Ideology and Politics in English-Language Education in Trinidad and Tobago: The Colonial Experience and a Postcolonial Critique

Comparative Education Review

Volumn 47, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 287-320+421

  London, Norrel A ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0346273646     PISSN: 00104086     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/378249     Document Type: Review

References (152)

1. Shirley Gordon, A Century of West Indian Education (London: Longmans, 1963).
2. I b i d.
3. M. Kazim Bacchus, Utilization, Misuse and Development of Human Resources in the Early West Indian Colonies (Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1990).
4. Ibid. p. 51.
5. Norrel A. London, "Language for the Global Economy: Some Curriculum Fundamentals and Pedagogical Practices in the Colonial Educational Enterprise," Educational Studies 27, no. 4 (2001): 338-423.
6. Peter Roberts, From Oral to Literate Culture: Colonial Experience in the English West Indies (Mona, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 1997).
7. In several ex-colonies, especially those in Africa and Asia, "the language question" is today a big and sensitive issue. The debate is highly politicized, and state managers have had to confront the dilemma of which language to promote among many, in attempts to grant legitimacy to claims from diverse language communities within national borders. See, e.g., B. Brock-Utne, "The Language Question in Namibian Schools," International Review of Education 43, no. 2-3 (1997): 241-60.
8. The record explains that Spain surrendered the island of Trinidad to Britain in 1797 and that in 1802 the island (Trinidad) was ceded to Britain by the Treaty of Amiens. In the same year (1802), the island of Tobago was ceded to Britain, this time by the Treaty of Paris and having passed through the hands of several European nations several times. The two, Trinidad and Tobago, were thrown together in political union in 1889 to become the Crown Colony of Trinidad and Tobago under British rule. The colony, however, acceded to political independence in 1962 and in 1976 became the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago within the Commonwealth of Nations. See Norrel A. London, "Curriculum and Pedagogy in the Development of Colonial Imagination: A Subversive Agenda," Canadian and International Education 30, no. 1 (2001): 45-76.
9. E. W. Evans, ed., Principles and Methods of Colonial Administration (London: Butterworths Scientific, 1950).
10. See, e.g., Thomas Ricento, ed., Ideology, Politics and Language Policies (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2000); A. Suresh Canagarajah, Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching (London: Oxford University Press, 1999); John Willinsky, Learning to Divide the World: Education at Empire's End (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998); Robert Phillipson, Linguistic Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Alastair Pennycook, English and the Discourses of Colonialism (London: Routledge, 1998), and The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language (London: Longman, 1994).
11. See, e.g., Thomas Ricento, ed., Ideology, Politics and Language Policies (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2000); A. Suresh Canagarajah, Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching (London: Oxford University Press, 1999); John Willinsky, Learning to Divide the World: Education at Empire's End (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998); Robert Phillipson, Linguistic Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Alastair Pennycook, English and the Discourses of Colonialism (London: Routledge, 1998), and The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language (London: Longman, 1994).
12. See, e.g., Thomas Ricento, ed., Ideology, Politics and Language Policies (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2000); A. Suresh Canagarajah, Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching (London: Oxford University Press, 1999); John Willinsky, Learning to Divide the World: Education at Empire's End (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998); Robert Phillipson, Linguistic Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Alastair Pennycook, English and the Discourses of Colonialism (London: Routledge, 1998), and The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language (London: Longman, 1994).
13. See, e.g., Thomas Ricento, ed., Ideology, Politics and Language Policies (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2000); A. Suresh Canagarajah, Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching (London: Oxford University Press, 1999); John Willinsky, Learning to Divide the World: Education at Empire's End (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998); Robert Phillipson, Linguistic Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Alastair Pennycook, English and the Discourses of Colonialism (London: Routledge, 1998), and The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language (London: Longman, 1994).
