Soviet Compulsory Education and the Unsettling of Central Asia: An Eco-Justice Analysis

• In Event: 54.080 - Roundtable Session 22
  In Roundtable Session: 54.080-20 - CANCELLED: Stories of Love and Loss From Inuit, Tajik, Buddhist, and Rural American Perspectives: Living Well in the Anthropocene

Abstract

When the Soviets started building the new system in Central Asia in early 1900, they viewed local cultures as backward and in need of change. Mechanization and industrialization have been widely imposed and formal education has been used as a main tool to implement industrialized development. I grew up when industrialization was fully implemented and schooling was fully in place. I was schooled through grade 12, then went to university. But formal schooling solely could not replace humbleness and humaneness to things beyond us that was experienced and practiced in my culture. Similar to our Inuit colleague’s narrative, formal schooling promoted “smartness” that was mostly about knowing some facts within disconnected disciplines. As an EcoJustice educator (Bowers, 1993; Martusewicz, 2001; 2013; Berry, 1996) using post-colonial theory (Fanon, 1963; Said, 1979; Spivak, 1988), I work to question whose knowledge is dominant and what is being lost. How do we understand the complexity of learning that takes place outside of schooling and what are the discourses used to justify one type of knowledge over another.

Author

• Nigora Erkaeva, Eastern Michigan University