A Neocolonial Warp of Outmoded Hierarchies, Curricula and Disciplinary Technologies in Trinidad’s Educational System

I re-appropriate the image of a space-time warp and its notion of disorientation to argue that colonialism created a warp in Trinidad’s educational system. Through an analysis of school violence and the wider network of structural violence in which it is steeped, I focus on three outmoded aspects as evidence of this warp--hierarchies, curricula and disciplinary technologies--by using data (interviews, documents and observations) from a longitudinal case study at a secondary school in Trinidad. Colonialism was about exclusion, alienation, violence, control and order, and this functionalism persists today; I therefore contend that hierarchies, curricula and disciplinary technologies are all enforcers of these tenets of (neo)colonialism in Trinidad’s schools. I conclude with some nascent thoughts on a Systemic Restorative Praxis (SRP) model as a way of de-stabilizing the warp, by stitching together literature/approaches from systems thinking, restorative justice and Freirean notions of praxis. SRP implies that colonialism (and this modern-day warp) has rendered much psychic and material damage, and that any intervention to address structural violence has to be systemic and iterative in scope and process, include healing, be participatory, and foster an ethic of horizontalization in human relations

Fighting a Resurgent Hyper-Positivism in Education is Music to My Ears

In this article, I argue that one of the gifts of the Age of Enlightenment, the ability to measure, to experiment, to predict—turned rancid by hyper-positivism—is re-asserting itself globally in the field of education (including music education). I see a neoliberal, neocolonial connection—in terms of the ideologies that fuel them—between some of the homogenizing, epistemologically/culturally imperialist aspects of globalization and this resurgent hyper-positivism that has been accompanied by a corporatization of education. I posit that critical education, including critical music education, is an essential component of a necessary—if rancorous—dialogue in maintaining a definition of education that is as varied and diverse as those students we wish to educate. In essence, I argue that critical education is one of many tools to help us fight a ‘re-colonization’ by this resurgent hyper-positivism in education

Fearless: Professor Hakim Williams

With his consistently energetic and enthusiastic personality, his progressive teaching methods using discussion and debate in the classroom, and his desire for his students to develop more comprehensive understandings of the problems facing education in a global context, Dr. Hakim Williams fearlessly uses his passion for change and justice in education to enlighten his students, sharpen their critical thinking skills, and change their outlooks on the future. [excerpt

Lingering Colonialities as Blockades to Peace Education: School Violence in Trinidad

Book Summary: Bringing together the voices of scholars and practitioners on challenges and possibilities of implementing peace education in diverse global sites, this book addresses key questions for students seeking to deepen their understanding of the field. The book not only highlights ground-breaking and rich qualitative studies from around the globe, but also analyses the limits and possibilities of peace education in diverse contexts of conflict and post-conflict societies. Contributing authors address how educators and learners can make meaning of international peace education efforts, how various forms of peace and violence interact in and around schools, and how the field of peace education has evolved and grown over the past four decades. Chapter Summary: By using data on school violence from field research in Trinidad and Tobago (TT), I argue that in the knowledge production of \u27school violence,\u27 \u27school\u27 is subtracted as a descriptive [term], and in its place is hoisted the category of \u27youth,\u27 inscribed as the \u27Other,\u27 the predominant signifier of violence. In so doing, the predominating discourse about what constitutes school violence itself, and its drivers/\u27causes,\u27 takes on a limiting and individualizing nature. As a result, the principal interventions that emanate from such a discourse are correspondingly narrow and therefore fail to reveal the structural violence in which youth violence in school is embedded. I posit this discursive violence as a lingering coloniality, and thus, as a blockade to the implementation of sustainable peace education in TT\u27s schools. [excerpt

Teachers’ Nascent Praxes of Care: Potentially Decolonizing Approaches to School Violence in Trinidad

Zero tolerance, punitive and more negative peace-oriented approaches dominate school violence interventions, despite research indicating that comprehensive approaches are more sustainable. In this article, I use data from a longitudinal case study at a Trinidadian secondary school to focus on the role of teachers and their impact on school violence; I show that institutional constraints are not fully deterministic, as teachers sometimes deploy their agency to efficacious ends. In combining Noddings’ postulations on care and Freire’s notions of praxis as a symbiosis of reflection and action, I explicate the nascent praxes of care of six teachers at this school, as they strive for more positive peace-oriented approaches to school violence. I characterize these praxes as nascent because they are not fully interrogative of the structural violence of the entire system. However, I do argue that these nascent praxes possess decolonizing and transgressive potentiality in the face of a logic of coloniality that reinforces hierarchy, exclusion, and marginalization in the Trinidadian educational system. I conclude by contending that these nascent praxes must be scaled-up to more mature, radical praxes, including the cultivation of a systemic praxis of care; in other words, a deeper and broader postcolonial peace education

Hakim Mohandas Amani Williams, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies

In this new Next Page column, Hakim Mohandas Amani Williams, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies, shares with us highlights from a recent trip to Trinidad he took with students, where he gets his daily dose of news, and which book gives him fire after each reading

Earth: Un-human me

He took a rib from your side and made others. So you considered Others your children, forever. He told you to go forth and produce and multiply so you made capitalism. He told you to go forth and conquer and pillage and mark your name and plant your flag where-ever you wanted. So now the moon is yours. Jupiter, beware! [excerpt

Critically Assessing Forms of Resistance in Music Education

In their classrooms, music educators draw upon critical pedagogy (as described by Freire, Giroux, and hooks) for the express purpose of cultivating a climate for conscientização. Conscientização, according to Paulo Freire (2006), “refers to learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality” (p. 35). This consciousness raising is a journey teachers pursue with students, together interrogating injustices in communities and the world in order to transform the conditions that inform them. Learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions often leads to multiple forms of resistance in and out of music classrooms. This chapter explores the following question: What do critical forms of assessment look like in music classrooms that use critical pedagogy and embrace resistance to foster conscientization

Book Review: Encyclopedia of Peace Education

Peace education itself is a contested term; its conceptions, and thus its manifestations, are quite varied. This is why this succinct volume proves to be so timely; it aims to provide greater nuance to debates around peace education (p. 2). Despite its daunting title, this volume is not presented as an authoritative stranglehold, but rather, as a way of historicizing the field of peace education, highlighting major conceptual threads and identifying the exciting prospects for the future of the field. [excerpt