14. See, e.g., Thomas Ricento, ed., Ideology, Politics and Language Policies (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2000); A. Suresh Canagarajah, Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching (London: Oxford University Press, 1999); John Willinsky, Learning to Divide the World: Education at Empire's End (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998); Robert Phillipson, Linguistic Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Alastair Pennycook, English and the Discourses of Colonialism (London: Routledge, 1998), and The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language (London: Longman, 1994).
15. See, e.g., Thomas Ricento, ed., Ideology, Politics and Language Policies (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2000); A. Suresh Canagarajah, Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching (London: Oxford University Press, 1999); John Willinsky, Learning to Divide the World: Education at Empire's End (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998); Robert Phillipson, Linguistic Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Alastair Pennycook, English and the Discourses of Colonialism (London: Routledge, 1998), and The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language (London: Longman, 1994).
16. Pennycook, English and the Discourses of Colonialism, p. 20.
17. I b i d.
18. Margaret D. Le Compte and Judith Preissle, Ethnography and Qualitative Design in Educational Research (New York: Academic Press, 1993).
19. Walter R. Borg and Meredith D. Gall, Educational Research: An Introduction, 5th ed. (New York: Longman, 1989).
20. Norrel A. London, "Quality Control in a Colonial School Setting: How It Worked and for What Purpose," in Educational Dilemmas: Debate and Diversity, vol. 4, Quality in Education, ed. Keith Watson, Celia Modgil, and Sohan Modgil (London: Cassell, 1997), pp. 88-97.
21. Sharan B. Merriam, Case Study Research in Education (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1988).
22. S. R. P. Clarke, "Researching Enterprise Bargaining: A Qualitative Approach," Education Research and Perspectives 30, no. 1 (2000): 1-18.
23. Stuart Hall, "When Was the Post-Colonial? Thinking at the Limit," in The Post-Colonial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons, ed. Iain Chamber and Lidia Curtis (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 242-60.
24. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (New York: Zed Books, 1999), p. 23.
25. Leela Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), p. 5.
26. Dirlik Arif, "The Postcolonial Aura," Critical Inquiry 20 (Winter 1994): 328-56.
27. Pennycook, English and the Discourses of Colonialism (n. 10 above), p. 39.
28. Bill Ashcroft, Garath Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 117.
29. Gayan Prakash, ed., After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995).
30. Georges Ballandier, Sociologie Actuelle de l'Afrique Noire (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963), p. 28.
31. David Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing and Imperial Administration (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1994).
32. Ibid., p. 6.
33. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 3.
34. Syed Hussein Alatas, The Myth of the Lazy Native: A Study of the Image of the Malays, Filipinos and Javanese from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century and Its Function in the Ideology of Colonial Capitalism (London: Frank Cass, 1977), p. 22.
35. Gandhi (n. 20 above), p. 15.
36. I b i d.
37. Ibid., p. 15.
38. Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983).
39. Gandhi, p. 15.
40. I b i d.
41. Albert Memmi, Dominated Man: Notes towards a Portrait (London: Orion, 1968), p. 45.
42. Anthony Giddens, The Nation State and Violence (Cambridge: Polity, 1985) ; Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1979); Jurgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon, 1973).
43. Anthony Giddens, The Nation State and Violence (Cambridge: Polity, 1985) ; Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1979); Jurgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon, 1973).
44. Anthony Giddens, The Nation State and Violence (Cambridge: Polity, 1985) ; Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1979); Jurgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon, 1973).
45. W. Saunders, "Discourse in Education," in Foucault and Education: Disciplines and Knowledge, ed. Stephen J. Ball (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 26.
46. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books, 1970), p. 188.
47. Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin (n. 23 above).
48. Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialsism (London: Routledge, 1998).
49. Ibid., p. 54.
50. James W. Tollefson, Planning Language, Planning Inequality: Language Policy in the Community (London: Longman, 1991), p. 9.
51. I b i d.
52. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977 (Hartfordshire, U.K.: Harvester, 1980), p. 98.
