|
|
AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
Show panel list
Content's transformation in South-African school syllabus? A look at new tendency
| Panel |
18. Education and Social change in Eastern and Southern Africa
|
| Paper ID | 660 |
| Author(s) |
Lafon, Michel
|
| Paper |
No paper submitted
|
| Abstract | South Africa has been dubbed two countries in one, as it comprises both areas quite a-par with Europe or the US regarding education, development and accessibility, and remote areas, more reminiscent of rural Africa, where ‘tradition’ reins supreme and western education modes remain distant. Even if this perception is clearly premised on an underestimation of the impact of colonization and the destruction of pre-capitalist societies, and, in another aspect, on the assimilation of western education to modernity, it does signal the uneven diffusion of western education, following roughly racial and, within black communities, social differentiations, both in terms of access and impact.
Democratization in 1994 has given new impetus to a further spread of western education, already well in its way under the late years of apartheid. However, one should not conclude that this will unavoidably result in the further shrinking of the domain of African tradition, and a yet wider expansion of western world views. This is indisputably a tendency. But it can be significantly mitigated by a major curriculum reform coupled to the new language policy in education, launched as from 2004, all taking place in the context of the African Renaissance and the reclaiming of an African cultural heritage. As pedagogy becomes learners’s centered, and African languages find their way back as medium of instruction, school program contents tend to acknowledge, if not incorporate, aspects of indigenous philosophy or knowledge base. This is reflected, even if unevenly, in the new school manuals in African languages that are being issued and disseminated through the school system. Even if such a new trend has not yet passed the trial of time, and it is too early to assess its impact and durability on society at large, some aspects indisputably find their way in the global ethos of the new discourse on society that is emerging. That could be interpreted to some extent as an attempt at resisting overall societal westernization and could well offer a new blend of ‘modernity’ and ‘tradition’.
We will seek relevant indications in a recent Zulu school manual for grade 10.
|
|