tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/eurocentric-curriculum-15944/articlesEurocentric curriculum – The Conversation2023-10-18T14:17:32Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2144942023-10-18T14:17:32Z2023-10-18T14:17:32ZColonialism shaped modern universities in Africa – how they can become truly African<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553975/original/file-20231016-25-h2hnpz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">One of the roles of an African university is to produce critical and democratic thinkers.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vieriu Adrian/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Colonialism profoundly shaped modern universities in Africa. It implanted institutions on African soil that were largely replicas of European universities rather than organically African.</p>
<p>For historian and political theorist Achille Mbembe, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1474022215618513">one problem</a> of universities in Africa “is that they are ‘Westernised”. He describes them as “local institutions of a dominant academic model based on a Eurocentric epistemic canon that attributes truth only to the Western way of knowledge production”. This model, he says, “disregards other epistemic traditions”.</p>
<p>My research is mainly on universities, especially on issues of equity, inclusion and transformation. In a <a href="https://brill.com/display/book/9789004677432/BP000011.xml">recent chapter</a> I grapple with what universities need to do to stop being inappropriate replicas of European universities. How can they become, instead, African universities that address African needs?</p>
<p>I conclude that, to fulfil their key purposes of sharing and creating knowledge, they must play five associated roles. These are: encouraging students to be critical thinkers; undertaking more than just Eurocentric research; engaging proactively with the societies in which they are located; using their research and teaching to tackle development problems; and, finally, promoting critical and democratic citizenship.</p>
<p>In all these roles, African universities must take “place” – the geography, history, social relations, economics and politics of their respective contexts – seriously. They must overcome Eurocentric theories of knowledge and western institutional cultures. In doing so they must advance both decolonial thought and the public good.</p>
<p>But the African university cannot be created through changing the intellectual lens and basis alone. Political action is key.</p>
<h2>The importance of place</h2>
<p>African universities must be shaped by their contexts. Professor Louise Vincent of Rhodes University in South Africa rightly <a href="https://www.ru.ac.za/postgraduategateway/news/latestnews/proposaltotheandrewwmellonfoundation.html">argues</a> that it “entails a deep engagement, both literally and theoretically, with the notion of ‘place’” for universities to find their purpose. Universities, she adds, are situated in “place”. </p>
<p>For Vincent, place is neither “objective nor neutral”. It is “inscribed with relations of power” and how “power works in and through places has to be confronted.”</p>
<p>This means that, rather than distancing themselves from the surrounding communities, universities need to, in Vincent’s words, “actively seek exposure and collaboration – because that is what they are ‘for’.” This has implications for universities’ functioning, roles and activities.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/toyin-falola-3-recent-books-that-explain-the-work-of-nigerias-famous-decolonial-scholar-200851">Toyin Falola: 3 recent books that explain the work of Nigeria's famous decolonial scholar</a>
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<p>This notion of “place” sees knowledge as being context sensitive rather than decontextualised. Eurocentrics assume that the findings of research undertaken in Europe apply to countries and areas in Africa. This is not so. The continent’s universities must imaginatively theorise their own realities as a basis for changing them. </p>
<h2>Five roles</h2>
<p>African universities must play at least five key roles.</p>
<p>One is encouraging students, as anthropologist Arjun Appadurai <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1474022215618513">puts it</a>, to “develop their own intellectual and moral lives as independent individuals”. </p>
<p>A second role is to undertake different kinds of scholarship that serve different purposes, aims and objects. Scholarship must confront dominant Eurocentric knowledge systems and theories. African universities need to, in <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n14/mahmood-mamdani/the-african-university">the words</a> of postcolonial scholar Mahmood Mamdani,</p>
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<p>theorise our own reality, and strike the right balance between the local and the global as we do so. </p>
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<p>Third, they must engage proactively with the societies in which they operate. This engagement must happen at the intellectual and cultural levels. It is a crucial part of universities’ ability to contribute to developing a critical citizenry.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-happens-when-you-put-african-philosophies-at-the-centre-of-learning-95465">What happens when you put African philosophies at the centre of learning</a>
