What does postcolonial education require?

In her article Veerlee Dieltiens presents the main contradictions of liberal education
in local African context. She argues that liberal education advocating for human
rights does not take into account the local circumstances of African community
spirit, the Ubuntu, among other things. Those contradictions often lead to a
dichotomy in public opinion, as to whether applying western education can
actually serve to the benefit of the people of ex-colonies or it serves as a causation
for the local elites to continue their rule and substitute the colonizing empires.
As Rizvi () argues, postcolonialism makes visible the ways the Western world was,
and still is in most cases, able to rule over 80 per cent of the globe and shaped its
discourse, politically, culturally and economically. It shows how discourse and
power are inextricably linked. (p.250) Postcolonial literature has exposed the way
global inequalities have perpetuated through the distribution of resources and
culture and in doing so suggests ways of resisting colonization towards social
justice both locally and globally.
Nevertheless postcolonial education does not take into account the changes in the
global arena leading to a misconception of an East vs West struggle.
Postcolonialisms simplistic view of the world as a bipolar of good and evil, colonial
and anti-colonial, rather than investigating the complex threads of power
distribution, has led to a total rejection of western values and ideals and a rise in
nationalism. The local elites have used postcolonial literature to divert attention
from their oppressive ruling to the colonial forces which are considered the evil in
the world and values like democracy and justice are discarded. In most cases
colonial forces were replaced by an equally oppressive local elite that used national
consciousness of the oppressed to achieve dominance.
Postcolonialism requires to take a new look to the world. The old colonizing empires
of the west have found new ways in imposing their beliefs and culture. Armed forces
have been replaced by supranational organisation that exercise power in the form of
financial aid and advisors. Postcolonial education should recognize the power
distribution and identify the complex thread of interests in the economical
circumstances of neoliberalism and in a globalised context. Armunardi identifies the
term educational neocolonialism as the particular knowledge that drives educational
policies towards neoliberal capitalism promoted by supranational organisations like
the OECD and the World Bank.