Abstract
Educational competition has always been the puzzle issue of educational researches. In this article, I analyze several aspects of educational competition within the perspective of post-colonialism discourse. In the political aspect, Taiwanese education is linked with political power, to present the post-colonial spirit by continuing dynastic change. In the economic aspect, education is considered as an effective investment to increase economic prosperity and development. However, a successful post-colonial revolution could not ensure that education and the economy would therefore develop in tandem. In the cultural aspect, racial/cultural differences are easily regarded as the result of educational achievement differences. Schooling praxis could also enlarge the educational advantage gap between the majority and minority. In the spatial aspect, education is a colonized space, no matter whether in curriculum knowledge or in pedagogical praxis. However, beside the binary opposition’s perspective, there also exists a third space. These spaces are in competition with each other. In the conclusion to this article, the development and application of post-colonialism discourse in education and research topics of educational competition will be clearly stated. Inspirations and reflections on educational research from the post-colonialism discourse perspective related to Taiwan will also be presented.
Introduction
Educational competition of postcolonial Hungary and Slovenia in aspects of their politics, economy and culture were analysed by Fulop et al. (2007). They pointed out that Hungary still held relative autonomy in the Soviet-era, so it placed more emphasis on individual competition even in the post-colonial times. Although Slovenia recognized the benefits from competition, it placed more emphasis on cooperation than comprehensive competition. The educational environments of Hungary and Slovenia are greatly dominated by their pre-colonial systems. It is clear that education in these two countries cannot be fully examined without understanding partition and evaluation of their colonial history.
Post-colonialism discourse concerns a variety of issues, including denial of pre-colonial states 1 slavery, immigration and complex diasporas, ethnic groups, cultures, social status, genders, identity, complex cultural mixtures, languages and language power, and Taiwanese aborigines' (hereafter aboriginals) power gaining and so on (Ashcroft et al., 1995). Competition is commonly seen in the post-colonialism education and it can be explored from various aspects, so it is not easy to grasp its main focus (Rizvi et al., 2006). That is, post-colonialism discourse focuses on operation of power of ideology in the historical context of colonization and how the remains of the colonial times work in the post-colonial society and economy (Hudson, 2003).
It is not easy to answer questions about educational competition and post-colonialism. Thus, this article sets out from post-colonialism discourse, and mainly focuses on the critical roles that education and competition play in the post-colonial times. This article aims to explore answers to the following questions: Which aspects are worth pondering? Which issues or perspectives can offer liberal understanding of the current post-colonial educational context? Is educational competition structurally hidden or promoted by market mechanisms? And what role does educational competition play in the elevation of education?
Post-colonial education and competition in the political aspect 2
Elias (1994) considers that competition is formed by the series of gaining and losing power of each regime throughout history. Politics, in other words, is a series of denial and domination by the superior groups over the defeated and inferior groups (Dickens, 2000). After a colonial government leaves, a new government often overthrows its former education system in order to declare the official beginning of post-colonialism. Foster (1982) considers that people in the post-colonial times tend to overthrow whatever 3 is promoted by the former regime due to the great influence of the scars left behind by colonization: the main characteristics of post-colonialism are “denial of the former regime” and “break-up with the past”. However, problems breed since a country often loses itself in the series of overthrowing and de-structuralism owing to post-colonial intellectuals’ failure to find “their own” education system, while mistakenly twisting the market mechanism. In Taiwan, education policies and instructors tend to manage educational affairs with their strong ideologies. The post-colonial education specialists’ overemphasis on operation and terror of political ideologies usually leads to changes of social structure and economy being overlooked (Foster, 1982). Foster reminds us that although a complete breakup with the past has an important political appeal for a new regime, it sometimes will create an imaginary post-colonial myth.
Overthrowing the former regime’s education policies is competition, which gives education in Taiwan the postcolonial feature
In terms of the regime and educational system changing in Taiwan, centralized management exploited by the government to plan, supervise, control, and interfere in all kinds of educational affairs did not strucurally chang in the existing education system with each regime change ( Chuang, 2007a). Take “Love Taiwan”, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government’s slogan for example. Its main emphasis is on the subjectivity of Taiwanese Consciousness which is deemed as exclusive from Chinese Consciousness and denial of others in the perspective of the post-colonialism (Su, 2006). For instance, the administrative policies of the Ministry of Education (MOE) under Minister Du Zheng Sheng of the DPP from 2004 to 2008 all listed “deepening understanding of Taiwan” (the fifth article in 2004, the fifth article in 2005, the fifth article in 2006), “promotion of local education and deepening understanding of Taiwan” (the fifth article of 2007) as their principal aims. Moreover, before the presidential election, he added the seventh article in the education policies: “to promote Taiwan local art education, enhance development of arts and cultures of each ethnic group, reinforce dialect research, organize and promote general language education, pass on cultures of various groups, establish 228 peace fund to facilitate Memorial Foundation of 228, and foster peace among all ethnic groups and development of the country (2007).” In this case, it is clear that administrative policies of the MOE have been combined with political aspirations. Thus, it is unsurprising that President Ma Ying-jeou in his inauguration announcement on the education policies declared that Taiwan has to “carefully cultivate our next generation to equip them with sound personality, citizenship, international perspective and lifelong learning ability without any possible improper interference from various ideologies” (Ma, 2008). From the post-colonial perspective, the Kuomintang (KMT) practice of its education policies after regaining power (re-operation of the National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, and elimination of the former government’s (DPP) “deepening understanding of Taiwan” in the 1999 and 2012 education policies) show that post-colonialism still influences education in Taiwan. Chen indicates that Taiwan, as a geographical space, is a miniature of imperialism in Asia. Thus, formation of current culture in Taiwan cannot be analyzed without consideration of others. It should be analyzed in the context of the regional history and history of imperialism (Chen, 1996). With reforms of education systems caused by regime changes, Taiwan has long been in the state of helplessness of post-colonialism.
