysia) gained Independence from the British in 1957 and Malaysia in 1963, the controversy about the right approach in the teaching of Malayan history came to the fore. The main contentious issue about the history curriculum was Malayanization and Malaysia-centric versus Euro-centric syllabus.

Land-based art intervention: Disrupting settler colonial curriculum of public parks

US public parks are ideological sites where settler-colonial curriculum of territoriality is enacted through their organization and design. However, public parks and the rhetorics of nature and democracy that often frame them are rarely problematized as White settler projects occupying the colonized land. Drawing on the scholarship of decolonial, land-based education, this article critiques the narratives of US urban parks’ undergirding settler-colonial curricula and discusses a student-developed artistic intervention executed in a local public park. The ‘Lederer Park Placards Project’ is explored as both pedagogical gesture and art-based research, which engages in settler-colonial critique through site-specific installation to surface the erasure of Indigenous realities and to divert the existing settler-colonial narratives of public places. This art-in-action is discussed as a decolonial gesture intended to disrupt the White, Eurocentric, colonial curricula embedded in US public parks.

Greeks and Romans on the Latin American Stage ed. by Rosa Andújar and Konstantinos P. Nikoloustos

Reviewed by: Greeks and Romans on the Latin American Stage ed. by Rosa Andújar and Konstantinos P. Nikoloustos Edmund P. Cueva Greeks and Romans on the Latin American Stage. Edited By Rosa Andújar and Konstantinos P. Nikoloustos. Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception. London, UK and New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. Pp. xii + 296. Hardback, £95.00. ISBN: 978-1-350-12561-2. Greeks and Romans on the Latin American Stage is the product of a 2014 international conference held at University College London and sponsored by the Institute of Classical Studies, the Institue for Latin American Studies, the A. G. Leventis Foundation, the Gilbert Murray Trust and the [End Page 488] Hellenic Society and Classical Association. The conference aimed to shift the examination of the reception of classical drama to Latin America, which, although the subject of a handful of scholarly reception studies, continues to be comparatively unknown and a relatively neglected scholarly area. The meeting in London included presentations on works from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Martinique, Mexico and Puerto Rico. In addition to an introduction to the topic, notes, bibliography and index, Rosa Andújar and Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos supply fourteen essays grouped by geographical area: the Southern Cone of South America, Brazil and the Caribbean and North America. Thirteen of these essays had been delivered at the conference. From the very start, the editors make clear the varied difficulties that scholars face in this area. For example, a vast number of these Latin American texts and their creators are mainly unknown and, indeed, even the term “Latin American” is challenging because it masks “a series of particular problems unique to the region” (1) in which these texts arose and its connection to European colonial and imperial history—the use of this term privileges Europe. Another complicating factor is the paradox that arises from the manifest increase in “Latin American” engagement with European and classical literary models in the 19th century, which is the very time when wars of independence from European powers were being fought. Moreover, in Latin America, the Greek and Roman classics were not part of the “colonial curriculum or experience” (3), as found, for example, in the former British colonies in other parts of the world. In other words, it would be wrong to consider Latin America as being in the same postcolonial mode as it would require “a new framework which would need to account for multiple and varied transmitters of the classical, which crucially include religion as well as encounters with foreign ideas”—this results in having “sub-regional and local histories matter enormously” (3). Additionally, the approaches to classical reception taken in this book differ because, in Spanish-speaking Latin America, colonial classics tend to be overwhelmingly Latin and taught and transmitted by such religious orders as the Jesuits and Franciscans. In Brazil, which the Portuguese had colonized, there is no real break in the transmittal of classical culture because the Portuguese royal court had only moved to Brazil in the 19th century, and any university education that took place among Brazilians before that transference involved studying in European universities. Lastly, regarding the Graeco-Roman classics and the Caribbean, the challenge of a unified approach is even more daunting. As the editors note, there “have been recent attempts to conceptualize the Caribbean as a single region, [End Page 489] but when it comes to classical reception, we must still rely on a fragmented view of this intensely diverse region: it matters by whom you were colonized, as classical receptions in Cuba have far more in common with other countries formerly colonized by Spain than its immediate neighbor Jamaica” (5). Due to the space limitations, I cannot review each of the fourteen essays. However, it must be said that the quality of all of the essays is quite good, but as often happens in volumes of collected essays, some essays are better than others. Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos’ “From Epic to Tragedy: The Theatre and Politics in Juan Cruz Varela’s Dido” is the first essay in Part I, the Southern Cone. Nikoloutsos explores the historical circumstances and cultural...

