Decolonizing the curriculum
But not too much
Education doesn’t occur in a vacuum, and is neither neutral nor universal. School curricula mirror the era’s prevailing ideology, and are designed to foster national unity and serve class interests. It is thus not surprising that Western school curricula favour the achievements of Western civilisation to the detriment of other civilisations. Moreover, when addressing the relations of different civilisations or marginalised groups of peoples with the West and its bourgeoise, curricula are often build based on a euphemistic idea of benevolence and mutual relations. Even today, I have colleagues who argue that notwithstanding the horrors of colonisation, the West still brought progress and better life conditions for the colonised.[1] The British developed a train system in India after all.[2] There is this idea that without them being colonised they would have been even worse. Although mistakes are acknowledged, it is assumed that the overall result of colonisation is one of world progress and civic expansion, driven by the prodigious efforts of Portuguese sailors, Dutch merchants, Belgian and German landlords, French diplomats, British industrialists, and American cowboys. One only needs to read the history school curriculum of these countries to witness how these ideas of grandiloquence continue to be very much present in the psyche of their people.
The recent efforts to decolonise the curriculum are thus completely justified. The way it is being done, however, risks devolving into a mere aesthetical exercise rather than a true attempt to compensate for the colonial crimes and, more importantly, to confront the still ongoing colonisation and the Western bourgeoisie’s inherent superior attitude.
The way the decolonisation of the curriculum is being made varies across countries, and it ultimately depends on the way teachers tailor their classes and the discussion of colonial matters. I believe that there were always teachers concerned with showing another history and in criticising the Western worldview—many of these endeavours being made before the rhetoric around “decolonising the curriculum” became popular. For the most part, however, decolonising the curriculum means including other topics that somehow compensate for a biased approach to history. These endeavours fall short of a proper critique of Western development, and, because thought within the frame of identity politics, tend to focus on epistemic issues instead of a critique of the past and present social conditions. Whilst these efforts at decolonisation create the impression that people are concerned with the faith of the so called Global Majority and that things are being done to compensate for the colonial past, the fact remains that Western countries continue to exercise their power across the globe in ways that are deeply colonial. In the same way that the neoliberal university needs the rhetoric on social justice to disavow their unjust mechanisms, neocolonialism also needs to be accompanied by a rhetoric of decolonisation as to mask the ongoing exploitation of ex-colonies.
There are many examples that attest to this mismatch between words and deeds. In the US, the efforts towards decolonising the curriculum took traction during the presidency of Barack Obama, where many universities and schools started to include in their curriculum matters that contest the colonial legacy, promoting the inclusion of neglected and marginalised knowledges. Yet, this push towards decolonisation occurred when the same country was killing thousands of African and Asian people and destroying their cities in Somalia, Libya, Syria and Yemen. What is the point of including the voices of the marginalised in the curriculum if the same government is killing those whose voices we can still hear today? An agenda for decolonisation should be concerned with ongoing governmental politics that continue to marginalise entire swathes of the world population—when not through direct military intervention as in the cases above, through economic sanctions that keep Asian, African and Latin American populations on the brink of survival (either we are talking about access to food, energy, health care, or medicines).
Nowhere is this gap between the rhetoric of decolonisation and real politics more noticeable today than in the US’s approach to the war in Palestine. While US universities promote the decolonisation of their curriculums, they also request the police and, in some cases, the army to come to their campus and curb pro-Palestinian protesters. No one stands today more truthfully for the anti-colonial struggle than the Palestinian people. Yet, the same government that so eloquently promotes policies of epistemic decolonisation, shows unreserved support for a regime that follows the politics of Lebensraum in its colonial endeavour. How could the Biden administration, arguably the most woke government on history and a fervent supporter of any identity struggle, also endorse and provide the military means for the massacre of women and people of colour?[3] The situation shows no signs of improvement under the new Trump administration.
Another limitation of the decolonising project concerns the decolonisation of European museums through, among other things, the returning of art to the countries from which they originate. Also tied to this issue is the proposal that former colonial powers should not only return stolen art but also financially compensate former colonies for the harm inflicted—from slavery to the exploitation of natural resources. This is a funny discussion because, while these requests are somehow being considered[4], no one seems to contemplate what would be a more efficient way of helping these countries—the obliteration of their national debts. Global mechanisms such as the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank are responsible for keeping countries in the Global Majority in a permanent state of debt, sometimes consuming up to 100% of the country’s GDP. If Western countries were serious about decolonisation, decolonising the debt of African, Asian and Latin American countries would be the first step forward. Yet, restructuring national debts is an unspoken tabu and a topic removed from the decolonising agenda.
