Decolonization(s) and Education. Daniel Maul

      In other parts of the world, World War II marked a watershed too. In Africa, for instance, it helped to foster a change in colonial policy that in the long run favored decolonization. Hakeem Ibikunle Tijani’s article on ‘Nigerianization’ of the educational system in the British West-African colony provides a rich and detailed account of this shift. Its focus is on the somewhat fluid period between late colonial rule and what historians Anthony Low and John Lonsdale have famously termed the “second colonial occupation” of Africa and the transitional phase leading eventually into independence of the British colony. The efforts for ‘nigerianizing’ technical and specialized staff within the state apparatus show a multi-layered conflict. Spanning the period between 1945 and the early years of independence in the beginning of the 1960s, Tijani reveals first and foremost the agency of local actors. Conflicts surrounding the build-up of new administrative capacities in the field of education needed for the consolidation and progress of the new polities played out on two different, but often intertwined levels: Between colonial and nationalist forces on the one hand and between different regions and ethnic groups within Nigeria on the other.

      The rapid emergence of post-colonial polities after 1960 led to the swift dismantling of the major colonial empires. Yet individual, minor colonies continued to exist even under British and French authority. Ting-Hong Wong’s contribution shows how decolonization in multiple ways also provided a crucial background for the re-definition of colonial educational policies. The British Crown Colony of Hong Kong serves as an example. As a study in the micro-politics of educational institution building during decolonization, Wong’s contribution also opens an otherwise often-ignored trans-colonial perspective. The author’s object of study is the process preceding the founding of a Polytechnic Institution in Hong Kong during the early 1960s. Wong can show how the strategies implied by the main protagonists were informed by personal experiences with the reform of educational institutions gathered in different colonial and decolonizing contexts. In Wong’s contribution, decolonization thus features as an incentive to create structures that would secure a degree of continuity after independence and stand the test of time even after the eventual dissolution of formal colonial rule.

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      The fall of the French and English colonial empires and their tremendous impact in world politics have also diverted attention from the latest processes of decolonization, particularly those of the Spanish and Portuguese last dominions. In her contribution, Sónia Vaz Borges addresses a model case of a liberation struggle accompanied by a whole set of educational strategies: Guinea-Bissau. In her analysis of the characteristics and impact of the Guinean liberation front’s magazine Blufo, a novel militant and educational initiative aimed at ‘youths’, she calls our attention to the question of how the process of mobilization against colonial rule both used and transformed elements of traditional local cultures. Whereas the very name of the magazine referred to local notions of transitioning to adulthood, the idea of an age-related ‘youth’ as a clearly defined period was clearly a rupture in the local environment. By using and actualizing traditional notions about growing-up, independence fighters were transforming some aspects of this cultural resource. Moreover, the involvement of the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire as a reference in many initiatives in Guinea-Bissau opens a perspective in which South-South-cooperation and mutual observation are paramount.

      Lastly, decolonization took place in the broader context of the Cold War and the existence of specific socialist entanglements throughout the world. The last two contributions address this theme from different perspectives. In their comparative analysis of educational transfers within the socialist world in the era of decolonization, Tim Kaiser, Ingrid Miethe and Alexandra Piepiorka present the establishment of a specific type of institution: the worker-peasant complementary education. Following their establishment and dissemination in post-colonial Vietnam and Mozambique, their discussion focuses on the crucial issue of the production of new forms of dependency, now within the socialist world-system, during decolonization. Their study offers surprising results: Applying a meticulously empirical approach, the authors can demonstrate that transfers were mostly locally activated and far from being imposed from the outside. The authors argue that local actors led the process all along, adapted the imported type of institutions to local needs and brought about genuine educational hybrids. By challenging the notion of new dependencies, the authors argue that these cases of educational transfers come close to an idea of ‘true decolonization’.

      Certainly, the socialist experience during decolonization was multi-layered and the colonial, understood as a set of representations constructing the other, also played a role during the process of socialist involvement in decolonization. Unequal relations between metropolitan and peripheral polities within the socialist cosmos resurfaces in Jane Weiß’s contribution on educational cooperation between the German Democratic Republic and Africa. ←16 | 17→Weiß presents the perspectives of a different set of actors, among whom GDR officials feature most prominently. These actors were delegated to provide aid in building new educational systems in Africa under the banner of “socialist solidarity”. Her analysis shows, that there is no easy answer to the question of the influence of these new “civilizers”. The recipients’ colonialist perceptions of educational aid and a genuine interest in the common goal of decolonization of education coexisted.

      In conclusion, the contributions deal with some of the key dilemmas permeating the relationship between decolonization(s) and education. They analyze processes marked both by continuity and change, rupture and resilience. While they highlight decolonization as a project crucially driven by educational elites, they also show the end of empire as an open space and a springboard for the emergence of new voices and new ideas. The articles address discourses and representations as well as institutions and particular organizations. In all that, if there is another important result of the cases presented in this volume, it is that they often defy clear-cut dichotomies: the re-interpretation of roles leading to hybrid forms is the rule rather than the exception. Lastly, many of the analyses highlight transnational entanglements and the role of an ‘outside’ influence, be this the impact of US foreign policy, the institutionalization of socialist cooperation, or international organizations. As a collection of articles, they show how multi-faceted and fruitful the analysis of educational history in the transformative settings of decolonization can be.

      Literature

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