The first Taiwanese female president, Tsai was elected in 2016. She is going to take over the country from President Ma from the KMT party. In the blueprint for educational policy, Tsai’s primary request is to deny the national curriculum guidelines about being close to China, which was revealed by the former government. Under the educational competition between KMT and DDP, Tsai is going to face bigger challenges as the representative of a post-colonial power. Referring/compared to Taiwanese educational competition, aboriginals' education is much more uncompetitive, not to mention oppressed or neglected. In other words, the plans of fighting against the educational curriculum guidelines of pre-colonial power proposed by Tsai from DDP are just another new colonization of new colonists. Aboriginals are still oppressed by the Chinese Han/Taiwanese Han government, and by Chinese/Taiwanese national educational curriculum guidelines. Taiwanese aboriginals are in colonized situations in the competitive educational field.
There are a group of aboriginal elites, professors, and cultural workers trying to speak for aboriginals in the educational competition field nowadays. They fight with the MOE to establish the complete educational system for aboriginal cultures, aboriginal knowledge systems, and aboriginal schools and lecture the next generation with their mother language, etc. with the MOE. The new president should consider whether to give the authority to aboriginals under the claim, which is able to examine if Taiwan is over the post-colonial era.
Competition for power needs political means and revolutions
Politics is a process of constant and cycling competitions for power. Power is a rare resource (Hong, 1997) so it is usually gained by fierce competition. However, politics in Taiwan is designed as extreme oligarchy only held by few elites. Since power is attractive but can be shared by few, everyone has to mentally and physically compete for it. A plethora of theories on hierarchy of needs in history suggest that human beings have needs and these needs are measurable. Thus, these measurable needs bring us to a world where we have to find ways to fulfill them (Corning, 2005). Among all the theories, Maslow's (1954) Hierarchy of Needs is the most famous. It maintains that human beings must fulfill physiological needs on the lower level to beat others, and reach self-actualization at the top of the society to become part of the few elites. Maslow stereotypes the mental needs of the top elites who govern the people in the lower levels. He considers that there must be a social hierarchy (the superior and the inferior) where elites on the top are few while most people are laborers who are busy satisfying lower needs. The assumption that few top elites govern the general public and share power and fortune will turn into social reality 4 . Fictional and unempirical as it is, this assumption will unsurprisingly enter into the educational environment through education theories and pass on the idea that competition is the primary means of access to resources and higher social status since resources are rare.
Engels (1958) maintained that competition between the working class and the oppressing class can be deemed as a state of war which can only be resolved by “revolutions”. Revolution means to change current status, break the current balance and to overthrow the current system and status in order to re-adapt and re-evolve it. In Taiwan, the primary force of revolution is opposition and disagreement among different regimes. Each regime change will give rise to revolutions and changes of education structures and policies. In micro situations such as schools and classes, many interactions between teachers and students are revolution-like. For example, “anti-unreasonable authorities” and “peer recognitions” shown in a teacher’s improper discipline, school regulations and teachers’ authority indicate the possibility for students to have autonomy (Chen, 2008). This phenomenon is often revealed in students’ subculture or resistance. This is not only a kind of competition for power in the educational context but also a revolution to gain power between teachers and students.
State will and education autonomy are two competing forces
We all hope that we can prevent education from being controlled by politics and stand for more educational autonomy. Politics influences education and education in return affects politics (Tan, 2010). Educational goals often reflect what kind of citizens a country wants to develop through education. We once heard about this educational goal: “Under the premise of this country’s unification, a harmonious social status should be maintained” (Ntarangwi, 2003). It is interesting for us to ask: why does a country need to make its citizens obedient and society harmonious by education? To form its legitimate authority and rights to control, a country exploits education to pass on morals such as respect for authority, discretion, politeness, perseverance, and obedience (Tan, 1998). What is the purpose for a country to have obedient citizens and a harmonious society? Are there any more important goals to attain than a “harmonious society”? What is the aim to attain harmony? Is it for competition as we have mentioned?
The modern academic social structure is based on the pedagogy of competition such as self-actualization, autonomy and adaptation, embodied in educational thoughts, and practiced through educational institutes (Edwards and Usher, 2000). Competitions are easily observed in the educational environment but rarely heard of in the interaction of politics and education. Spencer and Sumner once proposed their ideas about the relationship between national education and the government. Spencer maintains the
Do colonizers and the colonized always compete with each other?
