Reclaiming Our Indigenous Voices: The Problem with Postcolonial Sub-Saharan African School Curriculum
Mots-clés :
colonial education, indigenous knowledges, school curriculum, Sub-Saharan Africa, voicesRésumé
The school curriculum in postcolonial Sub-Saharan Africa experiences challenges that are a legacy of colonial education that remained in place decades after political decolonization. The case for African school curriculum is contentious in contemporary Africa because it negates the voices of African indigenous populations. Despite the advent of decolonization that started in the 1960s, African education systems mirror colonial education paradigms inherited from former colonial govern- ments. Colonial education was hegemonic and disruptive to African cultural practices, indigenous knowledges (IKs) and ways of knowing. Prior to colonization, Africans were socialized and educated within African indigenous cultural contexts. With the advent of colonization, traditional institutions of knowledge started disappearing due to cultural repression, misrepresentations, misinterpretations and devaluation. Postcolonial educations systems in Sub-Saharan Africa should reclaim Indigenous voices through curriculum reforms. This paper explores the possibilities of reclaim- ing IKs in postcolonial Sub-Saharan African schools and the challenges in revisiting indigenous discourses on school knowledge. The paper argues that it is through the implementation and integration of IKs in schools that students, parents and communities can reclaim their voices in the process of educating the African child.
Références
Appiah, K. A. (1992). In my father’s house: Africa is the philosophy of culture. New York, NY: OUP.
Barua, B. P. (2010). Ethnic minorities, indigenous knowledge, and livelihoods: Struggle for survival in Southeastern Bangladesh. In D. Kapoor & E. Shizha (Eds.), Indigenous knowledge and learning in Asia/Pacific and Africa: Perspectives on development, education and culture (pp. 63-80). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Boothman, D. (2008). Hegemony: Political and linguistic sources for Gramsci’s concept of hegemony. In R. Howson & K. Smith (Eds.), Hegemony: Studies in consensus and coercion. London, UK: Routledge.
Brokensha, D. W., Warren, D. M., & Warner, O. (Eds.). (1980). Indigenous knowledge system and development. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Brown, S. G. (2000). Words in the wilderness: Critical literacy in the borderlands.
New York: State University of New York Press.
Clark, M. (1977). Antonio Gramsci and the revolution that failed. New Haven, CT:Yale University Press.
Dyck, L. R. (2005). Redefined rhetorics: Academic discourse and Aboriginal students. Paper presented at the First Nations, First Thoughts Conference Canadian Studies Centre, University of Edinburgh, May 5- 6, 2005.
Eggleston, J. (1977). The sociology of the school curriculum. London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Flavier, J. M., de Jesus, A., Navarro, C. S., & Warren, D. M. (1995). The regional program for the promotion of indigenous knowledge in Asia. In D. M. Warren, L. J. Slikkerveer, & D. Brokensha (Eds.), The cultural dimension of development: Indigenous knowledge systems (pp. 479-487). London, England: Intermediate Technology Publications.
Giltrow, J. (2002). Academic writing: Writing and reading in the disciplines (3rd ed.). Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press.
Giroux, H. (1996). Is there a place for cultural studies in colleges of education? In H. A. Giroux, C. Lankshear, P. McLaren, & M. Peters (Eds.), Counternarratives: Cultural studies and critical pedagogies in postmodern spaces (pp. 27-49). New York, NY: Routledge.
Ibukun, W. O., & Aboluwodi, A. (2010). Nigeria’s national policy on education and the university curriculum in history: Implication for nation building. Journal of
Education and Practice, 1(2), 1-17.
Itolondo, W. A. (2012). Factors influencing school-based-teacher-evaluation in Kenya.
Saarbrü ́cken, Germany: Lambert Academic Publishing.
Kallaway, P. (1984). An introduction to the education for blacks in South Africa. In P. Kallaway (Ed.), Apartheid and education: The education of black South Africans
(pp. 1- 13). Bloomfontein: Ravan Press.
Kapoor, D., & Shizha, E. (Eds.). (2010). Indigenous knowledge and learning in Asia/Pacific and Africa: Perspectives on development, education and culture. New York,NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kelly, G. P., & Atbach, P. G. (1984). The four faces of colonialism. In G. P. Kelly & P. G. Atbach (Eds.), Education and the colonial experience (pp. 1-5). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
Lemert, C. (Ed.). (1999). Social theory: The multicultural and classic readings. Oxford, CO: Westview Press.
Lillis, K. M. (1985). Africanizing the school literature curriculum in Kenya: A case studying curriculum dependency. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 18(1), 63-84.
