ERIC Number: EJ1198519
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019
Pages: 20
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1750-8487
EISSN: N/A
A Neocolonial Warp of Outmoded Hierarchies, Curricula and Disciplinary Technologies in Trinidad's Educational System
Williams, Hakim Mohandas Amani
Critical Studies in Education, v60 n1 p93-112 2019
I reappropriate the image of a space-time warp and its notion of disorientation to argue that colonialism created a warp in Trinidad's educational system. Through an analysis of school violence and the wider network of structural violence in which it is steeped, I focus on three outmoded aspects as evidence of this warp--hierarchies, curricula and disciplinary technologies--by using data (interviews, documents and observations) from a longitudinal case study at a secondary school in Trinidad. Colonialism was about exclusion, alienation, violence, control and order and this functionalism persists today; I therefore contend that hierarchies, curricula and disciplinary technologies are all enforcers of these tenets of (neo)colonialism in Trinidad's schools. I conclude with some nascent thoughts on a Systemic Restorative Praxis (SRP) model as a way of destabilizing the warp, by stitching together literature/approaches from systems thinking, restorative justice and Freirean notions of praxis. SRP implies that colonialism (and this modern-day warp) has rendered much psychic and material damage, and that any intervention to address structural violence has to be systemic and iterative in scope and process, include healing, be participatory and foster an ethic of horizontalization in human relations.
Descriptors: Foreign Policy, Foreign Countries, Violence, Educational Environment, Longitudinal Studies, Case Studies, Alienation, Social Isolation, Curriculum, Systems Approach, Justice, Intervention, Teaching Methods, Educational History, Social Status, Secondary School Students, Discipline Policy, Authoritarianism
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Trinidad and Tobago
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A