Among all educational theories, Existentialism has great influence on humanistic psychology. After its combination with Dewey’s progressive education, humanistic education emerged. The assumption of humanistic education is: each child is a law unto himself/herself since there is no God or any unchanged or everlasting truth. Growth, as a biological metaphor, is the pronoun of subjectivism. To Dewey, children should have their own existence/awareness among concepts and goals based on the idea of growth and establish their own value system without any limitations (Pearcey, 1992). The absence of God symbolizes the fall of the authority, the death of colonizers, coming of the new era, and the infinite loss and great hope coming with the new era. That is the challenge in the post-colonial times. Children represent a country which just breaks up with its colonizer and needs to strive for independence and self-reliance. Dewey’s philosophical metaphor was once viewed as a renaissance of Neo-Darwinism. In fact, he also reveals an educational metaphor commonly used in post-colonialism discourse and indicates the one-way power and helplessness in education. What the comparison of children’s growth neglects is that a helpless and naïve individual needs a strong and powerful grown-up to support and guide him/her 5 to survive from dangerous competitions. The center of education includes not only students, but also the country, as the representative of the colonizer, and teachers.
Thus, we have to ponder whether it is necessary to break up with the past in the post-colonial times? Is it an either–or question? Will it lead to destruction? Is it necessary to compete with colonizers? Foster (1982) considers that such breakup is unnecessary because many post-colonial educational achievements have been good enough. Yet, more educational literature should be recorded for the future modifications of the education system. As long as policy-makers of education policies are aware of the limitation of educational resources and the close relation between education and social economic development, they can make their education successful. It is a matter of competition for resources and of abandoning ideologies. 6 Competition is widely recognized as the basic principle of meritocracy. Fortunately, competition helps find many fair compromises; namely, proportionate equality. Under such a norm, compromise is not necessarily a total give-up after political calculation, but sometimes it reflects the pursuit of a higher moral standard. Under proportionate equality, we admit the need for competition in the human society and give it legitimacy and rationality. However, to serve a higher purpose of the human society, that is, a cooperative society, the goal of competition should serve the goal of cooperation (Corning, 2005). We will not truly liberate ourselves until we realize that the sustainability and prosperity of the human society should be prior to any destruction and disasters brought about by ideology. The post-colonial spirit does not lie in triggering revolutions, but in creating humanity in the post-colonial times.
Match-ups and tug-of-wars between economic development and educational competition
When it comes to functions of education, influence of education on economic development is greatly assisted by a large amount of educational research and policies. In the post-colonial times, the end of the colonizer’s regime brings not only the reclamation of the land and power but also helplessness concerning the future development of the economy and the country. Indian scholar Nandy indicates that “progressive” phrases use facts about internal colonialism to fight against social culture influenced by external colonialism, while external colonialism in return justifies itself with external threats. However, it is noted that these two oppressions should be eliminated at the same time (Chen, 1996). Take Kenya for example. Since the Kenyans regained the power of self-government many years ago, the education system left by the colonial regime has not structurally changed. The only change is the nationality of the education specialists. Still, education there remains as institutions to cultivate laborers, and the education goals have always been framed in the domains of “developing” and “undeveloped”. Education in the post-colonial times presents a process of self-denial (Ntarangwi, 2003), which is the common feature of most education systems in post-colonial countries.
Post-colonial education is regarded as inner sustenance of economic recovery and industrial prosperity
Many theories have been proposed to present the positive relation between national development and education. One of the most well-known theories is development theory. Proposed between the two world wars, development theory assumed that post-colonial countries should be transformed into modernized and industrial countries and gradually become developed countries, and that the economic developments of these countries should be predictable linear states (Cannella and Viruru, 2004). Likewise, Darwin's theory of evolution becomes one important theory of national development in post-colonial countries which have increasing needs for social development. It maintains that a country should use human beings’ inherited potentials to develop itself from the backward to the mature state (Ntarangwi, 2003). Since this process requires successful exploitation of the environment to fulfill certain needs, exploitation and adaptation of the environment are important factors for underpinning social competition, which can bring human beings to a perfect state. These two theories both consider that human beings are of two kinds: “highly developed and undeveloped”. The highly developed group is mature in technology and industry while the other group of people need to perfect their technology and industry in order to catch up with the highly developed group. The primary requirements of national development are sufficient resources and a highly-developed economy, both of which many think can be achieved through education. Moreover, both of these two theories consider that education and economy are theoretically interdependent since either of them can create finer resources (whether it is human resources or knowledge resources) for the society. However, the assumption of development theory presents its black-or-white nature; that is, good country/ bad country, developed country/ undeveloped country, and strong country/ weak country. This assumption implies competitions and races for resources. Thus, education under this theory involves many cruel competitions. Education and economy are often seen as the arenas for resources. Since education is often assumed as unproductive, school education should be regulated and limited (Vanderstraeten, 2006). Furthermore, education has long been viewed as a country’s necessary investment and an important means to increase national strength and to promote economic development so many enforced actions are easily seen as reasonable (Sidorkin, 2007). However, as history has shown, the correlation between education and economic improvement has not yet been empirically proven. The relation between education and economic development is still vague.
