Colonización y Descolonización Educativa

África: Curriculums must include local content

Noticias

África/Septiembre de 2017/Autores: Khomotso Ntuli , Gert van der Westhuizen /Fuente: Mail and Guardian

Resumen: Los años 2015 y 2016 han recibido varias convocatorias en las universidades para la descolonización del conocimiento. Estos, impulsados por los movimientos #RhodesMustFall y #FeesMustFall, han destacado a los trabajadores de outsourcing, la pobreza estudiantil y el conocimiento enseñado. La última incluyó opiniones sobre los planes de estudio de la educación superior como inadecuados, irrelevantes, no inclusivos e intrínsecamente ajenos, sin tener en cuenta el conocimiento local y las tradiciones de conocimiento de otras partes de la sociedad.Los estudiantes parecen recurrir a pensadores críticos en África y el Sur Global, incluyendo los escritos del educador brasileño Paulo Freire, sobre cómo se enseña o aprende a los pobres y la clase trabajadora, y los problemas con la relación unidireccional entre aquellos considerados informados y quienes recibir el conocimiento.

The years 2015 and 2016 have seen several calls at universities for the decolonisation of knowledge. These, prompted by the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall movements, have highlighted outsourcing workers, student poverty and the knowledge taught. The last included views about higher education curricula being inadequate, irrelevant, not inclusive and inherently alien, not taking into account local knowledge and the knowledge traditions of other parts of society.

Students seem to draw on critical thinkers in Africa and the Global South, including the writings of the Brazilian educationalist Paulo Freire, on how poor and working class people are taught or learn, and the problems with the unidirectional relationship between those considered knowledgeable and those who receive the knowledge.

This is a problem faced not only by university students but also by pupils. The consequence has been what the American historian and sociologist WEB du Bois called a “double consciousness”, one being the “imposed” experience and the other being the lived experience of the “subjects”, with unjust consequences.

The challenge of decolonisation in schools and universities is about the knowledge prescribed in the curriculum. This knowledge, despite the intentions of people’s education and emancipatory learning from way before 1994, remains a continuation of Western knowledge systems.

This has been highlighted by South Africans such as Catherine Odora Hoppers, Crain Soudien, Aslam Fataar and other local education activists, who have detailed how this is still contributing to subjugation, alienation, othering and “epistemicide”.

African knowledge systems are still nowhere visible in the official knowledge of the school curriculum and the policies informed by what teacher educators and researchers maintain as the science of teaching.

In comparison to other countries, South Africa has high percentages of children attending school (though not yet 100% as it should be), and is still doing well in terms of Unesco’s 2030 goals of “education for all”. But the dilemma is that education curricula still exclude African knowledge systems, which means we cannot really talk about inclusion in the full sense of the word.

The calls for the decolonisation of knowledge require all concerned to consider what knowledge is about, and whose knowledge is important and valued. What is also missing in this debate is how knowledge could go beyond what gets you a job and encompass the many aspects of a person and their social context. Such knowledge is not only readily available but also valuable for pupils to understand their place in the communities in which they live.

Part of the problem with school curriculums knowledge and textbooks is that they follows “scientific knowledge” in a manner that seems to divorce school knowledge from the community. This is not only limited to community level but is also reflected by calls for decolonised education in some societies, especially in post-colonial countries. It is a call for the contextualisation of knowledge — a reciprocal engagement between the teacher, the pupil and the community they find themselves or live in.

The idea that “scientific knowledge” is the only legitimate form of knowledge leads Hoppers, the professor of development education at Unisa, to ask questions about the perception of an “epistemological vacuum”, where there is a view that if knowledge is not acquired through a scientifically accredited process then it is less valuable, if valued at all.

In a chapter from a book she wrote with Howard Richards, titled Rethinking Thinking, they note that “tertiary institutions in Africa are challenged to make their position known on the integration of local communities, the critical evaluation of indigenous knowledge, the reciprocal valorisation of knowledge systems and cognitive justice, as Africa seeks to find its voice, heal itself and reassess its true contributions to the global cultural and knowledge heritage”.

She adds that “it is precisely the holders of indigenous knowledge, the ‘informal’ community of expertise located in rural areas of Africa, Asia and other parts of the world, whom the official application of science and development has destroyed”.

The call for decolonisation is a call for restoring the congruence between home and school, and for the educational value of schooling to be advanced. Communities do not see themselves in the school curriculum. Textbooks encourage memorising alien knowledge content — this we see in all school subjects. In the subjects of history, life sciences and life orientation, knowledge is taught and memorised in decontextualised ways. For example, grade eights have to learn about curriculum topics such as “career choice”, “decision-making” and “self-knowledge” in ways that do not include community conceptions of work, careers, jobs and making a living, and drawing on elders for decision-making. Such topics are essentialised in factual and procedural ways, fragmented and decontextualised.

