PHILIPSBURG–University of St. Martin (USM) has teamed up with Windward Islands Teachers Union (WITU) to invite Dr. Melissa Weiner, an internationally renowned sociologist of education, to the island to share her research on schooling practices in the Dutch Kingdom. Dr. Weiner teaches at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. She researches and publishes on the ways in which colonially derived ideas about appropriate roles of men and women, adequate education for children of the working classes, and the importance attached to skin colour and hair type continue to be part of the unacknowledged curriculum throughout the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
WITU President Claire Elshot-Aventurin said, “This is a great opportunity to collaborate with the University of St Martin in presenting to the teaching staff of St. Maarten and the public at large this informative and educational lecture from this young professor.
“As a union, it makes us proud to know that our members can be empowered in their work by attending locally organised lectures of this nature. This will help the teachers to hear, analyse and admit to which level they would want to bring education.”
To make sure that this lecture meets the needs of the teaching population, USM President Dr. Francio Guadeloupe has consulted with various school boards and actively enlisted the help of local veterans in education.
One of these veterans is comedian and artist Dorothy Richardson, who has been active in education for 45 years. When asked why she had taken up the offer to be part of the organising committee, she responded, “It is long overdue that we as a people revisit and rethink the function and goals of the educational system in our society. This time, we must genuinely work towards nation-building through education. I look forward to Dr. Wiener’s discourse of how decolonising education can subvert the current status and promote nation-building.”
Dr. Guadeloupe invites the entire public of St. Maarten/St. Martin – both sides of the island – to attend the lecture, as it is about the future of everyone on the island.
Source: The Daily Herald https://www.thedailyherald.sx/islands/66212-sociologist-to-share-research-about-schooling-practices
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