Rethinking Global Education for an Indigenist Anti-Colonial Perspective
Dr. George Sefa Dei
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE),
University of Toronto
1:00 p.m.
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Community Room (1139)
Faculty of Education Building
Refreshments will be provided.
Please RSVP to awatso62@uwo.ca by Mon, Nov 18, 4:00 pm.
Abstract: George Dei’s talk will trouble dominant ways of pursuing of “global education” while pointing to the redemptive qualities and the possibilities of such education using an Indigenist anti-colonial lens A learning objective is to present inclusive global education as a ‘right’, i.e., a right to education beyond borders as a component of ‘global education’. A key question is: how do we frame an inclusive anti-racist future and what is the nature of the work required to collectively arrive at that future? Using case material from a 3-year Social Science Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) study on African Indigenous philosophies, the paper points to both the “small acts” and “major acts” of rethinking education. It is enthused that such new rethinking can help subvert the conventional understandings and approaches to global [citizenship] education thereby also challenging the coloniality of the global (Grosfuguel, 2007). It is enthused that global education must echo values that underpin democratic education and society and challenge the harsh competitive individualist models of learning and success that have been instituted through neoliberal value systems of productivity, consumerism, and efficiency. Such education should also help subvert and re-imagine the internalized colonial hierarchies of conventional schooling by promoting Indigenous teachings that focus specifically on social values and community education. Global education must promote a much- needed multi-centric/polycentric education model that recognizes different types of learners, their knowledges and experiences and challenges the Eurocentric model of humanism.
