Webinar: Decolonizing the Curriculum with Aincre Evans | 9 sept 2020

[@emillanz2167]

This was very good - thank you!!

[@michaelfavourites6395]

Very interesting, thank you for sharing. A few thoughts: 1. I appreciate your explanation of why you believe the term “decolonisation” is appropriate, and confrontational, but listening to your presentation it sounds like you are really advocating a broadening of curricula to include other perspectives. You also appear to be advocating greater humility/transparency in the current teaching of courses such as history/politics, suggesting that universities make clear that they represent a certain perspective rather than an objective, universal truth. I would suggest “broadening” not only more accurately represents what you seek to achieve, but is also more likely to gain broad-based support. 2. Considering Point 1 above, it is appropriate for you to clarify that, by “colonisation”, you really are referring to West-European and United States notions of empire-building and colonialism, with a specific focus on the UK and the USA. Societies all over the world have engaged in empire-building, colonising lands beyond one’s original territory, holding one’s own perspective to be universal truth and considering one’s own practices as being the correct ones. Similarly, slavery has been (and continues to be) practiced in many areas of the world, in some cases pre-dating the European colonialism that is the focus of your analysis. Presumably a broader perspective on education would need to include this. 3. Relating to Point 2 above, you use the term “BIPOC” a few times. While I understand that on occasion we may need to refer to people who are not of European origin, we do need to bear in mind that the term BIPOC covers billions of people who in many cases have little in common with each other, and also have their own histories of racism and discrimination as between themselves. For example, anti-Black racism is rampant in some BIPOC communities, and I am not aware of any empirical evidence that those communities are, on the whole, any less racist than Europeans or the United States towards Black people. 4. Finally, I hope you have the opportunity to debate/discuss your ideas with those who disagree with your views. I have attended conferences where highly regarded academics have expressed views entirely contrary to yours, to audiences that were very favourable to those opinions. We would all benefit from an exchange of ideas between highly-educated people of different viewpoints so that we could agree on a path forward.