Success of post-colonial revolutions cannot guarantee prosperous development of economy and education
When emphasizing the importance of education in the social and economic development owing to the ritual significance of national education goals, most post-colonial countries fail to offer better education strategies than their colonizers’ to achieve their goals. However, post-colonial elites realize that they have to provide more and sufficient education resources if they want a more developed economy (Foster, 1982). In the post-colonial times, much research on education has inspired the public to pursue greater changes in education so as to achieve greater social justice, including criticism about the relationship between education and professions hierarchized by social status (Hudson, 2003). This indicated that competition matters in the relation between professions and education. The more competitive an education department is, the more students it will have. Competition and hierarchy not only exist among subjects but also between senior high schools and vocational schools. In Taiwan, after several competitions, many students go to vocational schools because they fail to get high grades rather than being interested in vocational education. Educational streaming at high school level presents the results of competition in the post-colonial times: winners go to high schools while losers go to vocational schools or go to labor-intensive workplaces.
Therefore, Ntarangwi (2003) took post-colonial Kenya for example, indicating that the relation between the status quo of post-colonial education and so-called national competitiveness is “more schooling than education, which less benefits national competitiveness”. Ntarangwi’s idea about these three variables is as follows: schooling is the arrangement of schools made to maintain the present structure of the country and power; education is the process of passing on the values, aesthetics, beliefs of a certain traditional culture to the next generation; and national competitiveness from the post-colonial perspective is the way the country uses resources like knowledge to face and maintain the present situation and then survive.
Post-colonial countries’ investment in education gradually becomes market-oriented (establishment of schools) because the desperate need for national regeneration requires a large amount of tax revenue and financial supports. Even cost-effectiveness has to be taken into consideration in a school establishment because no one wants to lose money. Such a market-oriented idea will influence national investment in education and twist parents’ ideas of school achievements. Therefore, it is well observed that competition in schools has enlarged and that commercialization and branding of education has become more common than previously (Roberts, 2006). It is unsurprising to see in the post-colonial times that commercialization of education has led to numerous competitions in schools and in education. In the times when we look for innovation and cost-effectiveness, competition for achievements inevitably appears in education.
Education is also a field of power competition
With the advance of civilization, schools play an important role because schools are the main place where elites are cultivated in a society (Jiang, 2002). Indeed, in terms of long-term effects of education, expansion of education still has the positive effect of elevating the quality of all citizens' lives even if it fails to immediately fix the social injustice (Chuang, 2007b).
Since education is viewed as an important factor of national development and competitiveness, why are many post-colonial countries still poorly-developed and backward after they have invested a lot in education? After their interviews with social elites who have unfavorable family and social economic backgrounds, Zhong et al. (2006) indicate that education does not seem as important in social competition as people think. Zhong et al. point out that: “When most educational research results show that education has played an important role in national, social, and individual development, there are still many opposite voices. Even with longer schooling and much greater education investment, we still do not see the expected outstanding educational achievements but what we see is more unrest and injustice which are opposite to education goals. Thus, we have to think whether our education ideology has gone to a cold extreme and tilt the core value of our culture.” (Zhong et al., 2006: 84)
Education competition from various cultural factors
Based on Darwinism, culture is the product of evolution and evolves with the progress of evolution. 7 In education, parents play an important role in passing on culture. Parents’ expectations of education will become a value which influences children’s academic achievements and learning. Thus, education is viewed as the most important carrier of social mobility (Pearce, 2006). Under the creation of individual’s strength, culture colors the post-colonial spirit. For example, many parents resist national education and choose to educate their children at home. Buchen (2004) considers that parents who choose homeschooling are more businessperson-like and have sufficient resources. The so-called businessperson-like personality refers not only to bold and daring but also competitive and adventurous characteristics. Parents of businessperson-like personality usually do not like to see their children disciplined by national education and they do not believe that national education will lead their children to a better future. Moreover, parents who choose homeschooling tend to have more resources than others so they can freely choose homeschooling or national education under the protection of the laws. For the middle class or lower class in the social hierarchy, the scale of free choices is balanced in favour of the upper class.
Difficulty distinguishing ethnic/cultural and difference/quality leads to different treatments of colonial educators
Is ethnic/cultural an important variable in education? Do ethnic differences reflect in their educational achievements? Woolman (2001) thinks that, in terms of educational philosophy, there are huge differences between Western competitive individualism and traditional cooperative communalism in Africa. Many educational scholars also consider that the Western traditional competition teaching method is not suitable for multicultural classrooms (Salili and Hoosain, 2007). However, this point of view is not always the truth.
