Paper short abstract:

Using Uganda as an example, this paper examines the colonial legacy of education in postcolonial contexts as an aspect of the “global education crisis”, focusing on current dynamics and effects of the instrumentalization of formal education as a tool to consolidate specific structures of power.

Paper long abstract:

In mainstream discourses on the "global education crisis", education is typically discussed in terms of infrastructure, access or inclusion. However, when looking at education in postcolonial contexts, it is not only crucial to understand and consider existing problems of inequality and underfunding, but also the implications of the fact that formal education systems were colonially designed (and often continue to serve) as a tool to consolidate specific structures of power and domination. This paper explores this aspect through the case study of Uganda. The starting point of my analysis is the currently dwindling power of the central legitimization narrative of the authoritarian Museveni regime, which portrays Museveni’s seizure of power in 1986 as an act of national liberation. Among young people, however, this historical-political story finds little resonance, as it lacks an affective connection to their lived realities. One of the spaces in which the regime is trying to reach young Ugandans and re-stabilize the discursive hegemony of its "liberation narrative" are history classes in schools and universities. At the same time, Uganda's ruling elite seems increasingly concerned about the critical autonomous power of humanities subjects such as history – and rightly so, I argue. Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic research in Ugandan educational institutions, I show how instead of simply accepting the limitations of Uganda's ideologically charged and restrictive history curriculum, students and teachers actively engage with them and thereby transform the classroom from a site of ideological instruction to a site of political contestation and debate.