. . . "Colonial and postcolonial problems are the most urgent matters of concern that are confronting the world today" (Mannoni 17). On its own, colonialism has left indelible scars of rape, oppression, and underdevelopment in most Third World nations. These scars, whether economic or cultural, are imprinted on the minds of once colonized peoples. While many newly independent peoples have the sisyphean task of erasing these scars and restoring what the "cankerworm" has eaten, canonization, a new form of colonialism, threatens to continue the work of oppression and marginalization. The traditional literary canon creates inclusiveness and exclusiveness, reinforces stereotypes, and facilitates discrimination and oppression on the bases of race, class, and gender. The concept of this "great" Western art in reality is nothing but a justification for colonization (Baraka 153). This paper explores colonial and canonical marginalization on the basis of class, through education. Reference to class comes from a Marxist-feminist perspective, and Alan Wald's definition provides a most appropriate foundation of understanding:
 

"Class" means redirecting the study of U.S. cultural formation away from myths, themes, symbols, and elitist networks--which are symptomatic, not causal--and focusing more precisely on conquest and invasion, capital accumulation, urbanization, colonial and imperial expansion, and late capitalism, as the framework that nurtures and limits the context in which active agents create culture. (30-31)