In Pearce’s (2006) research on reasons why Chinese American can have distinguished academic achievements and even excel their White peers and become the model among many minor groups in America, he indicates that cultural factors indeed affect students’ academic achievements. White American families and Chinese families are different when passing on their educational values. In Pearce’s opinion, Asian American students can excel among their American peers because they come from the cultural circle of Confucian empires, where individual’s endeavors and competence are highly valued. Moreover, Chinese American parents particularly care about their children’s education. Compared with White equivalents, Chinese American parents spend more time supervising their children’s extracurricular activities, confirming their children’s completion of homework, planning their leisure hours, limiting their time watching TV, and investing more tuition fees in cram schools of music and language (Pearce, 2006). In addition, in the research of Jao and McKeever (2006) on the relationship between different provinces and academic achievements in Taiwan, they suggest that academic performance of Mainlanders’ children is actually better than others (the order is Mainlanders, Hakkanese and the Holo people). The main reasons are parents’ social status, education level, and educational ideas, and these reasons can even go beyond racial differences. Another example exploring how culture and ranking in the family influence children’s academic achievements is Chu et al.'s (2007) analysis of samples of a population over 25 years of age from 2,626 families. They indicate that, based on Chinese family tradition, most family resources will be invested on sons. This patriarchy tradition will unsurprisingly sacrifice education opportunities of senior daughters so they tend to get into the workplace early to help family finance. The situation gets worse when the oldest daughter is much older than her siblings. Culture (China) and spatial factors (age gap among siblings) should be taken into consideration in this kind of analysis. Last, Fulop et al. (2007) investigated cultural differences of cooperation and competition in middle and primary schools in three areas in Europe (the U.K., Hungary, and Slovenia). They indicate that cooperation and competition are common in middle and primary schools in the U.K. but competition becomes less while cooperation dominates the education field or classroom. In Hungary, competition dominates both middle and primary schools while cooperation is rarely seen in these schools. In Slovenia, cooperation is emphasized in both middle and primary schools but competition is rarely seen and mostly appears in the form of group competition. Thus, it is clear that differences among academic achievements of different races exist and these differences are related to education level of parents and family education.
The above-mentioned studies illustrate the multicultural phenomenon that racial differences are equal to cultural differences. Moreover, it is controversial whether ethical or cultural differences are hierarchized. From the above-mentioned studies, it is noted that attitudes toward education competition vary from country to country, from race to race, and from culture to culture. However, while it is uncertain whether these different attitudes stem from cultural or ethical differences, different treatments stemming from the stereotype of racial discrimination have been seen in the education field. This phenomenon needs more attention and further research.
Superior groups widen the gap from the inferior groups through school education
Concerning racial issues in schools, Ntarangwi (2003) indicates that school is a place where minor groups learn how backward they are. Knowledge composition, hidden lessons, and practice of school life present dehumanization, alienation and enemization of the minority groups (or aboriginals) (Smith, 1999). This relation is shown in some tense ideologies. Duckiit explored two social discrimination modes: one is Altemeyer’s right wing authoritarianism (RWA) and the other is Sidanius and Pratto’s social dominance orientation (SDO). Emphasizing social compliance and maintenance of social order, RWA views outside groups as a threat. SDO stresses tough attitude and views the world as a competitive-jungle world where outside groups can discriminate and compete (Duckiit, 2006). Thus, school education and atmosphere is unfriendly to minority groups. Owing to concerns over foreign culture and the need to pursue their own culture, children of minority groups tend to attend “Holiday Schools” in their free time such as Chinese school, Irish societies, and Swedish folk dancing and so on. In the opinion of some scholars, private or self-operated Holiday Schools can be free from reinforcement of middle class’s ideology (Buchen, 2004). Since the existence of oligopolistic education indicates the colonial spiritare still alive. Public schools are still seen as the representation and restoration of colonialism.
How group culture shapes and protects group identification of a stigmatization blotted group was investigated by Derks et al. (2006); their analysis shows that a group will have more inner unification in the face of outer threats than in a peaceful state. This result is similar to Wilson’s (2006) levels of selection. In Wilson’s opinion, an action should be defined as what one does for his or her individual benefits within a small group and as what a group of people do to benefit themselves in the face of outer threats. It should be utility maximizing rather than mistakenly enlarging individual benefits to group benefits. In the post-colonial times, subjects and objects of discriminations among many races have been exchanged. The discriminated in the colonial times have become new emerging superior groups and they may oppress other minor groups. Or, the oppressors in the colonial times have become more powerful and hide their oppression so well as to make it undetectable. It can be concluded that competition brings about unification to fight against outer threats. Once an action to fight against the outer threats has been taken, competitions breed.
Post-colonial spatial and educational competition in education
The concept of space is derived from geography and becomes an interdependent mechanism through the prevailing politics, militarism, martial invasion, colonialism and post-colonialism. Thus, when it comes to empowerment, it appropriates the spatial; that is, this standpoint implies a ground for standing and a site for resisting (Wang, 1996). Animated and personified, space is referred to not only as a kind of liberation but as a new way of interpretation in the social sciences. Issues about space have played a more and more important part in social science. Moreover, among argumentations about the relationship between globalization and pedagogy, spatial metaphor and learning space are explored and associated with relative studies about space in social science and schooling praxis (Edwards and Usher, 2000). Spatial power passes on certain rigid relationships in combination with education, which needs to be analyzed from the post-colonial perspective.
Education field is a colonized space
Education is viewed as an agency which changes with culture and passes on knowledge (Woolman, 2001). Therefore, “undifferentiated” and “unified” shown in the cultural field which education depends on need further exploration. In Bourdieu’s opinion, organization, limitation, and operation of a field lead to consistency of each field in the society. First, there is competition for power and against foreign threats between dominators and dominatees in each field. This competition is the regeneration mechanism of each field. Second, power operation of the superior (political) field tends to defeat other fields and thus makes them similar (Hong, 2000). Consistency in Bourdieu’s idea is spatial consistency. Under the influence of superior imperial colonization, results of spatial colonization are surprisingly consistent even in the post-colonial times. This is similar to globalization.
