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Through the example of Tayeb Salih’s novel Season of Migration to the North (1969), this article argues that education as provided by the colonial school system is an “undecidable” (Derrida), at once empowering and disempowering the educated non-Westerner. On the one hand, the knowledge and language appropriated by Mustafa Sa’eed (Salih’s African prodigy) enable him not only to belie, through his own academic success, the derogatory clichés regarding the Black man’s intellectual inferiority, but also to denounce imperialism in the impressive number of books he has written. On the other hand, as a system which perpetuates traditional values and codes of thinking, rather than promoting originality and difference, the (Western) educational machine ensures that its products unconsciously absorb Western ‘truths’ about the passionate nature and sexual appetite of the native races. This article shows that Mustafa Sa’eed reproduces these ‘truths’ both in his lectures and in his lifestyle.

Colonial education is often criticized for being conservative, static, oppressive, and irrelevant to the needs and interests of the colonized people. This theoretical paper, however, disrupts the established narrative of condemnation by challenging scholars of curriculum reform to take a fresh look at colonial education policy. This study teases George Stark’s policy of technical-vocational education for Africans by employing critical policy historiography as the theoretical framework and historical discourse analysis as its methodology. Two questions drive this theoretical paper: What were the central tenets of George Stark’s curriculum reform policy in Rhodesia, and what lessons can be drawn from this policy to inform contemporary education reform in Zimbabwean secondary schools? From the research findings, it cannot be disputed that Stark’s reform policy for African education in colonial Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) was fervently racist and discriminatory, as it was framed within the overarching scope of white hegemony. But his advocacy for a practical technical-vocational curriculum for Africans seems pragmatic, visionary, and prophetic. These findings become more compelling when considering the current clarion call for worldwide technical-vocational education. As if policy planners are scavenging nuggets from Stark’s widely condemned colonial script, the Zimbabwe government is currently piloting a reform initiative to transform secondary education from an academic to a practical-oriented curriculum. In light of these findings, it appears there are several lessons to be drawn from Stark’s colonial policy for technical-vocational education to inform current curriculum reform and practice in Zimbabwe and globally.

This paper aims to glean valuable insights from critical pedagogy in order to apply them to the field of African literary studies. Specifically, I am interested in how approaches inspired by culturally responsive education can help us revisit the important but under-researched topic of student agency as it features in fictional works that deal with colonial education in Africa. Although colonial education in literature has been the subject of intense focus in postcolonial theory, such theorizations largely examine how colonial education reproduces colonial rule through the dissemination of colonial discourse/ideology. When student agency in the colonial education systems is addressed, conventional postcolonial theory sees it as being overwhelmed or assimilated by colonial discourse and power. Ideas emanating from critical pedagogy and culturally responsive education are of value here in that they can elucidate how students interact with and even resist the pedagogical and political power of the colonial education system. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s novel Weep Not, Child is an illustrative example of how such a critical-pedagogy-inspired approach can help us reorient literary studies of colonial education systems.

This paper investigates the differentiated educational ideologies projected during the Japanese colonial era by comparing the Japanese language textbooks used by Korean and Japanese primary students at that time. By comparing the texts and images in Kokugotokuhon (Japanese language textbooks for Korean students) and Shougakutokuhon (Japanese language textbooks for Japanese students) with critical discourse analysis (CDA) in analysis of texts and visual image analysis (VIA) for images, this paper verifies the differentiated educational ideologies that Japanese colonial authorities presented to Korean students. There were three findings that were featured in the Japanese language textbooks for Korean students that were absent from the textbooks for Japanese students. Firstly, depictions of physical labour and helping parents after school and late at night were present only in the textbooks for Koreans. Secondly, Japanese nationalism with an Emperor-centred ideology was emphasised in the Japanese language textbooks used by Koreans. Thirdly, the textbooks encouraged Korean students to practise war-like games and drills. The results from this study suggest that differentiated education was provided to Korean students during the Japanese colonial era via the contents of the Japanese language textbooks, which projected the colonial ideologies of the Japanese government. Korean students were being educated to become Japanese colonial subjects.

