Towards a Deconstructed Curriculum: Rethinking Higher Education in the Global North

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to argue for the deconstruction rather than the decolonisation of the neocolonial curriculum. Globalisation facilitates the democratisation of higher education, which is now accessible to more people than ever before, but globalisation also facilitates the expansion of the ideological dominance of the Global North over the Global South by means of the neocolonial curriculum. Contemporary attempts to decolonise Global South curricula are proceeding very slowly. We propose an alternative, the deconstruction of the Global North curriculum, i.e. a radical change to the Global North curriculum that exploits the neoliberal imperative to maximise profit in order to undermine the neocolonial curriculum. We use two case studies – Frantz Fanon and Çiğdem Kağitçibaşi – to demonstrate how the deconstruction of the Global North curriculum can be achieved, by the prioritisation of theory and practice that are sensitive to context.