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<p>A fourth role is actively engaging with the pressing development challenges. This is achieved through teaching and learning, research and community engagement. </p>
<p>Promoting critical and democratic citizenship is a fifth role. Africa requires not only capable professionals but also sensitive intellectuals and critical citizens. Universities must, in ethicist <a href="https://www.eur.nl/sites/corporate/files/nussbaum_text.pdf">Martha Nussbaum’s terms</a>, promote the “cultivation of humanity”.</p>
<h2>Making it happen</h2>
<p>The purposes and roles I’ve outlined here do not exhaust the meaning of an African university. Instead, they are its ideal core functions. </p>
<p>I also do not wish to imply that every purpose and role must be undertaken in identical ways by every university. There is no value in uniformity and homogeneity. It is essential that, within national systems, universities address different needs that span the local to the global.</p>
<p>But no matter their focus, African universities must, fundamentally, advance the “public good”. International higher education policy academic Mala Singh <a href="https://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/aa/article/view/1433/1412">contends</a> that this is the “foundational narrative and platform” for universities to pursue a different path from their current dubious trajectories. </p>
<p>The state has a major role to play. It must ably steer and supervise – not interfere with – universities. It must resource them properly, and uphold academic freedom and institutional autonomy. It must also ensure a supportive macro-economic, social and financial policy environment.</p>
<p>The African university will be realised neither overnight nor without political struggles that involve diverse actors within and beyond universities. It will entail confronting complicity, opposition, inertia and apprehension. Collective and individual intellectual and practical political actions, as well as “<a href="https://intercontinentalcry.org/what-is-decolonization-and-why-does-it-matter/">everyday acts of resurgence</a>”, are required.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214494/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Saleem Badat receives funding from the Mellon Foundation and the National Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences. </span></em></p>The African university cannot be created through changing the intellectual lens and basis alone. Political action is key.Saleem Badat, Research Professor, UFS History Department, University of the Free StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/850052017-10-10T14:59:09Z2017-10-10T14:59:09ZKhanya College: a South African story of decolonisation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188547/original/file-20171003-18144-u1w8bp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Khanya College thought differently about its students and its curriculum.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/decolonising-research-methodology-must-include-undoing-its-dirty-history-83912">Decolonisation</a> and Africanisation may appear to be new ideas on South Africa’s higher education landscape. But a tertiary college established nearly 30 years ago shows that this is not the case. The story of Khanya College proves that decolonised learning – rooted in Africa but infused with global influences – is entirely possible. </p>
<p>Khanya College didn’t use the words “decolonisation” or “Africanisation”, but these were strong themes in its work. It gave students confidence and aimed to empower them by strengthening their identity of where they came from based in part on their African history, language and traditions. This can be labelled “powerful knowledge”. </p>
<p>The institution also taught students “<a href="https://www.routledge.com/Bringing-Knowledge-Back-In-From-Social-Constructivism-to-Social-Realism/Young/p/book/9780415321211">knowledge of the powerful</a>”. This was needed for the graduates to be able to act and adapt within a white, elite, English educational system. It taught them to recognise – and challenge – the implicit rules.</p>
<p><a href="https://khanyacollege.org.za/">Khanya</a> still exists today, though in recent years it has become a non-governmental organisation rather than a formal college. Its history as a college that opened the doors of white universities to black students during apartheid holds three key lessons for higher education in South Africa today. These relate to empowering students through an African and global curriculum; encouraging critical thinking; and transforming universities and society.</p>
<h2>Empowerment through an African curriculum</h2>
<p>Khanya College was established in 1986, when the apartheid system was <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/state-emergency-1985">starting to unravel</a>. The South African Committee of Higher Education, led by renowned educationalist <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dr-neville-edward-alexander">Neville Alexander</a>, established the college to address the limitations of apartheid’s educational system. </p>
