indigenous cultures and educational reform

Angel M.Y. Lin (mylin who-is-at oise.on.ca)
Sun, 29 Oct 1995 23:35:57 -0500 (EST)

Hi fellow xmca-ers,

The last part of Eugene's message gave an overview of the 2
kinds of positions on the tension between indigenous cultures and the
dominant culture: one position aims at gaining access to the
dominant cultural (and linguistic) capital on the part of
indigenous people for socioeconomic advancement; the other
position aims at reforming the existing dominant cultural (and
linguistic) forms of schooling and definitions of valued
knowledge and practices to make the dominant culture more
accommodating to indigenous cultures.

I've been struggling with these issues for some time. It's
difficult to be "high-sounding" when you're face to face with the
cold realities of the world and the society that we've been
thrown into, like it or not...

I've read Susan Philips' short discussion piece in AEQ
(Anthropology and Education Quarterly), Vol. 23, 1992, pp. 73-82:
"Colonial and Postcolonial Circumstances in the Education of
Pacific Peoples", in which she summarized the different
experiences and responses that Pacific indigenous peoples have
had with and have made to the dominant (ex)colonial culture.

It has stimulated me to reflect on the issues again, and alas...
I can't help feeling that many of the academic discourses around
educational reforms are somehow "off the mark" or like beating
around the bush, or "trying to soothe your itchy feet from
outside your boots" (a Chinese idiom). I'm "realistically
pessimistic" or "pessimistically optimistic" :-), i.e., I don't
have any illusions or delusions whatsoever about our society and
our world (in Hong Kong or in anywhere); painfully as they sound
and I know no one likes to hear them or to come face to face with
them, but they are there, like it or not, and any hope of
educational reform perhaps should start with the painful
recognition of these stark realities:

1. From day one we have never lived in a world where there's been
any relative equity among different groups of people,
whether those group boundaries have been constructed on
gender, race, culture, language, socioeconomic means... or
whatever;

2. We cannot romanticize indigenous cultures, just as we cannot
romanticize dominant cultures (e.g., Western, middle class,
Caucasian,... or whatever); in indigenous cultures, just as
in the dominant cultures, there can also be domination and
privileging of certain forms of knowledge and practices to
the advantage of certain groups versus other groups within
that culture (this is certainly true in the case of Chinese
culture... there is an ancient Chinese saying which goes
like this: "the virtue of a woman is in her ignorance";
today, few would say this any more, but that doesn't mean

3. The problems that the subordinated groups are up agains include
not only cultural incompatibility between
home/indigenous community and school, but also include those
problems created by the increasingly powerful "invisible"
economic hand. What does this economy want, what do they
need in the labor market, what kinds of school graduates do
they want to train... how much are they (e.g., government,
those interests who influence the govt....) willing to
invest in inner city or working class schools and children?

These are very real realities. When we look at the
situation of inner city schools in America or in other
places (e.g., in Hong Kong, one of the best-doing economies
and the most capitalist societies in the world), we can no
longer delude ourselves about what's happening around us:
No, the issue is not only cultural incompatibility (though
it is obviously and definitely an important part of the
problem), but also something like underfunding, poor
facilities, lack of resources... no, no, it's by no accident
that they are in such a situation... we see systematic
patterns and structural reasons for why they are where they
are...

There's "nothing new under the sun", no, and we delude ourselves
if we are not ready to come face to face with social inequalities
and how our lifeworld has been gradually colonized by
increasingly global and keenly competitive capitalist
economies... and yet to be still optimistic enough to try our
best to find out how one can do something in one's limited role
and position, however little that something may appear to be.

But we cannot start this if we are complacent with our existing
academic theories or models of what's happening out there... it's
a cold cold world you know out there... and what we are up
against is much more than meets the eyes... (if only we can learn
a lesson from the decline of the Roman Empire!) how we see it and
how we respond to it and how we choose to act upon it define our
own very existence in this world......

Angel

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Angel M.Y. Lin
Doctoral Candidate
Modern Language Centre
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
252 Bloor St. W., Toronto, ON M5S 1V6, Canada
E-Mail: MYLIN who-is-at OISE.ON.CA
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Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When ... we stand face to face in the cyber space? ...
--Adapted from: The Ballad of East and West, Rudyard Kipling
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