In the globalized education market, education indeed shoulders the responsibility of cultivation of elites who can compete in the global market (Wang, 1993). However, as we can see, space seems animated and “competes (or plunders)” for rights to survive by colonization and further transforms all the other spaces into one. This situation is one of Darwinian post-colonial political competition. This novel power analysis discloses space politics in the education field to certain degree. Accordingly, the relation between teaching and learning is no longer simple and linear but works as comprehensive spatial occupation.
Spatial arrangement in school implies colonial power
School, campus, or arrangement of classes is of power of spatial colonization. Yeh (2002) considers country/city relativity of a school’s location as a manifestation of colonization and deems the security office and office of students’ affairs as agencies of colonization. In classrooms, he suggested that portraits of great people and slogans express patriotism and loyalty and that teachers’ seat arrangement of misbehaved students is a kind of spatial colonization. All these are colonial controls in school. As for country/city relativity of a school’s location, Yeh (2002) considers that this factor is competitive and that attraction of a city will make students travel and roam. Su (2006) divides Foucault’s theory of disciplinary power into three interdependent categories: space discipline; time discipline; and rank discipline. It includes the concepts of Panopticon, grade system, seat arrangement in a classroom, school syllabus, class bell rings, attendance check system, rewards and punishments, examination systems, and so on; this carefully-divided work easily literalizes, documentaizes, and disciplinizes students. This includes the process of student classification, including individualizing and differentiating (Huang, 2004), and arranges students into complex power spaces. There are many combination rituals of power spaces in school (McLaren, 1999) framed by the inclusion/exclusion concept (Popkewitz, 1998). This is a complicated and multidimensional field but the post-colonial perspective, combined with post-structuralism and geography, is suitable for analysis in this field.
Binary opposition in education space and the third space after competition are inspired by Fanon and Bhabha
Bhabha is the first to propose the phrase “the third space” in his
In terms of sex colonization, science has been a subject of male domination but of female exclusion. Colonial empires treat a foreign landscape as unoccupied, so they can “discover”, “explore”, and “take”. Furthermore, it implies the colony as the virgin land, “the other” or “the female” (Cai, 2003), where scientists and colonizers can develop and civilize. Bhabha (1994) uses Fanon’s criticism against Western liberal arts to criticize this rigid binary space. He exploits Derrida’s de-structuralism to de-structure Europe-centered thoughts (Sheng, 2005) to see whether there are male knowledge and female knowledge, or whether there is the knowledge of all humankind.
In terms of research of educational competition, Chen (2006) investigated whether there are significant differences between male and female students in competition for higher education from the perspectives of macro-economics and national development. The results of his study show that economic development significantly influences male and female students in competition for higher education. However, there is less educational research offering empirical and quantitative data to show viewpoints and attitudes of male and female students about educational competition. Chang (2007) suggests that males and females have less space to avoid each other in real life because both sexes in the same culture system form and construct their gender features within the same environment. That is, with certain vague gender features between these two sexes, both sexes may share certain vague competitive traits and have certain individual differences.
Concept of spatial competition in curriculum
Fang (2009) suggests that the curriculum arrangement is a competition for profit in his evaluation of the new curriculum of junior and senior high schools. Because departmentalism exists among subjects, arrangements of teaching hours become competitions of profits and ideology which mute the professional opinions and segment subjects. This issue can be investigated from certain aspects: definition of curriculum; classification and hierarchy of knowledge; and praxis of curriculum and teaching. In terms of curriculum praxis, curriculum is occupied space.
Definition of curriculum
There are several dimensions in curriculum space arrangement. In terms of definition of curriculum, curriculum involves inclusion and exclusion, which indicates existence and absence of certain values (Popkewitz, 1998). When it comes to knowledge classification and subjects' division or integration, spatial concepts like inclusion and exclusion appear. Concerning knowledge that has been “included” in textbooks, textbooks are tools to rank students into good or bad categories by definition of morality. Furthermore, the hierarchy of space will gradually form two opposite worlds, such as competitive and uncompetitive, or academic and non-academic (Popkewitz, 1998). In terms of section arrangement of curriculum, absolute power is commonly seen (Kanu, 2003). Sections and chapters of the curriculum are fixed, “from the previous to the next, from the basic to the advanced, and from the past to the present.” It is an arranged space series. In the classroom, lessons should be taught in the order of the section arrangement. If students do not well learn a certain chapter, they cannot and are forbidden move to the next. The spatial power of curriculum is superior to teachers’ professional autonomy. Thus, subjectivity of teachers and students are excluded under this priority.
Classification and hierarchy of knowledge
The second dimension follows the definition of curriculum, namely, issues about epistemology. Humans’ thinking model tends to classify things around them, and existence and classification of knowledge are the primary conditions of generation of subjects. Generation of subjects is thus closely connected with formation of the school system. That is, once a school is systematized, several subjects will come into existence through division of present knowledge to fulfill the needs of teaching and communication. Take the Western world for example. From Plato, Xenocrates, to the present dichotomy, the world is divided into the natural and the spiritual world, or cultural and natural, or historical and natural. As for trichotomy, there are Popper’s three worlds: physic; spiritual; and constructed; and Scheler’s three knowledges: dominating; cultivating; and savoring. Concerning quartering, we have Diemer and Seiffert quartering: general science; inorganic natural science; biology; and human science (Yang, 2002). The process of knowledge division is spatial arrangement and a historical process of competition and colonization of official knowledge (Kanu, 2003). Which knowledge should be put under certain subjects? What are the differences of this subject and that subject? Woolman (2001) points out that in the field of education curriculum modification is the restoration of post-colonial education. He took the new government of Mozambique, Africa, for example. After independence, the new government immediately reformed the curriculum. It transformed the Portuguese competition-oriented and test-oriented education system into cooperative, non-authoritative African schools. This reform is often combined with political correctness. That is, it frames and fixes students’ minds with academic and professional terms through competitions of ideologies. Actually, history, knowledge, and even daily life language we read in textbooks are products of a series of competitions.