<p>Khanya College allowed students who were classified as “black” by apartheid legislation the chance to gain access to universities classified as “white”. Its campuses, in Johannesburg and Cape Town, primarily targeted young black South Africans. In the first three years of its existence, more than <a href="https://global.iu.edu/blog/africa/2013/08/28/ius-south-african-connections-run-deep/">400 students</a> completed the Khanya course of study. </p>
<p>Staff were also drawn from across “race” groups. Professor Rajani Naidoo, one of the authors of this article, was involved in Khanya’s programme from its launch until 1991.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188532/original/file-20171003-3782-1b36ttw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188532/original/file-20171003-3782-1b36ttw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188532/original/file-20171003-3782-1b36ttw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188532/original/file-20171003-3782-1b36ttw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188532/original/file-20171003-3782-1b36ttw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188532/original/file-20171003-3782-1b36ttw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188532/original/file-20171003-3782-1b36ttw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188532/original/file-20171003-3782-1b36ttw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Some of the students and staff at Khanya College in the late 1980s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
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<p>One of Khanya’s big goals was to act as a model for the transformation of all universities in South Africa. It employed a strategy of knowledge for liberation. This work was an attempt to facilitate students’ access to powerful knowledge held by dominant groups in society. </p>
<p>The college wanted to break away from apartheid education’s emphasis on mainly Afrikaner history and the sole study of Europe as world history. Instead, the emphasis included oral African literature and African history taught from a critical perspective. </p>
<p>The teaching philosophy was twofold: first, it aimed to give students confidence and empower them by strengthening their identity of where they came from based in part on their African history, language, traditions and social class. The staff wanted to create an environment in which students acknowledged and were proud of their own identity. This was the first, crucial step to support students in understanding how to navigate their way through a dominant culture.</p>
<p>Secondly, it taught students the curriculum they needed to know how to succeed in a white, elite university. The students were introduced to the dominant discourses and practices within elite universities; they were taught to understand and evaluate these practices. Then they were supported in finding the tools to challenge such practices. </p>
<p>In contrast to some proponents of Africanisation today, Khanya College did not disregard so-called Western knowledge. Instead it drew the best from critical thinkers worldwide to develop students’ own critical insights. Some students were political activists who were accepted on the basis of their community involvement rather than strictly academic results. At Khanya, their political work was linked to more formal modes of critical analysis.</p>
<p>For example, the African literature course included formal text analysis. Students learned about the social, economic and political conditions of production of the text and its real world implications, including insights for their own organisations and community groups. Pamphlets were created to raise popular awareness about apartheid and students developed strategies towards alternative higher education systems.</p>
<p>This work, rooted in Brazilian theorist <a href="http://www.freire.org/paulo-freire/">Paulo Freire’s</a> principle of education for liberation, was designed to transform universities – and, in the long term, to help Khanya’s students contribute to transforming South African society.</p>
<h2>The lessons</h2>
<p>Apartheid rendered the divisions based on “race” and disadvantage extremely visible. We would suggest, then, that apartheid South Africa was an extreme case of the social fault lines that divide many societies today – both in the Global North and in the Global South. </p>
<p>The story of Khanya College has important lessons to offer that remain relevant today. Its approach was developed in a different time and societal context, but can contribute a great deal to contemporary debates about decolonising and transforming universities worldwide.</p>
<p>For instance, it shows how a curriculum can be Africanised without essentialising what it means to be African and what African knowledge is. It also shines a light on how crucial it is to understand the importance of access to the knowledge of the powerful, what aspects of this are valuable and how it can be critiqued.</p>
<p>Finally, by using these classic virtues of the university – constructive criticism and dissent – Khanya College contributed to the skills students needed to constructively transform the university and, ultimately, society. </p>
