Colonial archaeology functioned as conservative education to block native schooling
Evidence
In the first place, the timing of the archaeological push coincided with the first political struggle over the state’s educational policies. ‘Progressives’ – colonials as well as natives – were urging major investments in modern schooling. Against them were arrayed conservatives who feared the long-term consequences of such schooling, and preferred the natives to stay native. In this light, archaeological restorations – soon followed by state-sponsored printed editions of traditional literary texts – can be seen as a sort of conservative educational program, which also served as a pretext for resisting the pressure of the progressives. … Seen in this light, the reconstructed monuments, juxtaposed with the surrounding rural poverty, said to the natives: Our very presence shows that you have always been, or have long become, incapable of either greatness or self-rule. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 673
Categorization
- SEED: Angle: how heritage preservation is wielded as a political weapon against educational progress — applies to contemporary heritage-vs-modernity debates in many countries.
- XREF: Parallels the use of tradition to delegitimize native capacity in Things Fall Apart; also echoes the ‘guardian of tradition’ state logic elsewhere in Anderson. — connects to: Settler schooling functioned deliberately as deculturalization of native peoples — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1197
Related
- Monument restoration served as colonial propaganda proclaiming native incapacity for self-rule (similarity 0.86)
- Settler schooling functioned deliberately as deculturalization of native peoples (similarity 0.79)
- Colonial states museumized sacred sites to legitimize themselves as guardians of tradition (similarity 0.79)
- Dutch colonial education produced almost no native college graduates before 1940 (similarity 0.78)