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Laurette S.M. Bristol Plantation Pedagogy: A Postcolonial and Global Perspective. New York: Peter Lang, 2012. vii + 206 pp. (Paper US$37.95)
In Plantation Pedagogy, Laurette Bristol presents two major agendas with regard to primary school education in the twin-island republic of Trinidad and Tobago. She provides a stinging and unapologetic critique of educational practices carried over from the days of British colonial rule into the postindependence era. And she offers hope for the adoption of a redemptive educational alternative capable of emancipating the citizenry from the shackles of colonial rule and slavery.
An overarching feature of Trinidad and Tobago's educational system that spilled over into the present from the pre-independence era (of which Bristol is severely critical) is the organization of human resources in the teaching service. Bristol objects to the supervisory and, by extension, domineering roles assigned to the minister of Education and his or her supervisors. She frowns on the junior/senior dynamics existing between primary and secondary school teachers. And she finds fault in the insistence on individualistic as opposed to collaborative operations by teachers in the classroom. Within this structure, Bristol perceives unmistakable parallels with the old colonial plantation system. Massa is the minister of Education, the overseer is the school supervisor, and the laborers are the teachers who merely implement without question the curriculum that massa has imposed from above.
Bristol...