<p><em>This article is adapted from a chapter in the book <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=LLThCgAAQBAJ&dq=chapter+10+higher+education+and+capacity+building+africa+khanya&source=gbs_navlinks_s&hl=en">Higher Education and Capacity Building in Africa</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85005/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Khanya College’s curriculum was quite different from the one taught at other universities of the time. Its students studied oral African literature and history alongside Western literature.Hanne Kirstine Adriansen, Associate Professor, School of Education, Aarhus UniversityLene Møller Madsen, Associate professor in Science Education, University of CopenhagenRajani Naidoo, Professor and Director, International Centre for Higher Education Management, School of Management, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/680802016-11-20T19:49:14Z2016-11-20T19:49:14ZDecolonisation: academics must change what they teach, and how<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145978/original/image-20161115-30742-89b5xe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Students in South Africa are tired of Western, Eurocentric university curricula.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Hutchings</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The idea of decolonisation frightens many South African academics. Since students launched the movement to <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/10/feesmustfall-decolonising-education-161031093938509.html">decolonise higher education</a> in early 2015, I’ve heard several of my peers ask, “What do ‘they’ mean by decolonisation? Going back to the Stone Age? Teaching only about South Africa and Africa? Isolation from the rest of the world?”</p>
<p>Legal academic Joel Modiri <a href="http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2016-10-16-in-the-fall-decolonisation-and-the-rejuvenation-of-the-academic-project-in-south-africa/">points out</a> that these “cynical queries by mostly white academics, demanding that students explain to them what decolonisation even means, suggests their own illiteracy about the history and intellectual debates in their disciplines”.</p>
<p>These sorts of questions also show a distinct lack of engagement with the African continent. After all, other African countries have grappled with precisely the same issues for decades. In <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-04-17-what-is-an-african-curriculum/">Kenya</a>, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14649373.2016.1140260">Uganda, Tanzania</a> and <a href="http://escholarship.org/uc/item/13m5c5vp">Ghana</a>, academics and intellectuals have long tried to break down colonial shackles and decolonise their disciplines and universities.</p>
<h2>Reconstructing and rethinking</h2>
<p>More than two decades after apartheid ended, South African universities still tend to offer a view of the country and continent that is rooted in colonial and apartheid thinking.</p>
<p>The university curricula remain largely Eurocentric, dominated by what some academics have <a href="https://theconversation.com/decolonising-the-curriculum-its-time-for-a-strategy-60598">called</a> “white, male, Western, capitalist, heterosexual, European worldviews”. </p>
<p>Students are railing against this dominance at the expense of theories, thinkers and ideas from Africa and the global South. Black students also complain that their own lived experience isn’t reflected in lecture halls. In the old colonial fashion, they are the “other”, not recognised and valued unless they conform.</p>
<p>Decolonisation, for them, involves fundamental rethinking and reframing of the curriculum and <a href="http://thejournal.org.za/index.php/thejournal/article/view/9/21">bringing South Africa and Africa to the centre</a> of teaching, learning and research.</p>
<p>Decolonisation is also about <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02533959808458649">reconstructing the African continent</a> from various perspectives. The continent’s history, the way its cultures and civilisations are studied and understandings of its political economy have been shaped by European thinkers.</p>
<p>It’s time for Africa to tell its own stories in university classrooms.</p>
<p>As I argue in <a href="http://thejournal.org.za/index.php/thejournal/article/view/9/21">newly published research</a>, universities also need to end epistemic violence. This concept has been defined by the Indian scholar <a href="http://abahlali.org/files/Can_the_subaltern_speak.pdf">Gayatri Spivak</a> as the Eurocentric and Western domination and subjugation of former colonial subjects through knowledge systems. </p>
<p>The world views expressed through colonial knowledge systems were designed to degrade, exploit and subjugate people in Africa and other parts of the formerly colonised world. These views persist today at South African universities. Black students are confronted by texts and theories that negate their own history, lived experiences – and their dreams. They get little exposure to their own continent and all its complexity.</p>
<p>When Africa does appear in the curriculum, <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02533959808458649">argues scholar Mahmood Mamdani</a>, it is no more than a version of the continent offered by apartheid’s reviled Bantu education system:</p>
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<p>… students are being taught a curriculum which presumes that Africa begins at the Limpopo [River, which divides South Africa from Zimbabwe and Botswana], and that this Africa has no intelligentsia worth reading.</p>
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<p>So how might South Africa tackle epistemic violence and usher in an era of decolonisation of knowledge?</p>
<h2>African universities</h2>
<p>Contrary to what some academics fear, decolonisation is not about moving backwards to “the Stone Age”. Nor is it about isolating South Africa’s universities from the rest of the world.</p>
<p>The country’s Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande has made this clear, <a href="http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politics/higher-education-is-at-critical-juncture--blade-nz">saying</a> at a 2015 summit that</p>
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<p>Building African universities does not mean creating universities that are globally disengaged. They should be globally engaged, but not only by being consumers of global knowledge. They should be producers of knowledge as well, knowledge that is of relevance locally, continentally, in the South and globally.</p>
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<p>Universities must <em>incorporate</em> epistemic perspectives, knowledge and thinking from the African continent and the global South into their teaching and research.</p>
<p><a href="http://ahh.sagepub.com/content/15/1/29">As the academic Achille Mbembe</a> points out, decolonisation “is not about closing the door to European or other traditions. It is about defining clearly what the centre is”.</p>
<p>South Africa is not alone in the push to do away with colonial education. In fact, it’s very far behind the curve. </p>
<p>For example, the movement to decolonise education in Kenya started at the end of the 1960s, after the country won independence from Britain. Author and academic Harry Garuba, writing of this time, <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-04-17-what-is-an-african-curriculum/">says</a> that a “fundamental question of place, perspective and orientation needed to be addressed in any reconceptualisation of the curriculum”.</p>
<p>And, he <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-04-17-what-is-an-african-curriculum/">points out</a>, one of the decolonisation movement’s main desires was that “Kenya, East Africa and Africa needed to be placed at the centre of teaching, learning and research at Kenyan universities”.</p>
<p>According to Garuba, the work that began more than four decades ago has led to “major curriculum transformation” not only in Kenya but across East Africa.</p>
<p>Still, while Kenya is far ahead of South Africa, the decolonisation process there isn’t over yet. One of the main reasons for this, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-africas-professors-are-afraid-of-colonial-education-being-dismantled-50930">it’s been argued</a>, is that the majority of academics in Africa “are cut from the cloth of Western knowledge” and are often “reluctant to repudiate their very make-up” through dismantling colonial knowledge systems.</p>
<p>South African higher education system faces a similar challenge. Its universities will not be decolonised overnight. But the process is non-negotiable. The question is whether those academics who fear decolonisation will go along for this important ride.</p>
<h2>Academics must come on board</h2>
<p>The decolonisation project needs to encompass more than just changing the curriculum. How things are taught and academics’ attitudes to this process matter just as much.</p>
<p>Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Decolonising_the_Mind.html?id=qlZBsYQtSeoC&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y">writes</a> that decolonisation of knowledge “calls for more than choice of materials”.</p>
<p>While adding the literature from the African continent and the global South is crucial in the decolonisation project, it is not enough. The attitude to the materials used in the curriculum – as wa Thiong'o points out – is as critical.</p>
<p>This presents a massive challenge. Universities can easily prescribe new readings and other materials but what about the academics’ attitudes to these and to new ways of thinking? </p>
<p>Research by the then <a href="https://www.cput.ac.za/storage/services/transformation/ministerial_report_transformation_social_cohesion.pdf">Department of Education</a> in 2008 found that many in the South African academy still assume that Western knowledge systems “constitute the only basis for higher forms of thinking”.</p>
<p>Are these academics willing to change today? Are they ready to unlearn, learn and fundamentally transform as academics and individuals? Are they ready to decolonise their minds, <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Decolonising_the_Mind.html?id=qlZBsYQtSeoC&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y">to borrow from wa Thiong'o</a>?</p>