Schools with invisible fences in the British Southern Cameroons, 1916–1961: colonial curriculum and the ‘other’ side of modernist thinking

In this paper, I revisit the popular position in British colonial education literature which suggests there is no evidence that Britain had any predetermined wish to dominate, subvert or control the minds of Africans with an official education policy emanating from Whitehall, the seat of the colonial office. I have used archival data and some critical testimonies from Cameroon to show that British colonial education was experienced and understood differently. Cameroon is relatively unrepresented in the colonial legacy discourse, especially in the context of education. I argue that the curriculum contents and the overall school culture at both the senior elementary and secondary school levels were essentially Eurocentric and therefore served purposes of cultural imperialism. This was not an unintended fallout of curriculum implementation, but a major goal of British colonial education policy initiated at the colonial office and sustained by various colonial administrations. I conclude that a discussion of British colonial education based on policy documents which advocated adaptation, without an emic perspective of their experience with implementation, is likely an unfinished appraisal of Britain’s goal in educating her colonial territories.

Foreword

Foreword Louis A. Pérez Jr. (bio) Few deficiencies of the colonial regime rankled creole sensibilities more than the deplorable state of education. Simply in terms of numbers—the number of teachers and number of schools for the number of students—the colonial education system was unable to meet even the minimum needs of the school-age population. Schools were poorly funded and ill equipped; teachers were often inadequately trained and always poorly paid. “We have been left without schools, without books, without teachers, and without students,” complained Manuel Valdés Rodríguez in 1891. Education was in wretched condition, suffering equally from neglect and negligence, from mismanagement and malfeasance, as well as inadequate instruction and insufficient funding. And of course, as Bonnie Lucero writes with understated emphasis, for Cubans of color the prospects of “limited access to formal education” served to make everything worse. Acts of omission were exacerbated by deeds of commission, for pedagogy was not without a point of view, or, perhaps more correctly, not without a politics. Raquel Otheguy is correct to call attention to the use of “education as a forum to express anxieties [of whites] about the racial situation in Cuba, and they used segregation in educational policy as a tool to limit Afro-descendants’ access to education and thus their participation in society.” These were only some of the most egregious deficiencies of colonial education, and only part of the problem. In fact, and more to the point, colonial education had ceased to meet Cuban needs. The specialization of the economy had reached the point whereby social diversity was derived from production and distribution, access to which was increasingly possible only by mastery of new forms of knowledge and new types of skills. The colonial university and colegio curricula, with their traditional emphasis on law, philosophy, and letters, under the direction of Catholic religious orders, did not admit change easily, if at all. Captain General José G. de la Concha did not fail to appreciate the deepening contradictions within an education system failing to meet the needs of a changing economy, noting in 1853 that while the island had five educational institutions offering a full curriculum in law studies, it lacked even one school to train sugar masters, mechanics, chemists, and engineers—“all so necessary for the principal industry of the country.” Cuban needs had changed, but the colonial curricula had not. New fields of learning, new bodies of knowledge, and especially technical training, science programs, business law, and commerce—all of which had to do with precisely [End Page 149] the forces transforming the physiognomy of daily life in Cuba—were not readily available on the island, which meant, too, that the skills and knowledge Cubans required to make the transition and guarantee a place for themselves in a rapidly changing global market environment could be obtained only abroad. The War of Independence (1895–1898) made everything worse. Nearly four years of war laid waste to the existing colonial educational capacities, such as they were. Funding came to a near halt. Schools were caught between the cross fire of contending armies. The reconcentration policy relocated tens of thousands of boys and girls in overcrowded urban centers in which the importance of schooling was eclipsed by the imperatives of survival. The population scattered from the countryside into the cities and, for many, from the cities to exile. A disproportionate number of teachers were among the many thousands of Cubans who abandoned the island in search of refuge abroad. Conditions were frightful. It had been a close and intimate war. Many tens of thousands of men, women, and children, as shattered families and broken households, as widows and orphans, the aged, the ill, and the infirm, the maimed and the marred, crowded into towns and cities across the island, there to expand into a swelling itinerant population of supplicants and mendicants, to confront an uncertain future, not quite certain how, or where, or with what, to begin anew. These years were never made up. The losses were never recovered. ________ Education was a matter of priority during the US military occupation (1899– 1902). What was especially remarkable about North American imperial administration in Cuba...

