The contradictions between tradition and modernity are nowhere more pronounced than in Africa’s educational systems. The struggle is vividly expressed in the struggle between traditional African educational systems which have been and still are threatened of displacement and replacement by the modern educational system largely copied and pasted from Western educational systems. The colonial legacy in Africa has subverted African education in such a way that it has given rise to the duality of the system which is expressed in the uneasy coexistence of the weakened traditional system alongside the modern one.
According to some studies traditional African educational method is expressed in or based on what is known as, “the didactic approach which is a method of instruction in which the teacher transmits knowledge to students through lectures, readings or other forms of presentation.” According to another definition, “Traditional African education was based apprenticeship and each young person had to learn a trade or profession, which was an informal form of education.”
There are many theories of African education and one of them maintains that, “An African philosophy of education is an enterprise which has three constitutive aspects: firstly, to be reasonable in one’s articulation, secondly, to demonstrate moral maturity and thirdly, to be attuned to deliberation.”
Any theory of education should be put in its cultural context because the African philosophy of knowledge, like any such philosophy anywhere in the world, is “an epistemology that is deliberately situated within a particular cultural context.”
In olden days, Africans were organized into the smallest units as tribal entities and their identities varies according to the natures of the tribal groups. Ethnicity is a relatively recent and a higher form of organization when tribal members organize into higher forms of communal units due to their growth in numbers, activities and geographic context. Then came the nation states that are the modern form of African identity with nationalism at its core.
As many researchers agree, education in Africa was primarily traditional based on the various forms of organizations and each tribe or ethnic group had, and still has in many parts of the country, its traditional or church or mosque-based educational facilities with family values serving as cultural and educational transmission belts from one generation to another. In Ethiopia for instance the family and then the church in the case of Christian families and Islam in the case of Islamic believers taught their children the basics of the Bible or the Koran in accordance with their traditions.
The situation in Ethiopia is not different from any other country because it is located within the context of the Christian or Islamic cultures that shape its values, including its educational values. “Ethiopia maintains two educational systems. The traditional system is rooted in Christianity and Islam. Christian education at the primary level is often conducted by clergy in the vicinity of place of worship.”
The erosion and marginalization of the traditional educational system in Africa as well as in Ethiopia was a slow process that started within the colonial era and continued even after the collapse of colonialism. As the traditional educational system took shape over a long period of time, so does the post-colonial education in Africa before it is slowly replaced by the so-called modern education imported form or imposed by the Western powers.
Colonialism in Africa is not only about territory and identity, it was also about educational subversion and the erosion of the traditional value systems. Colonialism not only occupied territories, and communities. It also conquered people’s minds and hearts and reshaped them in the image of European societies and called the process a “civilizing mission”. In the 19th and 20th centuries, colonialism reinvented African politics, economics, society and culture and mostly of education.
With the emergence of the pseudo-modern state in Africa, European education was cut and pasted on the minds of young Africans with the notion that in order to become a modern and educated person, one had to be educated in the European traditions of the earlier centuries. Reviving the old traditional schools was considered backward, traditionalist, archaic and passé. The basic message was: “If you want to be a modern African, turn your eyes towards the European man and try to be like him”. This is what Franz Fanon was saying in “Black Skin, White Mask”, the title of one of his books in which he analyzed the psychological, cultural, political and educational .aspects of race relations during the time of European colonialism. Fanon’s analyses are based on Algerian realities but also apply to other colonized and post-colonial Africa.
The 20th century came with a mixed mission, mixed message and mixed purpose. On the one hand it depicted African traditional education as unscientific and backward, irrational and illogical as it relied on African traditional religious and ethical systems. Modern education or European education was conceived as scientific, technological and rational in the sense that it has become secular or non-God centered or non-religion-centered. Secularism by simple definition was, “the separation of religion from civil affairs and the state and may be broadened to a similar position seeking to remove or minimize the role of religion from any public sphere.”
Another definition of secularism maintains that, “Secularism means separation of religion from political, economic, social and cultural aspects of life, religion being treated as a purely personal matter. It emphasized the separation of the state from religion and full freedom to all religions and tolerance of all religions.”
According to the above definition, education was supposed to have nothing to do with religion and the state if it wants to be scientific, modern, progressive and individual-centered. Yet, this is better said than done. In Ethiopia for example, the so-called modern educational system adopted by the monarchy at the turn of the 20th century was neither non-religious or implemented by non-state actors or private institutions separated from the feudal state. The Haile Sellassie government in its bid to modernize education in Ethiopia maintained both traditional religious institutions as well as “modern” Christian denominations in order to promote its policy.
The first tendency or policy, i.e. the need to maintain traditional religious schools or church-run educational institutions, was understandable in the sense that the government could not make a critical leap from feudalism to modernity in the space of a few decades or by will power alone. It took centuries for the church-backed schools to grow and it is bound that they need more centuries to hand over their authority to the modern school systems. the same goes to Western education that is still to a certain degree influenced by modern religious institutions and churches despite centuries of secularism.
When the feudal state decided to adopt Western education to Ethiopian realities, it did not do so critically analytically or in a way that was most suitable to the country’s diverse cultures and traditions. It introduced modern education in a sweeping way by edicts and by forcing parents to send their children to “askquala” or modern school in Italian. The church-sponsored schools retreated but were not totally defeated or destroyed. It remained on the margin for a long time and it is still occupying a marginalized existence within the overall modernization drive in the educational sector simply because religion is a deeply rooted psychological and identity phenomena in Ethiopian societies irrespective of their ethnic differences. Religion imbues not only culture and education but also politics and social behaviors to this very day.
The feudal state in Ethiopia cannot be accused of failing to introduce Western education compatible with Ethiopian values and needs. It tried and failed but it had no alternative models to choose from and modernization was considered as synonymous with Europeanization. Modern education or 20th century European education did not work for Africans not because they were or are lazier by nature than their European counterparts.
The colonial powers tried to impose their educational systems on Africans by coercion or by fiat without looking into the we may call problematic of relevance or the need to assess whether or not European education was compatible with African psychology, traditions and needs. They did it in haste and had not enough time or political will to do the necessary appraisals or analyses before imposing their educational values on African societies.
All said and done, Africa in general and Ethiopia in particular are still facing the daunting task of searching for an educational system or systems that are compatible with Ethiopian or African identity, values, traditions and needs. Education in African still consists of passing through the various school hierarchies and reaching college levels and earning degrees and then going to work whether the education they received was relevant or not to societal needs and aspirations. Traditional education was relatively social, communal or collective. Modern education, as imposed on Africa by the West, has increasingly become more private, individual and selfish. In brief, it has become a certificate for overcoming poverty at the individual level without caring much for the collective aspiration. It has become a passport for power and privilege.
Now that Africa has embarked on the journey to self-assertion and renewal, it would be relevant to look into how the education of Africans could be improved or reformed in such a way as to serve Africa’s identified political, social and economic challenges and better serve and promote African unity or live up to the 2063 agenda of continental unity or total integration of Africa. If at all African education needs to be modernized, it has to be reformed in an African spirit and not on the old copy-paste formula that has long proved irrelevant and even destructive.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SUNDAY EDITION 24 MARCH 2024
