The banking of education for sustainable development : A critical discourse analysis of the World Bank’s education policy from a modern/colonial world system perspective

Sammanfattning: Throughout colonial history, education has been used actively in an attempt to assimilate subaltern cultures into the colonizers’ realm. This study looks at the relationship between education of children in developing countries as a tool within sustainable development in relation to the colonial past and modern day coloniality. It looks at how the colonial use of education is recurring within a present hegemon of the modern/colonial world system. This is done by analysing education policy documents form the World Bank, the world’s largest single international provider of education development finance to developing countries. A hegemonic culture founded in a neoliberal capitalist modern/colonial world system is seen within the documents. This hegemonic culture undermines subaltern local and indigenous knowledge and builds on the “burden” of the Occidental needing to elevate developing countries from being “uneducated” into “educated” through universal, standardized and measurable education policies for proper sustainable development to happen. Thus, this development undermines the developing countries agency within lending negotiations as well as pushes them into environmental degradation through destruction and exploitation of natural resources and indigenous populations in order to meet debt-servicing needs dictated by the World Bank.