53. Quoted in Clive Y. Thomas, "Walter Rodney and the Caribbean Revolution," in Walter Rodney: Revolutionary and Scholar: A Tribute, ed. Edward A. Alpers and Pierre-Michel Fontaine (Los Angeles: Center for Afro-American Studies and African Studies Center, University of California, Los Angeles, 1982), pp. 119-32.
54. Foucault, Power/Knowledge.
55. Gandhi (n. 20 above).
56. Foucault, Power/Knowledge, p. 98.
57. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. Q. Hoare and G. N. Smith (London: Lawrence Wishart, 1971).
58. Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 110.
59. Raymond Williams, "Hegemony and the Selective Tradition," in Language, Authority and Criticism: Readings on the School Textbook, ed. Suzanne de Castell, Allan Luke, and Carmen Luke (London: Falmer, 1989), pp. 57-72, quote on p. 57.
60. I b i d.
61. Ibid., p. 58.
62. Tollefson (n. 43 above), p. 10
63. Loomba (n. 41 above).
64. Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy (London: New Left Books, 1971).
65. Robert Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London: Routledge, 1959).
66. Homi Bhabha, "Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority under a Tree Outside Delhi," Critical Inquiry 12, no. 1 (1985): 156-69, quote on 156.
67. Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (London: Verso, 1993).
68. Hall, "When Was the Post-Colonial" (n. 18 above); Loomba.
69. Bhabha.
70. Vidiadhar S. Naipaul, The Mimic Men, Russell Edition (London: André Deutsch, 1967).
71. Benedict Anderson, Imaginary Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).
72. Young, p. 23.
73. Bhabha, p. 148.
74. Frances Henry, Carol Tator, Winston Mattis, and Tim Rees, The Colour of Democracy: Racism in Canadian Society (Toronto: Harcourt Brace, 1995), p. 237.
75. Stuart Hall, "The Question of Cultural Identity," in Modernity and Its Futures, ed. Stuart Hall, D. Held, and T. McGraw (Cambridge: Polity), pp. 268-88, quote on p. 275.
76. Paul Gilroy, "The End of Anti-Racism," New Community 17, no. 1 (1990): 71-83.
77. Spurr (n. 26 above).
78. Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 64.
79. Foucault, The Order of Things (n. 39 above), p. 188.
80. I b i d.
81. I b i d.
82. Smith (n. 19 above), p. 68.
83. Loomba (n. 41 above), p. 35.
84. Gwyneth T. Roberts, The Language of the Blue Books: The Perfect Instrument of Empire (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1998).
85. Edmund King, Comparative Studies and Educational Decision (London: Methuen Educational, 1968).
86. Joel Spring, Education and the Rise of the Global Economy (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. 1998).
87. Thomas R. Trautmann, Aryans and British India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. 24.
88. Gwyneth T. Roberts.
89. Quoted in Phillipson (n. 10 above), p. 136.
90. Gwyneth T. Roberts, p. 54.
91. Trautmann, p. 89.
92. Gwyneth T. Roberts, p. 89.
93. I b i d.
94. Tony Crowley, Language in History (London: Routledge, 1996); Victor Kiernan, "Languages and Conquerers," in Language, Self and Society, ed. Peter Burke and Roy Porter(London: Polity, 1991), pp. 43-68.
95. Tony Crowley, Language in History (London: Routledge, 1996); Victor Kiernan, "Languages and Conquerers," in Language, Self and Society, ed. Peter Burke and Roy Porter(London: Polity, 1991), pp. 43-68.
96. Trinidad and Tobago Department of Education, Annual Report (Port of Spain: Government Printer, 1942), p. 124.
97. Bacchus (n. 3 above)
98. Trinidad and Tobago Department of Education (Port of Spain), log books for selected schools, incorporating data for 1938, 1948, and 1953.
99. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976).