Curriculum and pedagogical praxis
The last dimension of post-colonial spatial competition comes from the real-life teaching environment. In school, students are defined in divided teaching spaces and passively fixed in set places. School life is disciplinary. Disciplines are marked through teachers’ praxis in class but students may break this limitation (Weng, 2002). School education and official curriculum will formulize disciplinary knowledge. Based on rules of school structure, arrangement of school schedule, students’ recognition of responsibility, and definitions of physical and mental development of students in psychology (Popkewitz, 1998), students can be divided into each imaginary space and arranged in different spaces.
Relations of these spaces are complicated and detailed. One easy topic is textbook use and compilation. In terms of use, we take curriculum of local culture for example. Curriculum of local culture in Taiwan tends to neglect those who immigrate to other places because compilation of curriculum is local or commutative (Yeh, 2002); for example, those who moved once or for several times, especially those families who moved into a high gathering of other groups like Southern Min people in Hakka gathering, Hakkanese in gathering of Southern Min village, or aboriginals moving to Han area. To them, curriculum of local culture oriented from the local research of the school’s location is not necessarily connected to their own cultural origins (Chang, 2002).
In terms of textbook compilation, unified curriculum guidelines have been carried out from compilation to the everyday teaching environment. Textbooks turn spatial combination and establishment of learning guidelines into reality. Accordingly, they determine how and what readers think. However, the post-colonial spirit appears when students categorize subjects by their learning experiences, interests and grades. For example, Cai (2008) indicates that students tend to hierarchically categorize curriculum into major subjects and minor ones. In exploration of opinions of two senior high female students about groups and subjects, Wang (2007) pointed out that her participants agreed that males are born superior to females and that male students are good at science while female ones are talented at liberal arts. Is the gender difference natural? Are females born inferior in educational competition? Cai (2003) suggests that masculine science takes up the position of the real science and excludes feminine science to a marginal place. Thus, the teaching environment is full of binary oppositions and urban and higher class culture is passed on through textbooks and reinforced by teachers. The two contrary worlds are clearly divided from each other in each classroom.
To sum up, colonial spatial competition is everywhere. Owing to traditional geography’s emphasis on the binary opposition of perceived space and conceived space, the binary opposition of colonizers and the colonized is created. Later, post-colonialism discourse criticizes this binary perspective and the so-called “Dialectic” third place comes into existence (Kang, 1999). The existence of the third place inspires various ideas about educational competitions. First, competition of knowledge and curriculum generates literal value and ideologies presented in textbooks 8 . The second is competition of each role in the educational environment, which represents competition for power as well as untold, unquestionable, and unchallengeable rigid relation after competition. The last are the guidelines of everything in school life. Class schedules imply many results of competition. Questions like lesson arrangement, time allocation, and hierarchy of teachers reflect results of curricular competition in the school.
Conclusion: post-colonialism discourse after educational competition
This article examined educational competition by reviewing relative literature from the perspective of post-colonialism discourse. In the conclusion, development and application of post-colonialism discourse in education and research topics of educational competition will be clearly stated. Inspirations and reflections on educational research from the post-colonialism discourse perspective related to Taiwan will be presented.
Development and application of post-colonialism discourse in education
It is widely thought that post-colonialism discourse was first proposed by theorists of colonized races such as Fanon and Gandhi. They actually launched post-colonial revolutions by means of violence 9 and peace 10 and personally resisted colonial empires as martyrs. Their followers such as Said, Spivak and Bhabha continued their revolutions and recorded and spread the anti-colonial spirit. Those scholars came mainly from colonized countries, had admiringly high academic degrees, had well-paid jobs and shared high reputation in Western prestigious colleges. With their background of literary criticism, they usually spoke up for the post-colonial spirit in the field of literature and literary criticism. Thus, early post-colonialism discourse was often seen and emphasized in literature.
As a result, early post-colonialism discourse and educational research exist in various colonial literature, travel literature and female writing. Criticisms of post-colonialism discourse about education can be seen in several articles describing school experiences, conflicts between traditional culture and colonial culture, and colonial teachers working both as educators and oppressors. These critical words are later integrated into systematic research in college and become research materials for comparative literature and comparative education.
