Storying the world: Decolonizing classrooms

Geraldine Balzer, Associate Professor from the College of Education at the University of Saskatchewan, discusses the importance of decolonizing classrooms by telling stories about the world. Colonialism held great promise for the European world – access to land, resources, and wealth; for colonized peoples, it resulted in lost land, lost resources, enslavement, and poverty. The impacts of colonialism have shaped the 21st century through ongoing political conflicts, immigration and migration, and global climate change, forcing the Global North to face the resulting inequities and disrupt colonial structures perpetuating these inequities. One such societal structure, often seen as benign, is schooling. Kanu (2009) describes curriculum as a cultural practice that reinforces the hegemony of the existing political power structures, acting as an agent of the state as schools continue to: