Colonizing Education and Culture
Education is giving people the freedom to learn and speak in their languages, the school system changes and forces people to change their language to English. It creates an environment where people feel that they have to betray their language to avoid punishment and forced to speak English to survive. “On the Language of African Literature” written by Ngugi Wa Thiong states an argument of the dilemma of English being the dominant language of all languages. African Languages excluded from an English novel, short story, poetry, and dramas. People are discriminated for their native languages and being colonized to speak the English language. English being a dominant language has both sides that people can agree or disagree. How would people be able to communicate with each other in school, work, and with friends, if English wasn’t a dominant language?
Ngugi Wa Thiong was born and raised during the time the British colony colonized Kenya. Growing up, he did not experience discrimination for speaking and writing in the Gikuyu language from middle school to high school. The declaration of a state of emergency over Kenya was the beginning of schools to be taken over by the Englishmen. In his adolescence, he experiences the Mau Mau War of Independence; it is a war between the British Kenya Colony and the Kenya Land and Freedom Army known as the “Mau Mau”. They fought for freedom and Kenya’s independence from British colonists. During those time, students could not speak the Gikuyu language in school; it is considered an improper language, any students caught speaking the language are punished by wearing a metal plate around the neck with inscriptions that said, “I am stupid” or “I am a donkey” or either students get hit by the cane. Students writing and speaking in English were highly rewarded. British colony prevented Africans to use their language; it is a force of control that is erasing many African cultures, history, and identity. Ngugi states that “language without culture cannot exist without each other; both are the component of a person’s identity”. Culture and Language are both an important factor of giving people an identity,
Ngugi Wa Thiong, Gloria Anzaldua, and Jamaica Kincaid have experience discrimination and the dehumanization of their native languages in school and from society. In their novels, they show ways of rebelling against English. “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” written by Gloria Anzaldua, she uses standard English and Spanish, Chicano Spanish, Tex-Mex, Standard Mexican, and Pachuco. A pachuco is a form of rebellion towards the standard English and Spanish. She not only has a conflict with standard English, but she also has a conflict with Spanish. Both languages are the oppressor of her native language.
Chicano Spanish has two adjacent vowels into a single syllable; they say words differently such as Lado to Lao, and mojado to mojao. They use “archaisms” words that are not part of standard Spanish. Chicano Spanish is known as poor Spanish; they use words that Spaniard brought over from Medieval Spain. Chicanos have experience being told that their language is wrong by Latinas. The masculine plural also steals the plural of the female being of language; Chicanas use nosotros when referring to male and female. The first time she heard the women use “nosotras” to refer to a female, it was from Puerto Rican and Cuban women.
Gloria expresses that heterogeneous people have a variety of traits that can be challenging for other cultures to understand their way of communicating; people find a way to oppress the language to gain power. She uses a metaphor that refers to her accent; the dentist is upset that he cannot clean out her roots from her mouth and tongue. The dentist can refer to the school system or anyone. The quote “Ahogadas, escupimos el oscuro. Peleando con nuestra propia sombra el silencio nos sepulta.” Translating to English, it says “drowning; we spit in the darkness. Fighting with our own shadow the silence buries us.” The quote is that people can relate, in people’s daily life, they can feel the school and Latin putting much pressure on their language.
It makes Chicano feel like drowning in all the negativity, but in a way, they are rebelling by spit at the darkness that is pulling them. No matter how much they fight, the shadow cannot be hurt; it is only there to remind the person the position they are in, and they are getting buried in the silence. At Pan American University, Chicano students and herself were required to take two speech classes to get rid of the accent. She expresses that it is violating the 1st Amendment of freedom of speech. She has the same ideology as Ngugi of being robust to survive the struggle from not giving up their native language; anyone can try to erase the person’s history, culture, and native tongue but to be resilient and find ways to cope. People might see the person as a traitor for learning the oppressor language, but it is the only way to succeed in life. Language is part of a person’s culture, and people will find ways to oppress the language to create an atmosphere to threaten and tell other’s it is not the right way. Writers will be the voice for readers to remind people not to give up the language people are trying to make people forget. English is part of people’s daily life but use the native language with family and friends to decolonize English in parts of daily life.
Work Cited
Thiong, Wa Ngugi. “The language of African Literature” Decolonizing the Mind: The politics of Language in African Literature London: James Currey, 1981.
Anzaldua, Gloria. How to Tame a Wild Tongue. www.everettsd.org/cms/lib07/WA01920133/Centricity/Domain/965/Anzaldua-Wild-Tongue.pdf.