In Taiwan, post-colonialism discourse on education mainly follows the above-mentioned pattern. In the early times, literary critics in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at National Taiwan University, the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at National Tsing Hua University, and the Department of Chinese Literature at National Chengchi University introduced cultural research and post-colonialism discourse. They continued having dialogues with foreign colonial literature and Taiwan local colonial literature, which gave birth to discussions on post-colonialism and national identification in Taiwan. The novel trend seems to have been popular in the field of literature. In educational research, post-colonialism was voiceless in the 1990s when post-colonialism was introduced; furthermore, postmodernism and multiculturalism were very popular at that time. In the next ten years, post-colonialism discourse was introduced to educational research from comparative education by the Department of International and Comparative Education at National Chi Nan University. During those ten years, post-colonialism discourse attached itself to the research methodology of comparative education, as a new research method. In research of educational sociology and aboriginal education, post-colonialism discourse was categorized as a branch of post-modernism, post-structuralism, and criticism while treated as the best research tool to examine the learning environment of aboriginal students. It is at that time that dissertations of post-colonialism discourse in educational research appeared. Moreover, educational research methodology, decolonizing methodology 11 of post-colonialism discourse started to be viewed as a new kind of qualitative research emphasizing local voice and criticizing binary opposition.
Research topics of educational competition
Educational competition has always been a complex issue in educational research. Western scholar Dearden (1972) set out from the psychoanalytic perspective to investigate the relationship between education and competition, which is the beginning of recent research in educational competition. Research in educational competition has long been at the macro level. Its topics range from cross-cultural comparison, such as fierce competition in the cultural circle of Confucian empires after World War II and comparative research from cultural and historical perspectives, to issues of recruitment and management of schools from the perspective of capitalism, and research on educational competition of entering a high school. These studies indicate that education competition at the macro level is the main concern in the academic field.
Educational competition at the micro level appeared in academic articles with the rise of qualitative research and classroom sociology. However, it still attaches itself to a branch of field observation. The recent rise of research on cooperative learning brings discussions and criticisms of competitive learning. To sum up, educational competition is closely associated with negative criticism both at the macro level and at the micro level. This phenomenon is due to denial of “competition” in most educational goals. In most educational theories, harmony and cooperation are highly praised while competition and conflict are depreciated. This has long made the educational environment full of contradictions. From the perspective of post-colonialism discourse, the assumption of modern school education is purely Western, emphasizing individual meritocracy, higher grades, and higher academic achievements. Academic competition is everywhere. That is, where there is a school, there is competition. Conflicts arise when it is carried out in cultures stressing cooperation, group learning and lifelong learning.
Therefore, if research in educational competition does not take into account the essence and the reality of education, it will go into the dead end: educational competition is negative. Teaching is expected to be effective, teachers are required to manage their classes well, educate their students well, and qualify them for good colleges. All these expectations are about competition, which is against the traditional educational ideal and traditional morality. Students, parents, principals, teachers are in a state of moral confusion, disagreeing with conflicts while pushing each other into a competitive circle. That is the primary reason why research on educational competition has long been “negative” in Taiwan. In Western countries, educational competition is explored from the perspective of philosophical analysis to understand its essence, namely, to understand its positive value from the perspective of meritocracy. Moreover, even in the latest educational research 12 , the perspective of cultural differences is introduced to define educational competitions in different cultures. These efforts make for research in educational competition presented in an objective and positive way in Western countries.
Reflection on educational competition in Taiwan
This article set out from the post-colonial discourse perspective and indicated that education in Taiwan is still in an ambiguous state where former regimes are denied and political powers are fighting each other. The ambiguity is established in the realms of educational expenses, competition for educational resources, and competition between educational goals and national will. Politics not only brings sufficient financial supports but also cultivation of ideology. Therefore, post-colonial revolutions from the general public and from the academic field constantly criticize and challenge education. As there are changes of educational policies, a place for positive interaction where education and politics can compete and cooperate with each other is found.
Politics and education can compete with each other or depend on each other in the post-colonial times (Hong and Yeh, 2014). One of the crucial ideas is that “prosperity of education can facilitate economic development”. In fact, many post-colonial countries try to revive their countries while expelling their former colonial regimes. They expect that huge investment on education will bring economic growth and prosperity of their newly-built countries. As a result, just after expelling their former colonial regimes, post-colonial countries enter international competition as the colonized in the global village. Post-colonial countries are always chasing after the charming great giant in their mind.
Post-colonial countries are busy adjusting their educational policies, educational environment and educational situations. One way is to invest much of their educational expenses to plan a new curriculum. In planning the curriculum, while they are trying to keep their promise to the public in the revolution that they will preserve traditional cultures and knowledge systems of the local groups, they get lost and go to a dead end when they endeavor to overthrow educational policies of their former regimes. To solve the problem, they learn from their former colonizers, by segmenting the curriculum and educational space into many independent spaces, and trying to discover pure separate spaces in the vast knowledge system. By copying their former regimes, post-colonial countries try to effectively make their countries thriving and prosperous. This article analyzes this phenomenon from the perspective of post-colonialism discourse and suggests that this phenomenon gives many post-colonial countries too many expectations and imaginations, and makes educational competition fierce in combination with politics, the economy, and education.
Taiwan is a country striving to find its position in the international world. After hundreds of years of colonization, Taiwan still tries hard to ground itself and develop its humanitarianism in the post-colonial times. As a result, we expect a lot from education. However, investment on education requires huge sums of money, compromise, and competition. Educational competition is never a fearful and negative noun. It is believed that educational competition will be a change to liberate humanity and education in a post-colonial spirit.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.