Replacement of Banking Model by Critical Pedagogy for English Language and Literature Teaching

Is English language teaching suffering from narration sickness? Are the learners oppressed? If so, is there any pedagogy of the oppressed? Is banking model suitable for the 21st century techno-savvy learners? Are they not the victims of the outdated colonial curriculum? Don’t learners deserve better? Interrogation of the present English language curriculum is no longer a luxury that can wait another generation. Rather, it needs immediate intervention so that another generation may not go economically powerless, linguistically inarticulate, and socially oppressed! The present article discusses the various strategies of reading literature through critical pedagogy that would promote their critical literacy skills of critical thinking, interrogating, transforming oneself and the world.

Towards a transnational model of critical values education: the case for literature education in Singapore

Once regarded as the most essential subject in the national curriculum vital for civilizing the public, English Literature has now lost its place of prominence. In this paper, I focus on Singapore where the subject was a core aspect of the colonial curriculum and where it is currently facing declining enrolment at the national examinations. In the first part of the paper, I discuss how Literature initially functioned to propagate colonial values education in Singapore and how, following Singapore's independence, its goals were overtaken by a nation-state model of values education. Limitations of this model provide the grounds for a transnational model of critical values education that, as I argue in the second part, may be powerfully conveyed through Literature. It is Literature's capacity to facilitate transnational critical engagements with values and explorations of identity especially involving highly sensitive aspects related to gender, race, and religion that represents the strongest justification in the light of its present demise. What Literature offers is the possibility of engaging with values beyond the confines of Empire or nation by grappling with essential questions about what it means to be a cosmopolitan as opposed to a nationalistic citizen inhabiting the world.

The Making of a Colonial School: A Study of Language Policies and Practices in Nineteenth-Century Hong Kong

This article examines colonial language policies and practices at the government Central School, Hong Kong – the so-called Eton of the East – in the second half of the nineteenth century. The article, which draws on a range of unpublished primary sources, seeks to enhance our knowledge of an important episode in Hong Kong's educational history and, in so doing, illuminate our understanding of British attitudes towards the learning and use of English in the empire. The article is divided into three main sections. The first section analyses the nature and purposes of the scheme to ‘centralise’ government-sponsored English teaching in a flagship school in the early 1860s. The second section investigates the roles of the English and Chinese languages in the colonial curriculum and the approaches to the teaching of English adopted by the school's founding Headmaster, Frederick Stewart. The final section examines the reform of the Central School in the late nineteenth century.

The Making of a Colonial School: A Study of Language Policies and Practices in Nineteenth-Century Hong Kong

This article examines colonial language policies and practices at the government Central School, Hong Kong – the so-called Eton of the East – in the second half of the nineteenth century. The article, which draws on a range of unpublished primary sources, seeks to enhance our knowledge of an important episode in Hong Kong's educational history and, in so doing, illuminate our understanding of British attitudes towards the learning and use of English in the empire. The article is divided into three main sections. The first section analyses the nature and purposes of the scheme to ‘centralise’ government-sponsored English teaching in a flagship school in the early 1860s. The second section investigates the roles of the English and Chinese languages in the colonial curriculum and the approaches to the teaching of English adopted by the school's founding Headmaster, Frederick Stewart. The final section examines the reform of the Central School in the late nineteenth century.