Part of decolonisation is to rediscover community knowledge and learning systems. This involves coming closer to elders and community knowledge holders. What are their understandings of work life, of doing work, not as job, but as community living? Elders have broader conceptions, and they use community learning systems and conversations for learning authentic to community life to enable children, outside of school, to learn about careers, decision-making and self-knowledge.

People’s lived experiences are an important element of their outlook on life and, by extension, their views on useful knowledge, learning and education in general.

Researchers and students from the University of Johannesburg have explored this understanding in a collaborative study in Westbury, Johannesburg. The purpose was to document history knowledge and how community knowledge holders share what they know with children outside school, and to make what is taught in school relevant.

The project was kick-started in the latter part of 2016 with key questions about what authentic knowledge is perceived as and what form of knowledge is valued.

At a recent gathering, four elders/knowledge holders shared their history knowledge with children at the Westbury Youth Centre, which included their views on what it means to grow up in the area. Among their observations were statements such as “we will never know how to behave today and how to make tomorrow if we do not know what happened yesterday”.

This is a view that needs to be seen in the context of someone who comes from and appreciates the dynamics of the community.

Their identification with the area could also be seen in the reverence with which the community identifies with the name Florrie Daniels. She not only worked tirelessly to archive the history of Westbury but also ran projects to uplift the area.

Community knowledge seems to be underestimated, not considered and regarded as not relevant to what children need to learn in school. This leaves them half-educated, and growing up with the idea that it is only knowledge from school that is valuable. Added to this is that the education process does not seem to extend beyond the school walls.

It is also important to note that the history curriculum often treats South African communities as homogeneous. In reality, communities are complex and, without an acknowledgement of knowledge diversity, very little contextual education takes place.

The Westbury project aimed at documenting the “what” and “how” of community knowledge. In this process we focused on history knowledge — the history of community development. The very specific history of Westbury, which is similar to that of Sophiatown and the western townships, is very different to the traditional school history curriculum, which focuses on a selection of general historical events and distant timelines. One finds in the curriculum much about the areas but not the stories of people. The history curriculum in this context captures fact, historical facts.

There must be a fundamental overhaul of the knowledge that is taught in schools to ensure a greater congruence between the curriculum and community knowledge. This is not only to be seen as an aesthetic inclusion but also as a functional aspect of developing citizens with a recognition of their agency as a part of the community and their society. This is the crux of the need for a decolonised education that starts with early schooling and continues to tertiary level in order to have citizens who will understand the context of their communities and society.

Fuente: https://mg.co.za/article/2017-09-29-00-curriculums-must-include-local-content

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Africa: Ethiopia Was Colonised

Noticias

África /Etiopia/Junio del 2017/Noticias/http://allafrica.com

We kept the imperialists at bay, but it wasn’t enough.

Like many African countries that were colonised by the British, Ethiopia’s educational system strongly privileges the English language. I learnt this first hand going through school in the capital Addis Ababa.

Along with my classmates across the vast country, I was taught in my local language from Grades 1 to 6 (ages 6 to 12). But after that, the language of instruction switched. History, maths, sciences and the rest were now taught in English, while Ethiopia’s official language Amharic became its own separate subject.

Growing up in Ethiopia, fluency in English was considered a mark of progress and elite status. At my school, we were not only encouraged to improve our proficiency, but made to feel our future depended on it. When I was in grade 4, one of my tasks as a class monitor was to note down names of classmates I heard speaking Amharic during English lessons or lunchtime. Our teacher would enforce a 5-cent penalty for every Amharic word that slipped through our lips during lessons.

At the same time, we were proudly educated in Western history and literature. I learnt to take pleasure in reading books in English. I listened to American songs. And I looked to emulate the lives of the people I saw in Hollywood films.

At primary and secondary school, we were taught about Ethiopian history too. But many aspects of the country – from its philosophy to its architecture to its unique methods of mathematics and time-keeping – were neglected. I left school feeling I lacked a coherent understanding of my country’s history. And today, like most of my classmates, I would struggle to write even a short essay in Amharic.

My experience no doubts resonates with many people across Africa, where colonialism elevated European languages and history in the education system while devaluing local languages, methods of instruction, and histories. This is what has spurred vigorous movements across the continent today calling for the academy to be decolonised.

The strange thing though is that Ethiopia was never colonised in the first place.

Native colonialism

So how did the country’s school system come to be the way it is? According to Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes’ brilliant new book, Native Colonialism: Education and the Economy of Violence Against Traditions in Ethiopia, the answer is that Ethiopia was «self-colonised» and that education played a big part.

