In so many languages, the nursery words for mother and father are mama or dada or dada or baba or something similar; there is no magic inner connection between the idea of parenthood and words of this form: these just happen to be the first articulated sounds that the child makes. … Such words may also have been the first utterances of primitive man. … The languages of primitive peoples, and the history of languages in literate times, may throw some light on the origin of language by suggesting what elements in it are the most archaic (Barber, 1964: 25).
The question of literacy and education has played a central role in the history of colonialism and still plays it today in the postcolonial constellation. Colonialism used the reference to the lack of education and the idea of childhood as a primitive stage of development in order ‘to confirm a binarism between colonizer and colonized; a relationship which induced compliance to the cultural dominance of Europe. Colonizer and colonized were separated by literacy and education’ (Ashcroft, 2001: 52). This separation was confirmed by geographic distances, sometimes also by the distinction of nationalities. The question now arises whether these so far clearly visible antitheses exist in the postcolonial present, which is characterized by extensive globalization.
On the dialectic of education and power
In the debate about colonial and postcolonial power relations, it is justified to refer to educational processes. One of the most important insights of postcolonial theory is to understand the relations between the colonizers and the colonized as dialectical (Said, 1978; Bhabha, 1994). While the colonizers themselves are influenced by the colonial relationship, the colonized people can be seen not only as uninvolved and innocent spectators. The colonized are not ‘“cultural dupes”, incapable of interpreting, accommodating, and resisting dominant discourses’ (Rizvi, 2007: 261). The same is true of current global relations, which necessarily are accompanied by negotiations on cultural messages, even when they take place in socio-geographic areas characterized by asymmetric power relations. The relationships between the global and local are always complex and ambiguous, and require an accurate ethnographical case-specific analysis.
Ashcroft believes that today ‘the gap between colonizing parent and colonized child has been masked by globalization and the indiscriminate, transnational character of neo-colonialism’ (Ashcroft 2001: 53). The neo-colonial subject can no longer be fixed by geographical distance and lack of literacy and education. Instead of the colonial subject being placed geographically, according to Ashcroft, the ‘subject of global capitalism’ (Ashcroft 2001: 53) appears as fluid. To me, this assessment seems to be overstated and inaccurate. The impression aroused by Ashcroft – the separation of colonizers and colonized would be invalidated by globalization, or would be at least no longer visible and perceptible – affects only one of its aspects, namely the unlimited movement of goods and capital. For the people themselves geographic location and politically defined national boundaries remain powerful barriers to one’s own physical space of movement; moreover, the barriers become even higher. Even the seeming limitlessness of new communication media remains trapped in private ownership, which make it possible to cut off communications and make someone disappear from the ‘net’ or remain in it against their own will.
Nevertheless, Ashcroft’s consideration that the colonial conquest and domination, legitimized by the childhood metaphor, implies ambivalences and contradictions. The literacy introduced to uphold the up and down is no longer limited to reading and writing, but includes versatile forms of communication that are no longer bound to scriptures. Among the researchers dealing with literacy, especially in so-called development programmes, not only is the limitation of the view on the ability to read and write criticized, but there is also awareness that each form of communication must be considered in the context of the power relations contained therein. They point out that communication and education processes can never be understood merely as technical processes but always include a certain kind of knowledge while excluding other kinds of knowledge. According to Street (2001: 7), ‘in developing contexts the issue of literacy is often represented as simply a technical one: that people need to be taught how to decode letters and they can do what they like with their newly acquired literacy after that’. This approach is criticized by Street, who argues that it ignores or conceals the fact that literacy and education can never be neutral or universal. In practice, it goes beyond imposing and over-contributing Western concepts of education to other cultures. Instead, he favours a model that offers a more culture-sensible view of educational practice and recognizes that it is different depending on the context. The model is characterized by the fact that it considers educational processes as a ‘social practice’, which is
… always embedded in socially constructed epistemological principles. It is about knowledge: the ways in which people address reading and writing are themselves rooted in conceptions of knowledge, identity, being. Literacy in this sense is always contested, both in meaning and its practices, hence particular versions of it are always ‘ideological’, they are always rooted in a particular world-view and a desire for that view of literacy to dominate and to marginalize others. (Street, 2001: 7–8)
Street’s model claims not only cultural differences, but also ‘the power dimension of these reading and writing processes’ (Street, 2001: 9). When the effect is examined, it should be noted that this is always ‘part of a power relationship’ (Street, 2001: 9).
Another author (Rogers, 2001) notes that literacy in the context of the development of societies can be understood in two ways. On the one hand, education is regarded as a causal condition or a key element for any kind of development (‘literacy-leads-to-development equation’), which is typical of educational programmes of the World Bank. On the other hand, education can be seen as a way to promote social transformation or social change, for example in the sense of liberation, for which the so-called Educación Popular may serve as an example (see Freire, [1968]2000). In this respect, dominant and non-dominant educational processes should be distinguished. In the interrelations between the various educational contexts, the question arises which is the upper hand, an education that humiliates human beings to ‘human capital’ and alienates them from their lives, or a formation aimed at the elimination of inequality and oppression which provides tools to people to resist any form of degradation. This also raises questions about how education is institutionalized and who ultimately determines it.
The same is true for the image of the child, which in the colonial relationship was used to legitimize paternalism and the denial of independence. Ashcroft sees the ‘allegory of the child’ as a ‘counter-discourse’ of the age because the child is so strongly ‘constructed as the ambivalent trope of the colonized’ (Ashcroft, 2001: 53): ‘The child, invented by imperialism to represent the colonized subject amenable to education and improvement, becomes the allegorical subject of a different trajectory, a site of difference and anti-colonial possibility’ (Ashcroft, 2001: 53).
As tempting and promising as this sounds, it must be asked whether a metaphorical view of the child is overstrained. Since being a child always means having a future, the image of the child can become a