Reclaiming Tradition: Implications of a Knowledge Indigenization Perspective for Asian Education

Abstract

While there is a considerable body of research and disputation in the history of science, and the unresolved questions therein, there is little of a similar nature in the education sciences. In some ways, the state of play in the education sciences perhaps represents that in the history of science several decades ago. Just as some scholars are convinced that the rise of science in the West owes little to Eastern science, there is, for instance, among educationists of a broad stripe and in institutions such as the World Bank, a belief—even conviction—that Western models of education, more specifically schooling, are exactly what is needed for postcolonial societies wanting to modernize. Education libraries are full of books on the processes, history, and philosophy of education that make few, if any, references to non-Western traditions. Other examples are the privileging of the use of metropolitan and colonial languages in education; the strong desire to study abroad and earn recognition by acquiring foreign qualifications; and the often uncritical importation of Western, largely US education, trends and initiatives in education policy and practice. It is not difficult, for instance, to find enthusiasm for such schemes as vouchers and public-private partnerships in school management and governance in the Gulf states in the Middle East. More recently, there has been much excitement among policy elites in developing countries about evidence-based policy and pedagogic practices, unaccompanied by any understanding of the social and political contexts in the United States, from which these notions largely originated.