In the academic’s extensive study, he sets out to show «how and at what cost western knowledge became hegemonic in Ethiopia». He suggests that the 1868 British expedition to Abyssinia, which resulted in the British looting massive national treasures and intellectual resources that Emperor Tewodros II had accumulated over time, was a turning point in Ethiopians’ perception of power. Although the Emperor’s defeat in Magdala did not result in the country’s colonisation, it brought about a new, outward-looking consciousness. «This reaction to the European gaze created the desire to acquire European weapons in order to defend the country from Europe,» writes Woldeyes.

Successive rulers maintained a contradictory relationship with Europe – between friendship and enmity – until Emperor Haile Selassie, who ruled up to 1974, initiated a period of radical westernisation post-WW2. In that process, Woldeyes explains, Haile Selassie entrusted certain elites to establish Ethiopia’s modern education system. This group was educated in Western languages and teachings. They embraced European epistemology as a singular, objective basis of knowledge, seeing it as synonymous with «modernity» and naturally superior to the local.

These elites, who Woldeyes refers to as «native colonisers», introduced a system of education into Ethiopia that mimicked Western educational institutions. Contributions from traditional Ethiopian educators such as elders, religious leaders, and customary experts were squeezed out.

The result is that Ethiopia’s schools came to lack a meaningful connection with the culture and traditions of the communities in which they are located. Instead, they prepare students in the skill of imitation using copied curricula and foreign languages. Schooling today, argues Woldeyes, is as much a process of unlearning local tradition as it is about learning the art of foreign imitation.

This disconnect at the heart of Ethiopian teaching has many negative ramifications. An education that doesn’t speak to students’ lived experience limits their capacity to create, innovate, and deliver solutions to problems in their surrounding world. It leads young Ethiopians to feel alienated from their own culture, lowers self-esteem, and leads to a disoriented sense of identity.

Moreover, without a comprehensive understanding of their country’s history and politics, graduates lack the knowledge and skills to confront the nation’s ongoing problems.

Text kills, meaning heals

In Native Colonialism, Woldeyes does not stop at diagnosing the problem. He goes on to propose remedies – namely that the education system be reconstituted on the foundations of Ethiopia’s «rich legacy of traditional philosophy and wisdom».

He argues that: «before the rise of western knowledge as the source of scientific truth, one’s political and social status in Ethiopia was justified on the basis of traditional beliefs and practices». In the tradition of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church, he says, education was not a means to an end, but part of «an endless journey» of knowledge-seeking. This quest was grounded in the two core values of wisdom and humility.

Woldeyes argues that we need to put these core values back at the centre of the country’s education, which should reflect indigenous beliefs, knowledges and philosophies. This does not mean foreign ideas should be rejected. Students should be exposed to a variety of teachings. But they should, he says, be disseminated through an Ethiopian frame of reference.

Woldeyes argues that this approach was the norm in Ethiopian education for centuries. Through trade and diplomatic relations, scholarship from as far as Asia and Europe has been making its way to Ethiopia for hundreds of years. But traditionally, scholars did not simply translate these works into local languages.

Instead, they used an Ethiopian interpretative paradigm called Tirguamme «to evaluate the relevance and significance of knowledge». Woldeyes defines this as «a process that searches for meaning by focusing on the multiplicity, intention, irony and beauty of a given text». This unique process of inquiry is based on a traditional principle that literally translates as «text kills, but meaning heals». It is apparent in different Ethiopian cultural practices such as the multi-layered poetic practice of «wax and gold», allegorical puzzle games, the art of judicial debating, and storytelling.

Woldeyes’s methodology offers a potential framework for reforming the current education system in Ethiopia. It envisions a system of education centred on local priorities and ways of being, whilst also incorporating ideas from around the world.

Decolonising the academy

Woldeyes’s ground-breaking analysis demonstrates that despite the fact that no colonial power managed to conquer Ethiopia, the country did not escape being colonised in other ways.

Moreover, his study shows that decolonising education across Africa will require an investigation of how indigenous epistemologies were violently discarded. It will also entail a critical study of the modes of scholarship previously side-lined as «traditional».

Woldeyes’s research suggests that the decolonization movement cannot be confined to the four walls of elite educational institutions. It must reach out beyond to members of society that were previously closed out, such as traditional leaders, elders, and others.

Emperor Tewodros believed that Ethiopia needed European weapons to defend the country from Europe. Today, we may need native epistemologies to take back the country from native colonisation.

Fuente: http://allafrica.com/stories/201706210608.html

Fuente imagen:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/mlmCdqbuYeD-mBExDY3ugEekwAvDyre4RdCToHO9HaZIYoQBD4VTnwt1bDMqncTnScGbeQ=s139

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