Summary: Reading Erasures and Making the Familiar Strange: Defamiliarizing Methods for Research in Formerly Colonized and Historically Oppressed Communities
Summary: Reading Erasures and Making the Familiar Strange: Defamiliarizing Methods for Research in Formerly Colonized and Historically Oppressed Communities
Purpose
- Kaomea’s first and foremost purpose through this article was to reveal how the educational system in Hawai’i and other previously colonized places, favours colonialist, indifferent, non-traditional and oppressive tendencies of schooling.
- The article tries to prove the prevailing disembodiment and demotivation of the kupana (meaning ancestral, traditional, of the forefathers) by the schooling system in Hawai’i and address the reasons for such developments
- The article tries to put forward the availability of the different kinds of defamiliarizing analytic tools, like reading erasures and contemplating Lei day (Kaomea, 2002), that can be put to use change the perspective of present scenario and expose the true condition of the kupana in schools, and how use of such tools would reveal oppression and the plight of traditionally side-lined communities.
- The article also sheds light on how apparently compassionate or progressive educational practices can have unforeseen results and how even well-intentioned educationalists can unknowingly operate to create oppressive hegemonies.
Personal perspective
- The lapse of traditions can occur due to many reasons and the account the article puts forward forces a disturbing realization that traditional education are succumbing to current trends in education without the knowledge of the people
- The facts in the article are given after profound research and all the arguments are well supported through references of pictures and works by other researchers.
Reference
Kaomea, J. (2002). Reading Erasures and Making the Familiar Strange: Defamiliarizing Methods for Research in Formerly Colonized and Historically Oppressed Communities. College of Education, University of Hawai‘i
