Conflict and Harmony in Education in Tropical Africa

Godfrey N. Brown, Mervyn Hiskett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032152950
• eBook ISBN: 9781000510942
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Index: Law

Originally published in 1975, this book was something of a pioneering study. It examines the three main traditions of African educational development – indigenous, Islamic and 'Western' – and the resulting harmonies and conflicts that arise from these traditions. Its contributors are all specialists writing about their own particular area of interest covering many countries of tropical Africa. They include a number of well-known African scholars as well as some comparatively new names in the field of African Studies at the time. A feature of the book is the attention that it gives to the education of women – an aspect of 'nation-building' that had often been rather neglected.

This study is an inter-disciplinary work, calling into contribution History, Sociology, Anthropology, Law, Linguistics, and Medicine, as well as Education. It seeks to show how complex the educational situation is in Africa – and how this complexity needs to be appreciated as a background to educational planning. Nobody who has read this volume will be inclined to dismiss educational reform in Africa as 'a relatively simple matter' – a point of view too frequently implied by those who have not studied the subject in depth. 'Off with the old – on with the new' cannot be so easily implemented as critics within and without the continent sometimes seem to think. More constructively, however, this volume provides many useful insights into ways in which social tension may be reduced and harmony promoted in, and through, education.

Although it is likely to be of most immediate value to those who are concerned with African education and its administration (especially in teacher-education), the book constitutes a significant contribution to understanding problems of 'development'.

Part III Interaction and the Current Situation

17 Introduction

G. N. BROWN and M. HISKETT

The concluding section of this book cannot embody very definite and constructive conclusions. The interaction between the cultural histories of the peoples of Tropical Africa has been too complicated for the infallible prescription of means for reducing social and educational conflicts and promoting harmony.

This section therefore seeks to indicate some of the factors and projects that merit consideration in promoting educational development. Thus Dent Ocaya-Lakidi and Ali Mazrui examine problems of technical and moral acculturation. They see considerable tension in the promotion of secular skills against the background of an educational provision based on the historical legacy of missionary schools. Granted that the phenomenon of ‘cultural schizophrenia’ that they describe in Uganda may have been less pronounced elsewhere in Africa, their stimulating chapter does emphasise an important gap in the literature of development education: the study of values and of associated attitudes.

Possibly nowhere else in Africa has the conflict of attitudes associated with indigenous, Islamic and Western Christian educational traditions been more marked than in the twentieth-century history of the southern Sudan. Here the impact of all three cultures was experienced, compounded and confounded by the geographical, racial, national and imperial context. Kenneth King’s chapter performs a service in unravelling some of the most significant themes in this conflict. He also shows that great caution is necessary in attributing differing values to opponents.

From values to the language by which they are communicated, and from language to the literature, oral and written, within which they are embodied is a useful sequence. Values are implicit in language since languages delimit reality in different ways. Values are also, of course, both implicit and explicit in literature. In this context, Brian Tiffen presents a succinct synopsis of the problems involved in the use of the English language as a medium of instruction and a survey of current practices, H. L. B. Moody uses his chapter to examine some of the assumptions that arise from the comparative study of literature in Africa today. Especially interesting is his suggestion that traditional African literature is more concerned with the teaching than the learning function. A useful session might be devoted by students training to be teachers to a consideration of this matter.

Such a recommendation is not necessary in respect of the following chapter. Education for self-reliance in mainland Tanzania has caught the imagination of student teachers both within Africa and without. John Cameron’s view that ‘Education for Self Reliance is not firmly founded on traditional education and so cannot even be a synthesis between traditional education and his African socialism’ is a challenging point for such discussion. Certainly there would seem to be in Tanzania—as in the Harambee school movement in Kenya examined by John Anderson—a considerable recourse to popular ideas about traditional African society and an overt concern to use these to reduce conflict and promote harmony in the community.

The two chapters that follow are concerned, first, with the teaching of law in Africa, and then with medical education and both have as their essence a similar theme. In the first chapter James Read looks at the law in its various forms in Africa, acknowledging sources of conflict and advocating very much the same sort of approach to harmonisa-tion that marks the contribution of more general educationists. This view is yet further reinforced by David Stevenson’s viewpoint on medicine: ‘those who teach hygiene (and other subjects) in African schools, should ideally have an understanding of and a respect for both Western science and traditional belief and practice’.

As his contribution to this kind of approach, Raymond Smyke urges a better understanding of the teacher’s status and contribution to the development process. Godfrey Brown examines in particular the conflicts and tensions that cannot be avoided nor invariably reconciled in the process of curriculum development: he advocates a realistic approach using more integrated curricula predicated on the problems of development itself. Finally, Ali A. Mazrui contributes two fascinating case studies of Obote and Nyerere in relation to Milton and Shakespeare respectively. Both would seem to indicate that there is still much to be said for adopting an eclectic approach to the cultural traditions to be found in Africa: by a realistic utilisation of ideas, derived both from within and without the continent, Africa can make its own valuable contribution to world civilisation.

From an examination of the three main educational traditions— indigenous, Islamic and ‘Western’ and their interaction as seen in this book, useful clarification of what is meant by ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ begins to emerge. Yet the concepts are by no means sharply defined.

