African Values and Social Studies Education

By Beaton Galafa

This monograph discusses the integration of traditional African values into

social studies education in Malawi. It targets the curriculum as a fertile ground for breeding indigenous knowledge due to its relevance in the development of effective moral, ethical, and citizenship skills. The discussion occurs in the context of various studies on the paucity of an indigenous philosophy and the resulting dearth of local knowledge, which expose African education systems to Eurocentric values and ontologies. The study thus responds to recurring calls for the decolonization and Africanization of the curriculum for locally generated solutions to African problems. Galafa’s critical findings consolidate the basis for integration of local values into the curriculum to forge a national identity for Malawi and to develop education truly relevant to the Malawian society.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Academica Press
• Release date: Feb 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781680532517

Book preview

Introduction

This study centres on the possible integration of African traditional values into the Social Studies education. Deploying Umunthu as a source philosophy for the values, the monograph uses Malawi as a sample country, noting the plausibility of extrapolating its findings to the bigger African context due to the homogeneity of African cultural and historical experiences. To contextualize the experiences I find homogenous, I have chronicled a brief historical context of education in Africa and the trajectory it has taken in changing political contexts viz. the colony, the post-colony, and the post-independence.

I targeted the Social Studies curriculum as a fertile ground for breeding indigenous knowledge because of the relevance of the subject towards the development of effective moral, ethical and citizenship skills in the Malawian society as per the objectives of the curriculum. Such propositions come in the context of various works that have pointed to the lack of an indigenous philosophy and the resulting death of local knowledge that has made the education system of many African nations vulnerable to Eurocentric values and knowledge forms. This research acts as a response to calls for Africanization and decolonization of the curriculum by turning to indigenous knowledge production for local solutions to challenges encountered in African societies. The study therefore falls within general discourses of decolonization and Africanization of the curriculum for immediate relevance and restoration of the African’s own space in challenging global knowledge production which has witnessed the Malawian society degenerate into a plethora of socioeconomic problems.

A prediction and analysis of the study’s findings is explored from the angle of three interrelated theories viz. the Dependency Theory, the Southern Theory and the Reconstructionist Theory. The Dependency Theory helps in providing a historical and contemporary understanding on why countries of the periphery such as Malawi continue with curricula that appear to be less relevant and unrelatable to local needs. The Southern Theory provides the study with a basis on the advancement of indigenous knowledge as it explains the need for reliance on local knowledge production in the Global South for solutions to phenomena that have their roots in the region (the Global South). The study brings in the Reconstructionist Theory to relate the integration of Umunthu into the curriculum as traditional culture with the demands for modernization – the other Western and local elements that the proposed values would complement in the curriculum.

In placing the discourse within the right context, I explore attempts at Africanization of the curriculum in various countries. Thus, the study then broadens its focus to an exploration of global perspectives of the concept of Umunthu. From here, I narrow the discourse down to attempts at providing local solutions through an africanized education system in South Africa and Zimbabwe, which incorporated Hunhu/Unhu (cognates of Umunthu again) values into the education system. A review of the available literature of Umunthu winds up with a focus on propositions for its inclusion in the education system in Malawi, where primarily the concern has been its use in epistemology.

The study used a qualitative method with primary data generated from interviews with a sample of scholars/authors on Umunthu and Social Studies, and education, teachers, students, and parents from all over Malawi. Secondary data was sourced from scholarly articles, the traditional media as well as random searches on social media. Data presentation, analysis and discussion occurred under the three main theories which complemented each other in creating perspectives from which to understand the historical and contemporary contexts behind curricular reforms in Malawi. The theories also helped justify the need for indigenization of the curriculum through integration of the Umunthu philosophy as a decolonization process.

In the first chapter, the study presents a nexus between education and Social Studies in Africa. Here, I present the study’s background and subtly discuss the role of education in African development whose adverse effects on the African society are in part the very basis of the monograph. This is followed by a brief discussion of the three principal theories that inform the study. I purposefully proceed with the main purpose and specific objectives of the study after this to demonstrate the connection between the theories and the intention of the study. The first chapter concludes with definitions of the study’s key terms. The second chapter explores the attempts to integrate African values in education on the continent. It starts with a focus on Julius Nyerere’s Ujamaa in Tanzania as part of the earliest efforts at Africanization of education with his concept of Education for Self-Reliance. It then shifts to global perspectives on Umunthu to demonstrate the world’s familiarity with the philosophy. This precedes a section on Umunthu’s role in education for the healing process of post-apartheid South Africa, an aspect I explore further in education for reconciliation in Zimbabwe. From Zimbabwe, I navigate the terrain of Umunthu and its multidisciplinary presence in Malawi, before narrowing it further to education. The third chapter concerns the methodology that was deployed in this study. It contains very brief overviews of the research type, data collection, data analysis, ethical considerations, and trustworthiness of the study.