The British and curriculum development in West Africa: A historical discourse

THE BRITISH AND CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT IN WEST AFRICA: A HISTORICAL STUDY – Only recently have African nations begun to make their way towards establishing genuinely autonomous education systems incorporating elements of indigenous culture. The present study examines the historical development of curriculum in British West Africa in its links with the educational activities of the early Christian missionaries and the imposition of British colonial rule. For over 300 years, the curriculum content was essentially European in nature. African interests and cultural practices were largely excluded, as “bookwork” was favored over “handwork”. The colonial curriculum also helped introduce a new social order to West Africa, leading to the rise of new local elites reading, writing, and speaking foreign European languages. This study explores how the idea of a “civilized” person, promoted through the colonial school curriculum, developed new local elites with different sets of values and expectations that often made them strangers in their own societies. It also describes the connection between this curriculum and the repeated failure of education-reform efforts.

“The Gospel Of Work Does Not Save Souls”: Conceptions Of Industrial And Agricultural Education For Africans In the Cape Colony, 1890–1930

Charles T. Loram was an important proponent of fashioning African education in ways that would best meet the needs of the colonial system. In the 1920s, Loram championed adapting the colonial curriculum away from “bookishness” towards a manual and agricultural orientation in order to meet the “needs” of rural Africans, as white settlers defined them. As his ideas on adaptation matured, Loram wrote an influential book, The Education of the South African Native in 1917, in which he stated: “On the necessity of industrial training for the Natives of South Africa there is remarkable unanimity. Government commissions and officials, missionaries and students of the Native Question, and the general public all agree that industrial training should be made the chief end of Native education.” What is interesting about this statement is the certainty with which Loram attributed consensus on the question of industrial training to all white colonial interest groups. Loram claimed “unanimity” in order to strengthen his argument for the particular form of industrial education that he favored. Yet, even though colonial actors ostensibly agreed on the need for “industrial education,” they lacked a common definition of “industrial education” which raises the question: were they agreeing to the same thing?

Colonialism and the Politics of 'Chinese History' in Hong Kong's Schools

Writers on colonial education have generally assumed that colonial curricula were tools of metropolitan political and cultural 'hegemony'. In particular, it is alleged that colonial history curricula neglected or ignored the histories of indigenous populations. Through analysing the case of Chinese History in Hong Kong, this article demonstrates that these assumptions are highly misleading. Far from exercising 'hegemonical' authority over the school curriculum, the colonial government was to a large extent the prisoner of its local collaborators. For reasons of political as well as educational expediency, in the post-war years the government initiated a conservative Chinese History curriculum to be taught alongside the separate subject of 'History'. Subsequently, a strong Chinese History subject community evolved, who by appealing to nationalist sentiment were able to resist successfully the calls for reform. As a result, efforts by both the colonial and post-colonial administrations to resolve the anomaly of having two history subjects have proved fruitless.

Knowing their place: the political socialisation of Maori women in New Zealand through schooling policy and practice, 1867-1969

Nineteenth-century British missionaries and the colonial government in New Zealand adopted a policy of assimilation of Maori into Pakeha (European) culture through actively discouraging Maori language, belief systems and culture. Central to the goal of assimilation was a Native School policy which in particular, emphasised the ‘Europeanising’ of young Maori. Church-run schools for Maori, which were subsidised by the state, aimed to return young Maori to their homes to model a Christian Pakeha lifestyle. This article argues that it was Maori girls, rather than Maori boys who were viewed as critical agents of change in the transformation of Maori society and that the colonial curriculum they were taught led to a political socialisation of generations of Maori women.

Imperialism, Social Control and the Colonial Curriculum in Africa

This paper was first presented at the ‘Histories and Ethnographies of School Subjects’ conference, St. Hilda's College, Oxford (20‐22 September 1982). I am grateful to Scilla Furey for her comments on a previous draft.

Our Colonial Curriculum, 1607-1776. Colyer Meriwether

Previous articleNext article FreeBook ReviewsOur Colonial Curriculum, 1607-1776. Colyer Meriwether M. W. JerneganM. W. Jernegan Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 17, Number 2Feb., 1909 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/435291 Views: 40 Journal History This article was published in The School Review (1893-1979), which is continued by the American Journal of Education (1979-present). PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.