To begin with, there is the problem of historical semantics. For instance, the introduction to Part II discusses whether Islamic education can be considered as sufficiently established over a long time in Africa as to be regarded as traditional. Or, again, do the reforms made in Islamic education in certain Islamic countries outside Tropical Africa, in the present century, such as, for instance, North Africa and Egypt, make this education ‘modern’? Such theoretical problems, although not of immediate consequence for those presently engaged in the practical tasks of educational planning and practice, are important. For upon attitudes towards them depend decisions about the best approach to each of the three educational traditions with which this book deals. Since the terms ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ are widely used in Africa it seems advisable to invest them with a meaning which will command a consensus of agreement.

In this book ‘traditional’ has sometimes been used to mean ‘ancient’ and ‘modern’ to mean ‘recent’. Perhaps more often, however, ‘traditional’ has meant making for the maintenance of the status quo, and ‘modern’ has meant ‘making for change’. Such a viewpoint would seem to command considerable support in Africa and it is perhaps the most useful way of employing the terms. It should be noted that no moral values are involved in this conceptualisation: maintenance of existing institutions or their change are seen as neither necessarily good nor bad.

If this deliberately amoral dichotomy is accepted, it becomes possible to distinguish certain presuppositions and values attaching to each of the two concepts ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’, as follows: traditional education, whether Indigenous, Islamic or ‘Western’, tends to emphasise the past and to view the present in terms of the past. But modern education, from whichever of the three traditions it ultimately stems, is more likely to be preoccupied with the future and with the present in terms of the future.

Traditional education, whether provided by tribal elders, by Muslim ^culama’ or by Western teachers trained in an authoritarian tradition, will tend to value customary practice, scriptural authority or a cherished ethos more highly than intellectual curiosity. Modern education, on the other hand, certainly stresses the need for intellectual curiosity, although its practice is not always consistent with its theory.

Some traditional systems of education contribute to preserving a closed society, membership of which is restricted to those of certain ethnic origins or religious beliefs. Modern education usually claims to be open to all regardless of religion or ethnic origin, although here again it is legitimate to question how far practice conforms to theory.

Traditional education usually reflects the value placed upon the received role of women in society and fosters unease at the prospect of exposing them to social change. Modern education seeks to give them greater economic and social choice. Similarly, traditional education often emphasises the importance of the community and tends to regard the preservation of social cohesion and stability as one of its most desirable goals. Modern education may question this and is sometimes willing to set individual freedom and fulfilment at the top of its scale of values, even where this may be socially disruptive.

Finally, traditional education usually sees the teacher as ‘giving’ and the pupil as ‘receiving’ (although perhaps an exception to this ought to be made in the case of certain traditional, preliterate African systems). Modern education, on the other hand, generally seeks to promote the pupil’s active participation in learning and will play down the authoritarian role of the teacher.

Such ‘profiles’ are, of course, only approximating to the concepts of the traditional and the modern as they arise from considering the educational situation in tropical Africa. Yet to list them is helpful since they make apparent that it is over-simplistic to think of ‘Western-education’ as being ‘modern’ and ‘Islamic-education’ or ‘Indigenous-education’ as being traditional.

For instance, this book demonstrates that Western education in the hands of the Christian missionaries in particular was often based on dogma and authority. Islam has had its Ahmadiyya movement and the impartial observer would see no difference between the inquiry-based learning going forward in a science laboratory in an Ahmadiyya grammar school and that to be found in a government grammar school. Significant too is the idea, found in a number of chapters, that one of the important changes that Western education can make is to comprehend certain aspects of indigenous education.

It would seem unnecessary to labour the point further but sufficient to suggest that within each of the cultural traditions associated with Indigenous, Islamic and Western education there is a differential ranging from the ‘traditional’ to the ‘modern’. The extent of this differential will vary with the culture tradition being examined and the social and environmental circumstances of that culture’s particular manifestation.

Thus, to think of the educational situation in Africa as comparatively simple whereas the counterpart situation in Europe or the USA is complex, may well be the very reverse of the truth. In Africa, quite apart from the complexities introduced by the various colonial powers, there are three main educational traditions, each independently conceived, yet to some extent related to the other, and each having within itself a considerable range of viewpoints. In comparison, Western education, which, for a considerable period of time appears to have been concerned with promoting economic growth, seems a much simpler phenomenon.

Yet, anybody working on educational planning and development within a high-income country, with all its resources and statistical services, knows how vastly complicated this apparently simple phenomenon really is. The well-nigh universal failure to achieve satisfactory manpower forecasts is indicative of this. Such being the case, educational planning and development in Africa need to be undertaken with proper caution, informed social sensitivity and flexible enterprise.

18 Secular Skills and Sacred Values in Uganda Schools: Problems of Technical and Moral Acculturation

D. OCAYA-LAKIDI and ALI M. MAZRUI

Colonialism was not simply a political experience for Africa; it was even more fundamentally a cultural experience. The values of the African world were profoundly disturbed by what would otherwise have been a brief episode in African history.

We accept for our purposes in this chapter the definition of acculturation which views it as the process by which an individual or a group acquires the cultural characteristics of another through direct contact and interaction. ‘From an individual point of view this is a process of social learning similar to that of adult socialization in which linguistic communication plays an essential role. From a social point of view acculturation implies the diffusion of particular values, techniques and institutions and their modification under different conditions.’¹

It is indeed worth acce...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Tables
• Contributors
• Note on Transliteration
• Introduction
• I Indigenous African Education
• II Islamic Education in Tropical Africa
• III Interaction and the Current Situation
• Appendix
• Index