To obliterate debt would have a significant impact in the trust and workings of the global financial market. Colonial countries might consider paying a certain amount to compensate for the crimes of the past, but to mess around with the mechanisms of capitalist economy is out of the question. More so, erasing debt would primarily affect financial capital, while compensation could be paid through taxpayers’ money. No wonder the average Joe goes spinning when he hears his political leaders considering payments of compensation to former colonies.[5] He knows that his work will ultimately pay for this, diverting funds from his country and further worsening his already flimsy existence. He or she would ask: why should be me, a blue-collar worker on a minimal wage, who has never benefited in any way or shape from the riches of colonisation, be the one to support this? No wonder these people are turning away from the left. If someone needs to pay for what was stolen and the damage caused, it must be the economic elites that for centuries benefited from colonisation to build their industrial and financial empires. These elites are still here today and are very much operative. It will not be hard to identify them. But who will make them pay? As for the returning of the stolen art, perhaps it is not enough just to return it. Most times, the countries of origin lack the infrastructures and the organisation to care for and display these pieces. Some would argue that Western institutions provide better care and public appreciation for these pieces. Yet, if the goal of decolonisation is genuine, it makes sense to ask the colonial countries to not only return the art, but to build the infrastructure (museums, galleries, cultural centres, libraries, etc.) and provide the training for the countries of origin to explore their own art. The love for charity and philanthropy so dear to Western elites would have here a fertile terrain to grow.
The colonial usurpation extended beyond the theft of material goods. Ideas were and continue to be stolen in a variety of fields, from medicine and pharmacy to biology and engineering. Whilst in their native contexts, these ideas and technologies are at the service of the overall community, organised not around innovation but use, when appropriated by Western entrepreneurs and companies, they become patented, owned, and commercialised.[6] Between 1783 and 1784 the English financier turned ironmaster, Henry Cort, patented a process of rendering scrap metal into valuable bar iron. Historians have credited this “discovery” as one of the most important innovations in the making of modernity, and have lauded Cort as one of the revolutionary makers of the modern world. His patented process propelled the industrial revolution, made possible an unprecedented increase of British military bases across the world and the establishment of maritime networks of British enslaver colonialism. In 2023, Jenny Bulstrode, in an astonishing investigation, showed how the innovation for which Cort took credit was forged by 76 Black metallurgists, working in Jamaica, as slaves.[7] The paper identifies the Black metallurgists in Jamaica as the authors of this innovation and explores how Cort proceeded as to take credit for this innovation and build a monopoly. This investigation is part of a significant and rapidly growing literature “on the contributions of artisans and healers of African descent to innovations historically credited to white practitioners and institutions in Northern Europe and North America”.[8] This literature provides an important ground to question the idea that Western civilisation was scientifically and technologically more advanced than others by unmasking the various ways in which Western entrepreneurs stolen and used the mechanisms of intellectual property to cover up this robbing.
But it was not always the coloniser who took advantage of the knowledge of the colonised. Instances also occurred when it was the colonised who took ownership of Western ideas and implemented those in their own context. The most remarkable of these cases happened during the Haitian revolution, when Toussaint Louverture took ownership of the ideals of the French Revolution, and proclaimed the independence of Haiti in what became the first and only successful slave revolt in history. As explored by C. L. R. James, the Haitian revolution was the crucial, the trail by fire for the ideals of the French enlightenment.[9] While in France, these ideals remained at an abstract level, in the colonised Haiti the abstract idea of “liberty” found its concrete actualisation, in a context of slavery where it was being denied. One can say that the Haitians were more revolutionary than the French. They dared to actualise in a concrete context the abstract ideas of freedom and equality, while the French remained at an abstract level. No wonder Haiti remains, to this day, one of the most impoverished and disaggregated countries in the world.
Decolonising often means recognising that there are other knowledges and practices that somehow add to, complement or can replace Western cosmology. More difficult is to recognise that Western progress would not have been possible without the knowledge of the colonised and that, in some instances such as in the Haitian revolution, the colonised actually beat the coloniser at their own game—Haitians revealed themselves to be more democratic and equalitarian than the French. When in 2023, Niger, Gambon, Mali and Burkina Faso had their revolutions, the first decision of the newly formed governments was to expel the French military from their countries. Since the independence in the second half of the XX century that the French military, government and businesses continued to operate in these countries, exploiting their natural resources, controlling the army and mingling in national politics. They did all this under the veil of benevolence—if left alone, these poor natives will sink into a stage of savagery.[10] There is this idea that Africa is too good for its own habitants, and Western intervention is needed to make sure resources are not wasted and unruly Africans do not end up killing each other in endless wars. When a truly decolonising endeavour is made, such as the revolutions in the countries of the Sahel and the subsequent independence from the French neocolonial grip, this is seen in the West as an incitement to violence and chaos. People of the Sahel who revolt against their colonial masters and seek to build partnerships on their own terms with countries in the Global Majority are accused of falling into Russia and China’s hands. They are often seen as infantile and naïve, unable to decide by themselves the faith of their countries, and in need of being protected from evil powers. Recently, EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell, when referring to the pro-Russian sentiment among African people, defended the development by the West of information warfare tools to counter disinformation. This can be done by “reprogramming the listeners, giving them correct information”.[11] As mentioned by former Nigerian presidential contender Adamu Garba II, reacting to Borrell’s declarations, it is as if Western leaders see “Africa as a jungle full of zombies that can be programmed to do their interests”.[12]
There is little meaning to the decolonising agenda if it misses to address these contemporary and genuinely decolonising movements. However, because of being mostly an academic endeavour, the decolonising agenda is often silent about events such as the ones in the Sahel and Palestine where Western supremacy is being challenged. It is in this sense that the decolonising agenda can easily become an exercise in aesthetics, to the detriment of a concrete engagement with the people that continue up to this day to be victims of neocolonialism.
