After a bit more research this morning I came upon, " boko is a native Hausa word, originally meaning sham, fraud, inauthenticity, and such which came to represent western education and learning," from Paul Newman's http://www.megatchad.net/publications/Newman-2013-Etymology-of-Hausa-boko.pdf
I think of this in terms of the British, Catholic school in Prague that I taught at last year. Albeit a beautiful school with caring staff, the school wipes away most of Czech culture. It really does not take much interest in learning local customs, language or culture. It has a very colonial, business mindset. (They also had talks with Sierra Leone to expand the program in Africa.)
I'm thinking of education as power, especially as we go to write lesson plans for the upcoming classes. Who's information are we reproducing? How are we subverting that information? Is there grounding in nature?
Thinking about the shift in perspective of the ground every time I document a portrait- the canvas, or drop cloth that supports the clay. Each time the weave is from a different angle. (I need to look and work with this ground more closely as well as the paper it is printed on.)
No comments:
Post a Comment