10-03-2023, 07:29 PM
The Impact of Colonial Education
Often, the implementation of a new education system leaves those who are colonized with a limited sense of their past. The indigenous history and customs once practiced and observed slowly slip away (see Paul Gilroy: The Black Atlantic). Growing up in the colonial education system, many colonized children enter a condition of hybridity, in which their identities are created out of multiple cultural forms, practices, beliefs and power dynamics. Colonial education creates a blurring that makes it difficult to differentiate between the new, enforced ideas of the colonizers and the formerly accepted native practices. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, a citizen of the once colonized Kenya, displays his anger about the damage that colonial education wreaks on colonized peoples. He asserts 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. It makes them see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement and it makes them want to distance themselves from that wasteland. It makes them want to identify with that which is furthest removed from themselves” (Decolonising the Mind 3).
Not only does colonial education eventually create a desire to disassociate with native heritage, but it affects the individual and the sense of self-confidence. Thiong’o believes that colonial education instills a sense of inferiority and disempowerment with the collective psyche of a colonized people. In order to eliminate the harmful, lasting effects of colonial education, postcolonial nations must connect their own experiences of colonialism with other nations’ histories. A new educational structure must support and empower the hybrid identity of a liberated people.
Often, the implementation of a new education system leaves those who are colonized with a limited sense of their past. The indigenous history and customs once practiced and observed slowly slip away (see Paul Gilroy: The Black Atlantic). Growing up in the colonial education system, many colonized children enter a condition of hybridity, in which their identities are created out of multiple cultural forms, practices, beliefs and power dynamics. Colonial education creates a blurring that makes it difficult to differentiate between the new, enforced ideas of the colonizers and the formerly accepted native practices. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, a citizen of the once colonized Kenya, displays his anger about the damage that colonial education wreaks on colonized peoples. He asserts 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. It makes them see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement and it makes them want to distance themselves from that wasteland. It makes them want to identify with that which is furthest removed from themselves” (Decolonising the Mind 3).
Not only does colonial education eventually create a desire to disassociate with native heritage, but it affects the individual and the sense of self-confidence. Thiong’o believes that colonial education instills a sense of inferiority and disempowerment with the collective psyche of a colonized people. In order to eliminate the harmful, lasting effects of colonial education, postcolonial nations must connect their own experiences of colonialism with other nations’ histories. A new educational structure must support and empower the hybrid identity of a liberated people.