Anyone who has been involved in facilitating the process of teaching-learning has most certainly attempted ways of distancing herself from “the banking concept of education.” The exercise of the practice reveals that something is wrong in a system of education that reproduces the structures of power and perpetuates colonialism, oppression, and above all, the internalization of those processes. Ngugui wa Thiong’o tackles this internalization: the system of domination has triumphed “when the dominated start singing its virtues.” (445). The cultural facet of colonialism begins when one language becomes the language and subsequently enables a worldview that fashions itself as universal.
Aimé Césaire states “that for civilizations, exchange is oxygen” (173); however, if colonizers had been impelled by this progressive perspective they would not have subjugated non-European civilizations (which were in many ways communal, democratic and anti-capitalist) and capitalism would have not thrived. As educators, how do we start deconstructing the Eurocentric edifice and the idea that colonization has brought civilization, as Césaire puts it? Paulo Freire’s response is the concept of dialogics. Education as a practice of freedom entails breaking the hierarchies created by oppression and overcoming the fear of freedom among the oppressed by creating a conversation in which all cultural forms are welcome. Building on this, Augusto Boal’s theater challenges the Eurocentric concept of literacy, creating a space for opening other forms of communication to represent, discuss and change systems of oppression.
Education, theater, and literature produced in subjugated languages are inherently political. They raise awareness of the structures of power and its internalization, they free both the oppressed and the oppressors, and they become rehearsals of revolutionary and decolonial practices.
Césaire, Aimé. "From Discourse on Colonialism" Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. eds. Patrick Williams, and Laura Chrisman. 172-180. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.