Towards an epistemological alliance for the decolonization of knowledge of the global South and the global North

Social, cultural and scientific practices in the twenty-first century should not be areas where local knowledge is sacrificed on the altar of Western scientific rigour, but rather spaces that encourage a respectful and fruitful dialogue between knowledge holders from the global North and knowledge holders from the global South (with a mutually emancipatory aim). Learning to be or to become means opening up to epistemological diversity in order to develop our human potential in a sustainable and multidirectional way. It is essential to think, within the limits of a transgressive and emancipatory pedagogy, about the practical modalities of an alliance between the epistemologies of the global North and those of the global South to promote the futures of education. 

The monocultural educational paradigm is like a steamroller that crushes local knowledge in its multiple dimensions (technical, symbolic, magical, religious, relational, rational...) that appear irrational or residual, while much of this knowledge plays a very important role in human and planetary sustainability. If schools and societies of the future are to diminish the conscious and unconscious practices of destruction of local and indigenous knowledge in the global South and global North, they must invite the holders of this knowledge to teach and use it without constraint, in order to strengthen its resilience and optimize its transmission to present and future generations. Valuing the diversity of knowledge, ontologies, historical paths, temporalities, human cultures, languages, world views, ways of thinking and acting will allow the education of the future to confront monocultural violence. The education systems of the future should be based on an ecology of knowledge, in the sense that they are called upon to link the knowledge of the global South and the knowledge of the global North with a view to producing allocentric, place-centric and planet-centric humans capable of grasping dialectical units in the kaleidoscopic flow of human and natural facts. 

The products of Western and Western-centric education systems generally view the poor lacking in revenue in the global North and global South as also lacking in thought. Based on the dichotomy between knowers and non-knowers or between scholars and believers, these educational systems consciously and unconsciously promote socio-epistemic separation to the detriment of the epistemological mutual aid necessary for human survival. This age-old attitude is a hindrance to the hybridization of knowledge, which better reflects the complexity of human life. By excluding the language (symbolic linguicide ) of local knowledge holders and modes of knowledge production that do not coincide with the epistemology of the global North, formal educational processes, of which the monoculture of scientific knowledge is the substratum, lead to immeasurable cognitive losses in all fields of activity. The integration of local knowledge holders into formal education will lead to the co-construction of new knowledge and mutual correction between the knowledge of the global South and the knowledge of the global North, which will undoubtedly enrich science as a work of humanity.

The integration of local and indigenous knowledge holders into mainstream education will not be achieved without the use of local idioms. The use of ancestral languages in formerly colonized countries as the main vehicles of instruction will bring about intellectual liberation and autonomy, critical thinking, a sense of linguistic security, and the development of cognitive and metacognitive skills, all of which are essential to the process of knowledge production. Inequalities in the mastery of one or more "world" languages create an abyssal line between the global South and the global North in the field of knowledge production. Despite efforts to reform and develop many of them, local languages are still considered within many States as instruments unsuited to abstraction or modern science. However, it is necessary to make these languages teaching vehicles for an emancipating multicultural education and sustainable development. 

Local and indigenous knowledge systems are not only associated with human sustainability but also with planetary sustainability by enabling communities to participate in conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystems. The integration of local knowledge into primary, secondary and university curricula will enable educational institutions of the future to reduce auto-epistemicide (local knowledge disappears on its own because it is not valued or used, especially by young people), endo-epistemic practices (many actors from Western-centred education systems, as well as several holders of ancestral knowledge such as Haitian midwives and African and Andean-Amazonian traditional doctors, cease to use some local knowledge) and exo-epistemic practices (Western-centred intervention is causing the rapid disappearance of much local knowledge and know-how that was previously effective, both consciously and unconsciously; the destruction of traditional technical knowledge can be referred to as technocide).