INTRODUCTION
The experience of colonial education that has aroused the current
concerns about the use of computers in education. These concerns are heightened by a view that the west is a central location of knowledge and high culture. In the cultural and civilization arena, computers carry a code which sees the west as entrusted by destiny with the mission of casting the rest of the world in its mold. The ideas that generated computer technology constitute a certain cosmology: an implicit way of viewing the world in general and society in particular. This paper will not go into a detailed discussion of cosmology since it is beyond its scope, but a brief overview will be useful.Five western cosmological points that are significant to the discussion on computers as a vehicle of western culture are, the tendency to see geographical space in center periphery terms with the west at the center of the tendency to see time as linked with progress, increasing in a linear and preferably in an exponential manner. The tendency to think of reality in terms of units abstracted from the whole of which they are parts and relate them to each other causally and mechanically so that changes in one will imply changes in the other. The tendency to see vertical and individualistic relations between human beings as the normal and the natural and the tendency to see man as the master of nature with unlimited rights (White, 1974). According to this cosmology, then computers are taken as normal and natural, and computers as used in education are therefore not neutral. They can be viewed as meant to spread western culture and way of life to areas where they are used. Computers can also be seen as presenting western culture as more advanced than other cultures in an evolutionary sense. Thus the computer can personify a form of cultural invasion: an invasion possibly more insidious than colonialism and neo-colonialism because such an invasion is not always accompanied by the physical presence of western personnel. Computer use in education is highly centralized in the United States of America and Europe due to its widespread use coupled with early pedagogical experiences in computer mediated communications. Western based educators are thus well positioned in the mainstream of using computers in education. These advantages have led to the centralization of policies regarding organization, production, distribution, accreditation and evaluation of computer (i.e. hardware, software and programming etc.) in the western world. This process has led to an inequity dividing the educational sites between originator and receiver, producer and consumer, voiced and silenced. Definitions of contents, costs and decisions as to who participates in matters of concern in distance education are also all centralized in the west. The idea that the west is a central location of knowledge and high culture has prevented most educators in Third World countries from exploring policies of collaboration and partnership with those in the west in the production and distribution of education materials. Culture is the lifeblood of a vibrant society, expressed in the many ways we tell our stories, celebrate, remember the past, entertain ourselves, and imagine the future. Our creative expression helps define who we are, and helps us see the world through the eyes of others. Technology's implementation impacts societal values by altering expectations and realities. People have lost faith as a result of the overemphasis on technology. Unemployment, cultural gap, and changes in social institutions can all be blamed on technology. The cultural codes of a nation helps to understand the behavioral responses characteristic of that nation's citizens. The key codes in understanding specific behaviors differentiate between religion, gender, relationships, money, food, health, and cultures.
BACKGROUND
While the use of computers has glamorized education, it has also raised new concerns and brought to the forefront old fears about the impact such technologies might have.
Nowhere is this a case for greater concern than in the Third World nations of the world
where the new communications media are being embraced for the purpose of enhancing education. These fears relate to the impact computers might have on local cultures. The fears are not merely of a paranoid people, they have roots in the colonial history and experience of most of the people in the Third World countries. During the colonial period, the curriculum used in schools represented the dominant ideologies and cultures of the ruler, namely, the colonialist. This article will examine the impact computers currently being used in education might have on cultures in the Third World countries. The history of formal education in most Third World countries reflects a prolonged period of domination by the cultures and ideologies of foreign colonial rulers. Culture is for the purpose of this discussion taken to mean the way of life of a discrete group of people, including its body of accumulated knowledge and understandings, skills, beliefs and values. Culture is seen as central to the understanding of human relationships, and
acknowledges the fact that members of different cultural groups have unique systems of perceiving and organizing the world around them. This transmission is seen as a necessary and unproblematic functional requirement of the larger society. It is a regenerative process, which is characteristic of a social order marked by consensus and social harmony. Thus, according to this definition of cultural
reproduction, curriculum is one way in which society reproduces itself. Lawton (1975) pointed out that curriculum reflects the best of culture in terms of shared knowledge, skills, beliefs and values.
Curriculum is therefore essential because it makes certain assumptions not only about
people, but also about the nature of knowledge, the nature of learning and the way people behave. Since curriculum is a selection, it follows that whatever is selected would depend largely upon the experiences and the ideologies of those involved in the selection. It is also important to note that in the selection process, some values are also sometimes left out i.e., not transmitted. A selection often reflects and is influenced by the dominant world view/ideology of a particular time and place. Thus curriculum selection normally results in the imposition of the dominant group’s interests on the institutions and practices of the dominated societies (Apple, 1979). What is taught in schools therefore represents societal selection, i.e. values, beliefs and knowledge that have been entrusted to teachers for transmission to the young as mentioned above. Individuals and groups in society accordingly have a stake in the school experience. They operate formally and informally to have schools become fitting
means to ends which they value. The relationship between schools and their
constituencies hence occurs in a complex cultural context, wherein individuals and
groups are “agents” of a particular orientation that schools reflect.For instance, according to Said (1993), by 1914, Europe held about 85 percent of the world as colonies, protectorates, dependencies, dominions, and commonwealths. Britain was one of the European imperia powers. British traditions, identities, values and
knowledge were “naturalized” through the different spheres of cultures where they
ruled. British literature also helped to define these identities in a convenient way to the
British imperial interests. Schooling in many nations then under British rule aimed at training the indigenous populations to serve as low-level clerks and public servants in order to enhance the effectiveness of the colonial administration. Schools therefore suited the needs of the colonialist rather than that of the conquered. In addition, the few who went through this type of school system were not trained to be proud members of a society to which they belonged but to submit to all that was British and European (Thaman, 1993). Colonial schooling was thus “education for subordination, exploitation, the creation of mental confusion and alienation” (Okoth, 1993). The oppressor in this case the colonialist is centralized and the qualities it represents are magnified and naturalized. Their emotional effects are generally opposed to those identified as outside the imaginary boundary: the oppressed or subjects of the colonies. These subjects are termed the “other” and put into a perpetual state of marginalization. Their voices are omitted or silenced from the mainstream culture and they are left dehumanized and victimized (Mouffe, 1993).
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