Chapter 8: Decisions Taken in Undecidable Terrain: Donor Intervention, Discourses, and Perpetuation of the Educational Myth in the Democratic Republic of Congo

International education “interventions” in the “field” with their (often-white) “experts” are powerful perpetuators of neocolonial discourses in contexts such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). I use Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theory to study international narratives on the utility of education, and on order and discipline in schools, to better understand how outside organizations transmit neocolonial discourses, which are adopted, ignored, or resisted locally. Nodal points of (i) school utility, (ii) control, and (iii) punishment are reviewed, all of which are object to hegemonic interventions to attribute specific significance. The first is related to that of schools as child-friendly and useful, both in practical and in abstract terms. Attempts to fixate a meaning around the second and third nodal points have led to various clashing discourses: (i) an officially sanctioned discourse of child-friendly schools in which corporal disciplining does not take place, (ii) a discourse of order through necessary corporal disciplining, and (iii) a narrative of schools as perpetuators of physical violence. I discuss how informants interrogate and expose the preservation of coloniality in their local and specific educational arrangements, suggesting that a reframing of education is necessary, bringing in local traditions and life skills, entrepreneurship, and local work, to establish a discourse that is not perpetuating a neocolonial vision of education.