29
Apr
Apr
Every society has a history that will shape the present and future circumstances of its people and development.
Most people from Africa, Asia and South America,
live in the aftermath of colonialism, while others, for example the Indigenous
Peoples of North America, Australia, New Zealand, Latin and Central America still
live in colonial bondage.
The day-to-day lives of Africans are defined by their past history as colonised peoples,
often in ways that are subtle.
However, their experiences are a result of internal and
external influences.
Therefore, to fully comprehend and appreciate policies and
challenges that educational planners and administrators face, we need to explore
the history of education and how it has shaped much of the postcolonial education
system in Africa.
The problems that Africans face in restructuring its
education system are partly embedded in the colonial legacy.
For instance, nearly a century,
when Zimbabwe was under colonial rule, the majority of indigenous people had no
say in or influence on government policies and political decisions that affected the
education system (Zvobgo, 1996).
Since indigenous people were oppressed and not
politically empowered to make fundamental decisions affecting their education, it
was easier to blame racism and imperialism as the main cause of the indigenous
people’s problems.
Racial discrimination in colonial Zimbabwe was so ubiquitous
that no African was allowed to enrol in Whites-only schools (A situation which was extremely dominant in South Africa’s Apartheid Rigid system of Rule.
A handful of private
schools owned by the Church would enrol one or two token Blacks each year, if
they showed “outstanding” academic performance, had influential and wealthy
parents, or if they belonged to the same religious denomination (e.g. Catholic
Church) as the educational institutions (Zindi, 1996).
Without doubt, colonial education was a larger component of the colonial
project to dehumanise Africans by imposing both inner and outer colonisation
(Shizha, 2005a).
Both inner and outer colonisation were based on the premise that
Africans would assimilate into the European life styles and values that were
themselves a threat to the identity and self-perceptions of the indigenous people.
To a greater extent colonial education led to psycho-cultural alienation, and
cultural domination (Mazrui, 1993).
Based on cultural imperialisms, indigenous
Zimbabweans were defined and portrayed as inferior to Europeans and were
deliberately taught to despise their cultural identities and to internalise the racial
stereotypes of the coloniser. Moore (1997, p. 91) argues that indigenous
knowledges and identities do not reside in a fixed, static metaphoric site or space
removed from practice, performance, power and process.
They are socially created
and dependent on the everyday or lived experiences of the people.
By attempting to
enculturate or assimilate indigenous people, the settlers believed they were
annihilating a static and fixed predisposition (Shizha, 2006b).
In fact, because
indigenous knowledges and identities are resilient and reside within the ‘situated
[political] practices through which identities and places are contested, produced
and reworked in particular localities” (Moore, 1997, p. 87) they were never
obliterated and continue to exist to date.
Culture may be dynamic, but only in the
sense of being adaptable and a continuing record of a society’s achievements and
an important element in sustaining resistance to foreign domination.
European
hegemony was and still is about the ways in which cultures are represented and
constituted, about dominant and marginalised cultural narratives, defining the ‘us’
and ‘them’ identities.
As Africans, we need to invent ways of rewriting or changing
those dominant narratives and deconstruct “White” superiority and the
misrepresentation of indigenous people and their cultures.
Analysing the idea of assimilation is important when dealing with colonial
education.
Assimilation forces the colonised to conform to the cultures and accept foreign lifestyle as their own.
To be Continued…
