How to (really) decolonise the curriculum

African Catholicism is known for its profound social conservatism. Cardinal Sarah has written books sharply criticising Western modernity. Do the self-styled 'decolonisers' care what he thinks?

 

In my last article, I explained how the ‘decolonise the curriculum’ campaign is a sham. Indeed, it promises to ‘diversify’ higher education by challenging dominant Western moral and philosophical ideas and exposing students to a wider variety of perspectives. In fact, it does the very opposite of this : ‘decolonising’ higher education here really means making it subservient to a particular school of thought rooted in postmodernism. This successor ideology, as it is sometimes called, interprets all aspects of human culture – including art, religion, philosophy and even science – as means by which identity-groups (races, nations, genders etc.) exert power over other identity-groups. A ‘decolonised’ humanities curriculum, then, is one which requires students to approach their chosen fields in the way prescribed by neo-postmodern ideologues. That is, in a way that makes undermining ‘structures of oppression’ the central concern of academic inquiry, rather than, say, the quest for truth or beauty. In practise, this means ‘critiquing’ classical thinkers like Plato and Descartes for their failure to live up to the standards of postcolonial and critical race theory (both offshoots of postmodernism). 

As I argued, there is nothing remotely ‘decolonial’ about treating a contemporary intellectual tradition as the yardstick by which all other traditions are to be judged (especially when the yardstick is itself deeply Western). What we have here is an organised effort to colonise the academy with a strange, new doctrine. 

But perhaps I ought to be more constructive in my criticism. Surely there is some value in encouraging students to question the ruling ideas and background assumptions of modern culture. Christians in particular should welcome this, given the gulf that lies between historically orthodox Christianity and Modernity. Here, then, are my recommendations for a truly decolonised university curriculum. 

  Moral foundations Theory 

First, let us take a brief detour into moral psychology. Psychologists like Jonathan Haidt argue that human moral beliefs all ultimately derive from a small number of ‘moral foundations’, i.e. basic moral concerns generally shared by all human cultures, though (crucially) to differing extents. This is known as Moral Foundations Theory (MFT). The moral foundations are commonly subdivided as follows:

 Fairness : has everyone received their dues? Is anyone cheating? 

 Care : are the most vulnerable being protected from harm? 

 Loyalty : do you stand with your tribe/family/people? 

 Authority : will you honour our traditions, or try to subvert them? 

 Sanctity/purity : will you revere what is sacred and holy? 

As Haidt argues in The Righteous Mind and elsewhere, MFT provides a powerful explanation as to why equally intelligent individuals and groups can have such intractable moral disagreements about, say, abortion, immigration, gay marriage etc. While we are all naturally predisposed to value all of the five foundations, some cultures emphasise some foundations more than others, meaning that people will feel more or less strongly about the different foundations, depending on where and how they were raised.

 The moral foundations of the West 

Try to rank the moral foundations in order of importance to yourself. Do fairness and care come at the top? If they do, chances are you’ve been raised in a so-called ‘WEIRD’ society, i.e. one that is Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic. Haidt (2008) notes that such societies strive to protect “welfare and the autonomy of individuals above all else”. In contrast, tradition and authority are met with suspicion, and subversion is often praised (all our films seem to do this), while sanctity is dismissed as an old-fashioned value at best, and an oppressive one at worst. 

On the other hand, the moral frameworks of many non-WEIRD societies are not centred on care and fairness. Though the latter are still valued, they do not vastly outweigh loyalty, authority and sanctity. For example, studies using ‘Moral Foundations Questionnaires’ found that participants from East Asian countries scored significantly higher on sanctity and loyalty than their American and European counterparts. Fascinatingly, we observe very similar trends when we compare the moral foundations of progressives and conservatives, respectively. American conservatives were found to value all five moral foundations to a roughly equal degree, while their compatriots on the other side of the spectrum valued fairness and care far more. 

It would appear, then, that social conservatives living in the West constitute a counter-culture to the liberal-progressive cultural hegemony. Haidt (himself a liberal, ibid.) writes that the Enlightenment ‘liberal-progress’ narrative, which pits the goods of liberty, equality and prosperity against the dark forces of tradition and religious obscurantism, is dominant in his own academic circles. The same is surely true of academia at large, and our cultural institutions more generally. 

  True decolonisation 

In light of all this, what could genuinely decolonising higher education consist in, if not in inviting students to critically examine the moral foundations of the liberal-progressive West? After all, the majority of undergraduates will likely have been raised in WEIRD societies, and thus with the assumptions that being free means ‘doing what you want’, that there are no limits to ‘progress’, that nothing is really sacred, and so on. These seem like obvious targets for an education system that wants to style itself as daring and controversial. 

What might this entail for the curriculum, concretely? Speaking only for my field, i.e. philosophy, a greater emphasis on medieval philosophers would be an excellent start. Contempt for the 1000-year period which we now call the ‘Middle Ages’ has always been a staple of Enlightenment mythology. While this seems to have changed somewhat in recent times, many students still finish their philosophy degrees with the impression that nothing of intellectual worth was produced in Europe between the Ancient Greeks and Descartes. Studying the works of towering figures like Anselm and Thomas Aquinas would help to students to revisit their beliefs about pre-modern thinkers and world-views. It would also enable them to seriously engage with sophisticated alternatives to the atheistic scientism of the Enlightenment, and its desacralisation of reality. 

Moreover, students would benefit from being exposed to the strongest arguments for moral positions which they may initially strike them as illiberal or outdated. These could include arguments for the pro-life stance on abortion, natural law approaches to sexual ethics, nationalism, etc. The point wouldn’t be to persuade students to change their minds, but to help them to see where people with different moral foundations might be coming from. Just a couple of weeks ago, I had an undergraduate student (who considers himself left-wing) ask me why texts and thinkers in the conservative tradition were never covered in political modules. A colleague tells me he was asked the same question by other students. Many are curious to know what the ‘other side’ has to say, and wonder why their professors discourage them from finding out. 

  Why it will never happen 

This, I submit, is what a truly decolonised curriculum might look like. It should go without saying that it will not see the light of day, at least not anytime soon. 

If the 'decolonisation' campaign were really just about challenging Western modernity, we would expect religious and/or traditionalist perspectives, from both within and outside the West, to be incorporated in 'decolonised' curricula. For instance, we might see readings by black conservative intellectuals or Russian Orthodox critics of communism.

But in the end, the neo-postmodern ideology behind the ‘decolonisation’ campaign is a cartoonishly extreme form of Haidt’s ‘liberal-progress’ narrative. Genuinely decolonising the academy would mean teaching students that maybe, just maybe, equality and care aren’t everything, that structures and even (gasp!) some hierarchies might actually be good, and that holding some things to be sacred (like human life, and marriage) isn’t always a tool of oppression. And this is precisely what the decolonial wannabes cannot do.


Anyway, can’t a man dream?