Public Intellectual EssayThe introduction of critical race theory and other anti-colonial approaches to academic discourse has obscured the fact that higher education itself remains embedded in colonial institutions and structures. Higher education is a vestige of colonial means of psychological and social control. The political implications of colonialism in higher education include the perpetuation of hegemony, the suppression and subordination of alternative epistemologies, the ongoing political dominion over what constitutes knowledge, and the use of higher education to promote structures and institutions that serve the dominant culture. Although often an unconscious process, the ways colonial mentalities and processes remain entrenched in higher education are directly harmful to individual students and to society as a whole. Colonialism in higher education promotes a monolithic worldview that inhibits critical inquiry and creative solutions to global problems. By controlling how knowledge is defined, institutes of colonialist higher learning prevent alternative views and inhibit the flourishing of a genuinely meaningful academic curriculum as well as an evidence-based pedagogical practice. Colonialism in higher education is bad for everyone; it inhibits learning, limits the scope and depth of discursive practices, and prevents the formation of genuine community partnerships that can promote social justice.
In fact, the political often becomes personal with direct impacts on individual learners. “Education systems and processes, as well as ideas about what counts as education, have been entrenched in the reproduction of colonial ways of knowing which concomitantly limit possibilities for many learners,” (Dei, 2012, p. 103). The impact on individual learners extends to physical and mental health outcomes too, exacerbating health disparities. Epistemological data that shows that aboriginal peoples suffer from lower life expectancy, elevated morbidity, elevated suicide rates, higher rates of many diseases, and higher rates of poverty, all of which are empirically linked to “the forced acculturation imposed on Aboriginal peoples,” (Bourassa, McKay-McNabb & Hampton, n.d., p. 23). Therefore, colonialism in higher education is categorically unethical.
Colonialism refers to the imposition of power and the creation of political, social, and economic hierarchies. In higher education, colonialism manifests physically through the control over the physical space of the academic institution, symbolically...
Education Advocacy Issues Massive institutional racism and structural inequalities still exist in the United States, especially in housing, public education and the criminal justice system in inner city areas. In every urban area, the quality of education available to poor and minority students is demonstrably worse by any measure than that of their white peers in the suburbs. This type of institutional discrimination is not caused by genetic or cultural deprivation
In addition the Europeans that colonized Australia believed that their culture was superior and the aboriginal culture would somehow disappear in a short period of time. When this did not occur drastic steps were taken to assimilate indigenous people. These steps included taking aboriginal children away from their families to be raised in white society. Certainly this type of violent and reckless interaction led to great fear and panic because
Colonialism to Globalization Colonialism is a relationship of domination between indigenous, or forcibly imported majority, and a minority of foreign invaders, in which the fundamental decisions affecting the lives of the colonized people are made and implemented by the colonial rulers (Colonialism pp). Globalization is the intensification of economic, political, social and cultural relations across borders (Colonialism pp). Third World countries, often colonies, are economically underdeveloped countries of Asia, Africa, Oceania,
Education can reinforce hegemony or be used to facilitate political resistance and catalyze social justice. Students and faculty at the University of Hawaii have empowered themselves through education, through changes to curriculum and also to the norms of public discourse. In “Native Student Organizing,” Trask also describes how political structures in education have a direct bearing on community empowerment. Left alone, university politics can too easily reflect the dominant, colonialist,
Postcolonial Ed Lit Education, Death, and Postcolonial Literature The peculiarities of the postcolonial struggle for identity and independence are entirely unique to the historical occupation and colonization that ended, at least ostensibly, in the middle of the twentieth century. Peoples that had full histories and rich cultures prior to the arrival of Europeans or European-descended individuals from the New World found themselves largely without the foundations of these cultures to support themselves
Rise of Imperialism or Colonialism Colonialism in Africa The term colonialism simply implies the forced occupation and absolute control of one country by another. The colonizing country imposes the rules and the policies from its government and ensures that the colonized country follows the policies and decisions of the colonizing country. The focus of the paper will be on African since it is the continents that had all but two of its countries
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