Macaulay, R. (1994). Minute on Indian education. In Ashcroft et al. (Eds.), The post-colonial studies reader (pp. 428-430). New York, NY: Routledge.
Marah, J. K. (2006). The virtues and challenges in traditional African education. The Journal of Pan African Studies, 1(4), 1-24.
Maweu, J. W. (2011). Indigenous ecological knowledge and modern western ecological knowledge: Complementary, not contradictory. Thought and Practice: A Journal of the Philosophical Association of Kenya, 3(2), 35-47.
Mazrui, A. (1993). Language and the quest for liberation in Africa: The legacy of Franz Fanon. Third World Quarterly, 14(2), 348-365.
Nakpodia, E. D. (2012). Leadership development skills: A Nigeria educational institutions review. Global Business and Economics Research Journal, 1(2), 93-110.
Nasongo, J. W., & Musungu, L. L. (2009). The implications of Nyerere’s theory of education to contemporary education in Kenya. Educational Research and Reviews, 4(4), 111-116.
Nicolaides, A. (2012). Globalization and Americanization – the hijacking of indigenous African culture. Global Advanced Research Journal of History, Political Science and International Relations, 1(6), 118-131.
Nsibambi, A. (2001). The effects of globalization on the state in Africa: Harnessing the benefits and minimizing the costs. Panel discussion on globalization and the state: New York United Nations General Assembly, Second Committee.
Nyerere, J. K. (1968). Ujamaa: Essays on socialism. London, UK: Oxford University Press. Oluniyi, O., & Olajumoke, A. C. (2013). Curriculum development in Nigeria:
Historical perspectives. Journal of Educational and Social Research, 3(1), 73-80.
Outlaw, L. (1987). African ‘philosophy’: Deconstruction and reconstructive challenges. Contemporary Philosophy: A New Survey, 5, 1-19.
Owuor, J. A. (2007). Integrating African indigenous knowledge in Kenya’s formal education system: The potential for sustainable development. Journal of Contemporary Issues in Education, 2(2), 21-37.
Republic of Kenya (2005). Sessional paper no. 1: A policy framework for education, training and research. Nairobi: Ministry of Education.
Rodney, W. (1982). How Europe underdeveloped Africa. Washington, DC: Harvard University Press.
Rust, V. D. (1991). Postmodernism and its comparative education implications. Comparative Education, 35(4), 613-627.
Scott, D. J., & Miller, A. N. (2002). A cross-cultural study of immediacy, credibility, and learning in the U. S. and Kenya. Journal of Communication Education, 51(3), 280-292.
Shizha, E. (2005). Reclaiming our memories: The education dilemma in postcolonial African school curricula. In A. A. Abdi & A. Cleghorn (Eds.), Issues in African education: Sociological perspectives (pp. 65-83). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Shizha, E. (2009). Chara chimwe hachitswanyi inda: Indigenizing science education in Zimbabwe. In D. Kapoor & S. Jordan (Eds.), Education, participatory action research, and social change: International perspectives (pp. 139-154). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Shizha, E. (2010a). Rethinking and reconstituting indigenous knowledge and voices in the academy in Zimbabwe: A decolonization process. In D. Kapoor & E. Shizha (Eds.), Indigenous knowledge and learning in Asia/Pacific and Africa: Perspectives on development, education and culture (pp. 115-129). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Shizha, E. (2010b). The interface of neoliberal globalization, science education and indigenous African knowledges in Africa, Journal for Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences, 2(3), 27-58.
Shizha, E. (2011). Neoliberal globalization, science education and indigenous African knowledges. In D. Kapoor (Ed.), Critical perspectives on neoliberal globalization, development and education in Africa and Asia (pp. 15-31). Rotterdam, Holland: Sense Publishers.
Shizha E. (2012). Linguistic independence and African education and development. In H. K. Wright & A.A. Abdi (Eds.), The dialectics of African education and western discourses: Counter-hegemonic perspectives (pp. 148 – 162). New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Sifuna, D. N., & Sawamura, N. (2008). Universalizing primary education in Kenya: Is it beneficial and sustainable? Journal of International Cooperation in Education, 11(3), 103-118.
Sillitoe, P. (1998). What, know natives? Local knowledge in development. Social Anthropology, 6(2), 203-220.
United Nations (2007). The United Nation’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. New York, NY: United Nations.
wa Thiong’o, N. (1986). Decolonizing the mind: The politics of language in African literature. Portsmouth, UK: Heinemann.
Warren, D. (1991). Using indigenous knowledge in agricultural development. Washington, DC: The World Bank.
Whitt, L. (2009). Science, colonialism, and indigenous peoples: The cultural politics of law and knowledge. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