The work being done across Western science and education to decolonise the curriculum and knowledge has the great merit of criticising the perceived hegemony of Western knowledge systems, whilst legitimising alternative epistemologies, ontologies and methodologies. No modern endeavour is safe from this logic of decolonisation, including mathematics, which, with its ideals of objectivity and universality, stands as no other science as a representative of Western knowledge. The field of research by the name of ethnomathematics has been important in shifting mathematics from the places where it has been erected and glorified (university and schools) and spreading it to the world of people, in their diverse cultures and everyday activities.[13] All this work is important in demystifying Western hegemony. Yet, there is a contradiction in the way apologists of the decolonising agenda criticise Western dominance while remaining silence or indeed condemning events where people who are still today being colonised act and revolt against neocolonialism. How can one support the decolonisation of knowledge while reproaching countries such as India, Venezuela, Brazil, South Africa, Russia, China and Iran, in their endeavours to establish a multipolar world and break Western hegemony? How can a university support the decolonisation of the curriculum whilst remaining silent about the ongoing colonisation of Palestine? Without addressing these concrete instances of contemporary colonisation, the decolonising agenda will remain an academic venture, with little to offer to the billions of people who are part of the Global Majority and feel firsthand the effects of Western hegemony.
[1] Whilst this line of reasoning is common among right-wing figures (e.g., Robert Jenrick, George Chesterton, Emmanuel Macron), my colleagues are all proud leftists, who nonetheless fail to see beyond their chauvinist horizon.
[2] There is no reason to believe that India could not have developed by itself all the industry it needed. From the 1st century CE to the start of British colonization in India in the 17th century, India’s GDP varied between 25% and 35% of the world’s total GDP, more than all of Europe combined (It dropped to 2% by the time Britain departed India in 1947 (Source: Jeffrey G. Williamson, David Clingingsmith, India’s Deindustrialization in the 18th and 19th Centuries, 2005, Harvard University)). It was Western colonisation that kept progress in these countries under check and carried according not to the interests of the colonised people, but the interests of the colonisers. In most cases, like in India, this resulted in a deindustrialisation.
[3] Not to mention the dozens of thousands of children killed in the last year alone.
[5] As it was recently the case in Portugal, after President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa suggested Portugal should compensate its former colonies for the damages caused by Portuguese colonisation.
[6] Edgerton, 1999 cited in Bulstrode below.
[7] Jenny Bulstrode (2023) Black metallurgists and the making of the industrial revolution, History and Technology 39:1, 1-41.
[8] Op. cit. p.2.
[9] James, C.L.R. (2001). The Black Jacobins. Penguin.
[10] As recently explained by French president Emmanuel Macron, none of France its former African colonies “would be a sovereign country today if the French army hadn’t deployed in the region.” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn4xej8n7wxo
[12] https://www.rt.com/africa/600961-borrell-disinformation-work-nigerian-politician/
[13] Pais, A. (2011). Criticisms and contradictions of ethnomathematics. Educational Studies in Mathematics 76:1, 209-230.
An excellent paper. However I can talk only about one its aspect: mathematics education. Here we have a peculiar issue: The traditional Indo-Arabic-West European tradition of elementary mathematics is becoming a thing of the past, a dinosaur's skeleton. It is killed by advance of smartphones of ever increasing computing power and AI. Last week I heard on quite representative seminars on mathematics education in two different countries: "Who needs long multiplication of decimals?" In this new environment, what is motivation for learning any one of dozens, perhaps, algorithms for multiplication developed by various cultures of the past and documented by ethnomathematicians? Some of these algorithms have a definite aesthetic value -- but ancient scripts for calligraphic handwriting also have aesthetic value. But nowadays, not only calligraphy, basic handwriting becomes so 20-th century. Interestingly, quite a lot of ethnomathematical stuff is discussed by the great Donald Knuth in his The Art of Computer Programming - but he also systematically studied calligraphy when developing TeX, his seminal typesetting system. But, it seems, for creation of TeX/LaTeX (lingua franca of dissemination of mathematics, computer science, physics) this had to be done *only once* and vastly contributed to the new culture of instantly reproducible computer-generated artifacts. The debate around decolonisaton of curriculum is akin to a quarrel on the deck of Titanic about the choice of a tune for the famous band which continued to play regardless. Mathematics education, with its huge cultural, social, political bulk, will be sinking slowly amidst growing panic and pain of its passengers (or “stakeholders”, in parlance of state bureaucracy): children, parents, teachers. -- Alexandre Borovik
In 2023 external debts (borrowed from foreign lenders) of countries with low and middle incomes stood at US$8.8 trillion, a record high. Surprisinly, I cannot find figures for low income counties. This is esse tial for understanding your paper. Could you please help?