Take the Power Back!

I was listening to Take the Power Back by Rage Against the Machine yesterday. If you are not familiar with the song, check out this video. Lyrics and can be found here. The particular passage that made me get to thinking about my current essay is the following;

The present curriculum
I put my fist in 'em
Eurocentric every last one of 'em
See right through the red, white and blue disguise
With lecture I puncture the structure of lies
Installed in our minds and attempting
To hold us back
We've got to take it back
Holes in our spirit causin' tears and fears
One-sided stories for years and years and years
I'm inferior? Who's inferior?
Yeah, we need to check the interior
Of the system that cares about only one culture
And that is why
We gotta take the power back

I thought of my own education, particularly in the earlier years, let’s say grades 4-6. Was it Eurocentric? In looking back I would say that yes, it was predominantly Eurocentric. We learned about the medieval times, the renaissance, the world wars and all the rest. We did learn quite a lot about First Nations culture and struggles between the colonizers and colonized. I would say this was mostly the result of being brought up in a province with an approximately 20% First Nations population. Now I don’t remember many of the particular details of these lessons but, through some neurological malfunction, I made the leap from Rage Against the Maching to Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Could there be a more perfect venue to evaluate the eurocentricity of my education. I often watched the show as a kid and we had the computer game installed at school (follow this link for a reminder of the theme song).

I set out on the quest to determine the countries that Carmen Sandiego visited (actually she stole landmarks and other stuff and you had to catch her). A quick visit to Wikipedia confirmed the follow countries (Note that cities are identified as they were in the game and that they are followed by the country that the city would have been located in at the time the game was produced)

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Sydney, Australia

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Montreal, Canada

Peking, China

Moroni, Comoros

Cairo, Egypt

Paris, France

Athens, Greece

Budapest, Hungary

Reykjavík, Iceland

New Delhi, India

Baghdad, Iraq

Rome, Italy

Tokyo, Japan

Bamako, Mali

Mexico City, Mexico

Kathmandu, Nepal

Oslo, Norway

Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea

Lima, Peru

Kigali, Rwanda

San Marino, San Marino

Singapore

Moscow, Soviet Union

Colombo, Sri Lanka

Bangkok, Thailand

Istanbul, Turkey

London, United Kingdom

New York, United States


Let’s look at a few descriptive statistics related the European and non-European countries visited by Carmen Sandiego (Table 1.). Examining Table 1 suggests that Carmen Sandiego was not as Eurocentric as I may have guessed at first glance at the included countries.

Table 1. Frequency of European and Non-European countries in Carmen Sandiego.
European non-European
Frequency 10 20


However, further research suggests that “eurocentrism is a term coined during the period of decolonization in the later 20th century to refer to the practice of viewing the world from a European perspective, with an implied belief, either consciously or subconsciously, in the preeminence of European (and, more generally, of Western) culture (Wikipedia).” Thus, it is more accurate to categorize countries as Western (or developed) based on the United Nations classifications (Table 2). “In common practice, Japan in Asia, Canada and the United States in northern America, Australia and New Zealand in Oceania, and Europe are considered "developed" regions or areas (Wikipedia).”

Table 2. Frequency of Developed and Developing countries in Carmen Sandiego.
Developed Developing Least Developed
Frequency 11 16 3

Based on this new classification it appears that Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? is not as Eurocentric as I had imagined. But given this data, I’m not exactly sure what the conclusion this essay should be. This case study of the Eurocentrism of my education tells me that perhaps it was not as bad as Rage against the Machine had made me believe. But lets be serious, this was just a crazy idea anyway and does not really represent my true educational experience. In history class we had to be able to draw the map of Europe and outline the countries freehand. We didn’t learn much about Africa, South American or Asia, but my teacher was a bit eccentric so we did get to watch Quest for Fire. I think that’s all you really need to know about my education freehand Europe and Quest for Fire, enough said.