Breaking the Silence
Effects of Colonial Education on Identity and Mind
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Using an auto-ethnographic method, through anti-racist and anti-colonial frameworks, this chapter explores the role of colonial education and its effects on the identity and psyche of students. Arslan examines the ways in which colonial education silences students through the Eurocentric curriculum, representation, and other educational practices. She asserts that this silence constructs and shapes students’ sense of racial identity, learning, discomfort, and their relationship with other students in the classroom. Furthermore, Arslan argues that colonial education erases, silences, and constructs one’s difference and identity while teaching students to participate in White supremacy, hold prejudices, and make assumptions about the ‘other’. At the core of this research is whether education encourages and assists students to own and live their identities and differences, or whether education simply works to constitute a different way of exercising power on racialized bodies, resulting in the manufacturing of a certain kind of citizen.