What ‘decolonised education’ should and should not mean
Adopting protesters’ stance on transforming education could mean rejecting advances that originated elsewhere in the world, writes Brenda Wingfield
University students in very different countries — SA, England and the US — argue that it’s time to decolonise higher education. What does this mean? What would acquiescing to the students’ push mean for research, science and academic collaboration? First, it’s necessary to understand those two words: "decolonisation" and "education". The Cambridge dictionary calls decolonisation "the process in which a country that was previously a colony controlled by another country becomes politically independent". "Education", meanwhile, is what the Oxford dictionary calls "the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university". Placed together, then, the decolonisation of education means that a nation must become independent with regards to the acquisition of knowledge skills, values, beliefs and habits. This makes a lot of sense. It’s surely what any nation should be doing. But I would argue that the term is being badly misinterpreted among South Afric...
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