Drawing on contemporary documents, on the recollections of his friends, family and students, on his own words and on his voluminous correspondence, this article explores how Phạm Duy Khiêm, who had thoroughly absorbed and loved French culture, but who nevertheless remained deeply Vietnamese, rooted in Confucian and Buddhist values, saw himself at a time of deep political and cultural polarization. It seeks to answer such questions as: What beliefs and aspirations informed his behavior? How did maintaining the tension between French and Vietnamese cultures sustain him? Did it eventually undermine him, putting him at odds with his times and sometimes with himself? Did his refusal to deny either of the cultures that defined him affect his ability to participate actively in the history of his time?

South Africa is an important social space in world history and politics for understanding how the modern world comes to deal with the questions of social difference, and the encounter of people with different civilizational histories. In this essay I argue that a particular racial idea inflected this encounter. One of the ways in which this happened was through the dominance of late nineteenthcentury and early twentieth-century positivism. In setting up the argument for this essay, I begin with a characterization of the nature of early South Africa's modernity, the period in which the country's political and intellectual leadership began to outline the kinds of knowledges they valued. I argue that a scientism, not unlike the positivism that emerges in many parts of the world at this time, came to inform discussions of progress and development in the country at the end of the nineteenth century. This was continued into the early twentieth century, and was evident in important interventions in the country such as the establishment of the higher education system and initiatives like the Carnegie Inquiry of 1933. The key effect of this scientism, based as it was on the conceits of objectivity and neutrality, was to institute suspicion of all other forms of knowing, and most critically that of indigenous knowledge. In the second part of the paper, I show that this scientism persists in the post-apartheid curriculum project. Finally, I make an exploratory argument, drawing on the concept of the 'transaction' in John Dewey, for a new approach to knowing.

The article discusses several meanings of the word “education” that have a particular relevance to V. S. Naipaul’s career as a writer. It refers briefly to the typical colonial education he received in Trinidad, and the ways in which it turned him into both a “good” and a “bad colonial”. It then goes on to discuss how Naipaul came to feel the need to educate himself for a postcolonial world, and how he had to learn to cope with the deterritorialized, hybrid condition of the postcolonial subject. Finally, it is suggested that the “areas of darkness” that Naipaul elected as the main theme of his writing is the space where he deliberately built his discourse and the “zone of interdiction” which was meant to exist between colonizer and colonized is the “no-man’s land” that he inhabits.

Dead Stars: American and Philippine Literary Perspectives on the American Colonization of the Philippines examines the American colonization of the Philippines from three distinct but related literary perspectives. The first is the reaction of anti-imperialist American writers Mark Twain, W. E. B. Du Bois, and William James to America’s first foray into the role of colonizer and how their varied essays, letters, and speeches provide an incisive delineation of fundamental conflicts in American identity at the turn of the twentieth century. The book then analyzes how these same conflicts surface in the colonial regime’s use of American literature as a tool to inculcate American values in the colonial educational system. Finally, Dead Stars considers the way three early and important Filipino writers—Paz Marquez Benitez, Maximo Kalaw, and Juan C. Laya—interpret and represent these same tensions in their fiction.

Dead Stars: American and Philippine Literary Perspectives on the American Colonization of the Philippines examines the American colonization of the Philippines from three distinct but related literary perspectives. The first is the reaction of anti-imperialist American writers Mark Twain, W. E. B. Du Bois, and William James to America’s first foray into the role of colonizer and how their varied essays, letters, and speeches provide an incisive delineation of fundamental conflicts in American identity at the turn of the twentieth century. The book then analyzes how these same conflicts surface in the colonial regime’s use of American literature as a tool to inculcate American values in the colonial educational system. Finally, Dead Stars considers the way three early and important Filipino writers—Paz Marquez Benitez, Maximo Kalaw, and Juan C. Laya—interpret and represent these same tensions in their fiction.