Decolonization of the Classroom and its Impact on Student’s Experience

Name
Prof
Course
Date
Decolonization of the Classroom and its Impact on Student’s Experience
In recent years, experts, scholars, and researchers in the education sector are increasingly calling for the decolonization of education. Decolonization is the continuous action of confronting and challenging colonizing practices that influenced education in the past and are still present today. In TRC, reports have indicated that in the past, residential schools proliferated as means to colonize the mind, heart, and soul. For instance, indigenous students have been part of forced assimilation. In this assimilation, their heritage and knowledge have been suppressed, rejected, and ignored within the education system. Thus, decolonization is vital because it addresses this injustice.
Today, colonialism is more subtle and is often perpetuated through power relations, institutional structure, and curriculum. In this aspect, the classroom becomes an important political space targeting young minds that are not yet polluted with racial stereotypes and prejudices. For such reasons, the history of people previously excluded from the curriculum should be taught or learned in school as part of decolonization. Such action will ultimately impact the experience of students in school.
The first impact will be some form of confusion based on the currently-held stereotypes and prejudices. In one way or another, children have racial beliefs, perceptions, and stereotypes, whether conscious or subconscious, which materialize with age and are shaped by media, peers, and the environment in which they grow. Thus, when they begin to experience knowledge that challenges these beliefs, they may experience confusion. But confusion is not the ultimate experience, and with time, it wanes as new knowledge is ...