The presentation, analysis and discussion of the findings were carried out simultaneously in the fourth and fifth chapters where the focus was on the Social Studies curriculum and Umunthu and its integration into the curriculum respectively. This presents the fourth chapter with a discussion on the various aspects of the curriculum such as objectives, content, implementation and criticism of the curriculum which pointed to one larger theme of irrelevance to the local needs of moral, ethical and citizenship education through its Eurocentrism. This then formed the basis of chapter five where a homogenous understanding of Umunthu was provided from various perspectives before consolidating its proposed integration into the curriculum through a string of related arguments that hinged on the socioeconomic problems currently facing the Malawian society.

Chapter One

Education and Social Studies in Africa

1.1. Background

Education in Africa and Malawi in particular has traversed different sociopolitical and historical periods. These can be categorized into three. The pre-colonial period is the first, with an Africa that had its own completely developed education systems that led to the sustainability of the African societies at the time. As Rodney (1973) observes, one significant aspect of education in this period was its relevance to Africans. The pre-colonial education had among other important features close links with social life, both in a material and spiritual sense; collective nature; many-sidedness; and progressive development in conformity with the successive stages of physical, emotional and mental development of the child (Rodney, 1973). The education that existed in the different African societies at the time connected with the purposes of the society. Rodney (1973) thus makes a generalization about the education of the time as corresponding to the realities of pre-colonial African society and consequently nurturing personalities that fitted into the society. As Wyse (2008) argues, African traditional systems of education are distinguished by complex constructions of learning associated with achievement and expectations, a system which was in place long before European imposition (Abdi and Cleghorn 2005; Diop 1990; Jackson 1970; van Sertima 1991).

However, this type of education has today generated the label of being informal. This categorization emanates from the dawn of a new period that was not only catastrophic to Africa’s education but to its social and political establishments as well: colonialism. This was a long period of subjugation to European power and a savage destruction of indigenous knowledge, social and political systems, replacing them with alien European systems. All this was on the pretext of racial superiority – colonialism’s infantilization of the African local systems that had developed overtime in the flourishing of Africa’s various civilizations. However, the overhaul of the African traditional education systems did not have as its purpose the enlightenment of the African as the colonialists would claim. To the contrary, it clearly turned out that its sole purpose was to raise a colonial populace that was subservient to its masters (Namphande, Clarke, Farren, & McCully, 2017). Van der Merwe (1996) confirms that one cannot claim to help someone by indirectly destroying his/her humanity as colonial education did. As noted by Wyse (2008), the colonial educational process sought to alienate Africans from their own reality, history, language, culture, traditions, and economic opportunities.

Consequently, the colonial curricula promoted the colonial power’s history, culture, and values (Tlou and Kabwila 2000:217). Colonial powers purposefully sought to teach African history incorrectly, with crude falsifications hoping it would make the colonized lack identity with a limited sense of their past. (Wyse, 2008)

The different education policies of the colonial period attest to the fact that colonial education targeted breeding a culture of submissiveness to the white colonial masters. Kayambazinthu (1998) notes that even the main objective of the language policy in education during the colonial period was to use language that would help cultivate the local populace that would read, write, and do simple arithmetic. In agreement to this is the observation made at the dawn of independence contained in recommendations of a working committee on Kenyan education. The committee noted that prior to independence, education in Kenya was an instrument of colonial policy designed to educate the people of Kenya into acceptance of their role as the colonized (WaThiong’o, 1987). This was the case everywhere, Malawi inclusive – it being a British protectorate at the time. As a result, the nature of colonial education was minimal with a heavy stress on its limitation to primary education (Mazonde, 1995). Cesaire (2004) argues that colonial education was used for the hasty manufacture of a few thousand subordinate functionaries, boys, artisans, office clerks, and interpreters necessary for smooth operation of the colonial project (Wyse, 2008). From the medium of instruction to curricula content in relevant subjects such as social studies, it was apparent that colonial education was bent on exalting western values and inculcating them into colonial