100. Gramsci (n. 50 above)
101. Gwyneth T. Roberts (n. 77 above), p. 59.
102. Foucault, The Order of Things (n. 39 above), p. 188.
103. Saunders (n. 38 above), p. 2.
104. Foucault, Discipline and Punish (n. 37 above).
105. Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (London: Souvenir, 1974).
106. Quoted in Trautmann (n. 80 above), p. 1.
107. Gauri Viswanathan, "The Beginnings of English Literary Study in British India," Oxford Literary Review 9, nos. 1 and 2 (1987): 17-31, quote on 17.
108. Quoted in Gwyneth T. Roberts, p. 24.
109. Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of Education, Primary School Syllabus (Port of Spain: Government Printer, 1958).
110. Gandhi (n. 20 above).
111. Gwyneth T. Roberts (n. 77 above).
112. London, "Language for the Global Economy" (n. 5 above).
113. Quoted in Peter Childs, "Introduction," in Postcolonial Theory and English Literature: A Reader, ed. Peter Childs (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), p. 38.
114. Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin (n. 23 above), p. 7.
115. Foucault, Discipline and Punish (n. 37 above).
116. Canagarajah (n. 10 above).
117. Williams, "Hegemony and the Selective Tradition" (n. 52 above), p. 57.
118. Trautmann (n. 80 above), p. 42.
119. Gandhi, p. 38.
120. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Decolonizing the Mind (London: James Currey, 1981).
121. London, "Quality Control in a Colonial School Setting" (n. 15 above).
122. Gramsci (n. 50 above).
123. Norrel A. London, "Curriculum Convergence: An Ethno-Historical Investigation into Schooling in Trinidad and Tobago," Comparative Education 38, no. 1 (2002): 53-72.
124. Williams, "Hegemony and the Selective Tradition," p. 56.
125. Norman Fairclough, Language and Power (London: Longman, 1989).
126. Gordon (n. 1 above).
127. Young (n. 58 above), p. 3.
128. Loomba (n. 41 above).
129. Gandhi (n. 20 above), p. 30.
130. Bhabha (n. 59 above).
131. Young.
132. Anderson (n. 64 above), p. 13.
133. Quoted in Spring (n. 79 above), p. 16 (emphasis added).
134. Naipaul (n. 63 above).
135. R. Burchfield, The English Language (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985); and London, "Curriculum and Pedagogy in the Development of Colonial Imagination" (n. 8 above).
136. R. Burchfield, The English Language (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985); and London, "Curriculum and Pedagogy in the Development of Colonial Imagination" (n. 8 above).
137. Simon During, "Postmodernism or Postcolonialism Today," in Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin (n. 23 above), pp. 125-49.
138. Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (n. 97 above).
139. Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin.
140. Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized.
141. Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin.
142. Quoted in Gandhi (n. 20 above), p. 84.
143. I b i d.
144. Ibid, p. 16.
145. Smith (n. 19 above).
146. Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education: Society and Culture (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1977).
147. Derrida (n. 91 above)
148. David Johnson, Shakespeare and South Africa (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996).
149. Pennycook, English and the Discourses of Colonialism (n. 10 above), p. 39.
150. Trinidad and Tobago Department of Education, log books (n. 90 above).
151. Elementary schools during the colonial period considered in this article had an identifiable administrative structure: an infant department (Stages I-III), a primary division (Standards I-V), and a postprimary division (Standards VI and VII). In cases where enrolment figures were large enough, the primary and postprimary divisions were sometimes conceptualized as a single entity for administrative and pedagogical purposes, subdivided into "juniors" (Standards I-III) and "seniors" (Standards IV-VII). Students began schooling at age 5 and older, and the norm for progression through the system was one stage or standard per year. Thus by age 15 students were expected to complete the elementary cycle. Promotion was not automatic, however. It was earned on the basis of academic performance, and both repeating and demotion were common practices in cases where proficiency was not demonstrated.
152. Gramsci (n. 50 above).