John Dewey and the Question of Global Whiteness: A Postfoundational History of Transpacific Education Reforms

• In Event: (A)Historicity in Critical Posthuman and Postfoundational Studies in Education: Toward Educational Renewal and Reparative Futures

Abstract

Whiteness reiterates “a way of speaking from a center that they often appear to forget forms the white ideological fulcrum upon which what they say (do not say) or see (do not see) hinges” (Yancy, 2004, p. 1). Critical scholars have questioned the persistence of Euro-centric epistemology and coloniality in shaping human modernity, which is shaped relying on white-centric norms and their epistemic possibilities (Mills, 2007; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018; Quijano, 2000). In education, the critical awareness of whiteness is crucial for challenging the “global processes of (neo)colonization […] because students [continue to] learn that the white diaspora has, to a large extent, created a global condition after its own image” (Leonardo, 2002, p. 33). Although critical whiteness studies helped us recognize and challenge the perpetuation of whiteness, these studies are mostly conducted in the western context, still marginalizing the imperial transpacific histories between Asian and American continents (Espiritu, 2014; Lowe, 2015).

In this paper, I interrogate the epistemic imperial legacy of the United States in the transpacific education reforms by historicizing the presence of the (invisible-yet-performative) white-centric norms on human development in the present. Building on critical transpacific studies (e.g., Suzuki & Bahng, 2020; Yoneyama, 2016, 2017), my analysis brings John Dewey as a global icon of U.S. progressivism (Popkewitz, 2005) into a critical postfoundational history of national education reforms in South Korea. Drawing on reform documents and research literature, my discussion highlights how the white-centric norms embedded in John Dewey’s ideas of progressive education (Fallace, 2015; McCall, 2019; Yancy, 2004) had formed the epistemic foundations of the educated humans in South Korea, which has rarely changed until today since its liberation from Japanese colonization in 1945.

This paper exemplifies a critical postfoundational history in education to disrupt the epistemic continuity of the white-centric norms through non-linear and reparative relationships to the futures (Sriprakash, 2023). It is non-linear and reparative in that just futures can emerge by recovering lost histories and so-far peripheralized epistemic possibilities. Additionally, this paper advocates for a global perspective to decenter the U.S.-centric views on progressive education. Progressive education was not only liberatory but also detrimental due to its historical dominance on educational possibilities that has marginalized other ways to reform education. Moreover, this paper calls for critical postfoundational studies to take the intellectual leadership to advance transpacific studies in education by theoretically, historically, and critically interrogating the global movement of the white-centric norms in education reforms. All in all, this paper highlights the epistemological, ontological, and ethical implications of historicizing as a method in posthuman and postfoundational studies to remedy and repair the still progressivist, humanist, and race-neutral assumptions and, ultimately, to promote equitable educational reforms toward the reparative futures.

Author

• Sun Young Lee, Wichita State University