Recess Reflections: Decolonizing the Approach to Education

Recess Reflections is a weekly series that I started in 2022, during the Parliament of Sint Maarten’s summer recess. Each week, on Thursday, for six weeks, I’ll share my thoughts on particular topics impacting St. Maarten, as well as the Caribbean region.

This week’s Recess Reflections is a topic that I’ve been pushing for some time, although not necessarily in the language that many may recognize. I’ve never used the word “decolonize” for any topic where I championed reimagining the way that we, as St. Maarteners, approach said topic. However, in light of all the conversations happening in the Kingdom of the Netherlands regarding the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, the legacy of colonialism and the need to decolonize, I found it prudent to begin using that language so that everyone can comprehend the message. And that is: much of our approach to anything is rooted in colonialism. That’s the tweet.

The unfortunate result of this is that even while we have members of Parliament “supporting” the decolonization movement, their politics are still very much based in the legacy of colonization. A legacy that they’re very happy to embrace because it sustains their own confirmation bias…which itself comes from ingrained colonial ideas. What’s worse, they’re buoyed by the influx of primarily US-based envagelical entities and personalities that gleefully spend big bucks to continue to push messages of bigotry, hate and intolerance. The groups that are primarily impacted by these types of mindsets are women, the LGBT+ community, and, most critical for a nation’s development, children.

On St. Maarten, the legacy of colonialism in education is well-maintained by local educators, school managers and school boards, in the form of archaic and discriminatory dress and appearance codes. We’ve all heard the complaints; students as young as six years old blocked from attending school or class because of the length or style of their hair, or prevented from taking a test because their shoes happen to be the wrong color. We’re conditioned to believe that it’s okay to have a strict dress code in an educational institution, but what happens when said dress codes conflict with the laws of the land, which even the religion-based school boards must obey? Who has ever taken the time to examine the colonial origins of the concept of policing a person’s dress and appearance? Better yet, who has ever investigated the peculiarity that, even on St. Maarten, the majority of students who “violate” school dress codes are usually black and brown students?

This is an important distinction to make and here’s an example to explain why. When I was attending St. Dominic High School (under the Catholic School Board), very often there were two to three male students who were frequently directed to the barbershop because their hair was too long. They were all black and their hair textures were a variety across the 4A to 4C spectrum. Some frequently rocked an afro, and others let their hair grow in its natural state (so, up and out, in tight coils), moving between corn rows or other protective styles. Each time the afro bopped into school, comments would be made about cutting it to a low fade and sure enough, within a couple days the afro would be gone.

On the other hand, there were several white and Indian male students in my class, too. Their hair type, growing down and flat in the way that Type 1, 2a and 2b hair textures tend to, often fell to their shoulders. Their trims only ever had to bring their ends to the base of their neck, but their hair was not what you’d consider short. They weren’t made to get buzz cuts, crew cuts, or Caesars. Their hair was just allowed to grow, as it grows. Note the double standard?

Policing all forms of identity expression was one of the main forms of “modernizing the primitive African” used by colonizing countries to capture and control their human property. We see that practice of stifling individual identity expression in modern-day dress codes, where schools have evolved from requiring the same color shirt and pants to now dictating that everyone must wear the same color shoe, the same color backpack, use the same color notebooks, etc. Policing black hair, how it grows, how it’s styled and how it’s maintained…well. That remains one of those colonial remnants that is happily well-preserved and sustained by, not surprisingly, primarily black people.

It forms part of the generational trauma embedded in our genes by the legacy of colonization and slavery. In schools across St. Maarten, and the wider Caribbean, it is reinforced by local, black educators who have yet to decolonize their minds to what is considered the ‘gold standard’ for the appearance and dress of children. Children.

I would hope that schools, and government, are asking themselves the following questions: how does our current FBE system impact our students’ ability to learn and thrive? How do archaic ideas towards ‘neatness’ and morality affect our students’ mental health? Have we done enough to provide safe, progressive and dynamic learning environments that prepare students for the global community? Or are we just preparing the next wave of entry-level workforce fodder, their individualism and creativity suffocated by our own insistence on nonsensical ideas of neatness and ‘morality’?

Because how does an afro prevent learning? How do dreadlocks? How does the color of a child’s shoe prevent them from learning basic arithmetic? What role does the color and style of their notebook have on their ability to learn to read and write? The answer is the same: it doesn’t.