Alastair Pennycook

Alastair Pennycook is Professor of Language Studies at University Technology Sydney.  He coordinates and teaches the subject Global Englishes.

I have begun reading English and the Discourses of Colonialism (1998) Routledge, London.  Stumbling upon the writings of Prof. Alastair Pennycook has been a revelation as I am interested in the political dimensions and power relations involved in the teaching of English.
 

Summary
"English and the Discourses of Colonialism opens with the British departure from Hong Kong marking the end of British colonialism. Yet Alastair Pennycook argues that this dramatic exit masks the crucial issue that the traces left by colonialism run deep. This challenging and provocative book looks particularly at English, English language teaching, and colonialism. It reveals how the practice of colonialism permeated the cultures and discourses of both the colonial and colonized nations, the effects of which are still evident today. Pennycook explores the extent to which English is, as commonly assumed, a language of neutrality and global communication, and to what extent it is, by contrast, a language laden with meanings and still weighed down with colonial discourses that have come to adhere to it.  Travel writing, newspaper articles and popular books on English, are all referred to, as well as personal experiences and interviews with learners of English in India, Malaysia, China and Australia. Pennycook concludes by appealing to postcolonial writing, to create a politics of opposition and dislodge the discourses of colonialism from English."

Chapter 5: Opium Riots, English and Chinese

'The curriculum of the girls' school is no longer dead and uninspiring.  Cookery, clay-modelling, paper-cutting, drawn-thread work, hygiene taught by Lady Medical Officers, are romantic subjects for the little Malay girl compared with what her elder sisters learnt a few years ago.' 

Straits Settlements, 1934.

Pennycook views the education provided by the colonial powers as 'fostering a more receptive, obedient and hard-working population' which far from altering the status of women it rather maintained the same status (1998:97).

One aspect of the vernacular education was to promote loyalty, obedience, and acceptance of colonial rule (1998:100).

Language policy involved guarding against the teaching of English 'indiscriminately' with Frank Swettenham (later Sir Frank Swettenham, High Commissioner of the Federated Malay States and Governor of the Straits Settlments) believing that teaching English would 'unfit them for the duties of life and make them discontented with anything like manual labour' (1998:99).

Loh Fook Seng (1975:85): English education 'had emerged as a new basis for the achievement of elitist status'.

The effects of colonial language policies thus laid the roots for ethnic and class divisions that the British could then manipulate to widen colonial governance (1998:101).

Hong Kong: opium riots and myths

"It is important to provide a clearer account of the historical background to colonial education."

"The views of colonialism that many of these histories put into place downplay the background of colonial exploitation, disdain and racism and stress instead a history of colonial benevolence, stability, and docility" (1998:103).

The Opium Holocaust - 'Compared to the infamies of World War II, which still prey upon the Germans and Japanese, the supply of opium to China which led to the addiction and death of countless hundreds of millions has been neglected' Yee 1992 (1998:104).

First Opium War (1840-42)
Second Opium War (1857-58)

The trade in opium was to remain dominant in Hong Kong's development until the Japanese invasion in 1942.