<p>If not, the country will require new generations of academics and administrators. They must be at least literate about the historical injustices and diverse intellectual debates within their disciplines, <a href="http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2016-10-16-in-the-fall-decolonisation-and-the-rejuvenation-of-the-academic-project-in-south-africa/">to paraphrase Joel Modiri</a>, if they’re to reach senior university positions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68080/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Savo Heleta does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>More than two decades after apartheid ended, South African universities still tend to offer a view of the country and continent that is rooted in colonial and apartheid thinking.Savo Heleta, Manager, Internationalisation at Home and Research, Nelson Mandela UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/562152016-03-15T04:15:39Z2016-03-15T04:15:39ZDecolonising economics: more context is needed, not less content<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/114921/original/image-20160314-11299-1vjxqch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There is a new call to arms at South African universities: it’s time to decolonise the economics curriculum. This is part of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-african-students-must-be-given-the-chance-to-read-what-they-like-41790">broader project</a> to make curricula across disciplines more applicable to the South African context. Ihsaan Bassier, an Honours student at the University of Cape Town, <a href="http://www.groundup.org.za/article/ucts-economics-curriculum-crisis/">writes</a> that the institution’s curriculum is “largely abstracted from South Africa’s economic crisis and reinforces an anti-poor understanding of policies”. He explains:</p>
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<p>Economics is presented as an amoral subject, only examining mechanistic questions and optimising efficiency. If it is amoral, why is so little attention given to heterodox thought? Capitalism arbitrarily privileges those with money over others in the most violent form possible, through a system of class protection, marginalisation of the poor and gross injustice.</p>
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<p>From the outset, let me say that I agree South Africa’s economics curriculum needs to be refined. The tricky question is how. Simply removing content is not the answer: a more nuanced approach is needed.</p>
<h2>Capitalism is not anti-poor</h2>
<p>Economics equips students with a set of tools that allow them to explain the world around them. One of those tools is statistical analysis, which means we can test a hypothesis – such as Bassier’s above statement – with evidence from the real world. </p>
<p>And the real world evidence, unfortunately for Bassier, is loud and clear: capitalism, a system based on the principle of individual rights, has created remarkable economic freedom for humanity over the last three centuries. Consider this: in 1981 more than half the people in the world lived in absolute poverty. Today, that <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/05/global-inequality">figure</a> is less than 20%. Millions of Indians, Chinese - and Africans, too - have better living standards than their parents did.</p>
<p>That is not to say that everything about capitalism is great. Capitalism is not a single thing. It morphs into different forms depending on the political and social context. Capitalism in America is certainly more unfettered than capitalism in, say, France. And there is certainly space for more debate about the type of capitalism that’s needed in South Africa.</p>
<p>But those debates need to be based on sound theories and falsifiable evidence. Economic policy arguments – Is a higher minimum wage better for the poorest? Do social benefits lead to unemployment? Does regulation impede growth? – are all empirical questions, one that economists’ statistical toolkits can answer. Everyone has theories about how the world works. But as Dani Rodrik explains in his excellent book <a href="http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Economics-Rules/"><em>Economics Rules</em></a>, there is not one single, better theory. Instead, there’s a menu of theories that economists can use to understand their work and the societies in which they operate. </p>
<p>Think of a theory as a map. There is no single map that explains everything. Sometimes you need a world map to look at countries. Sometimes you need a street map to find that new restaurant. Economists’ theories or models are the same. Different models are used in different contexts, and what makes a really good economist is picking the right model for the right question.</p>
<h2>History provides context</h2>
<p>Here is where Bassier is right: there must be more context in South Africa’s economics curricula. You do not decolonise a curriculum by removing content. If you do that, students are denied the opportunity to participate in local policy debates and the global job market. Universities can decolonise by adding more context and diversity. </p>
<p>My solution? More economic history and more economic thought. Global and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-renaissance-in-understanding-africas-economic-past-42713">African economic history</a> provides us with an understanding of the historical roots of growth, poverty, development and inequality. The <a href="http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/het/">history of economic thought</a> is concerned with theorists’ ideas about solving the economic problem, including philosophers that were very much in favour of socialism. If the neoclassical model is a map of one country, the history of economic thought is a map of the world. It shows how neoclassical thinking evolved and why it became the dominant model.</p>
<p>This is already happening at some institutions. The University of Cape Town has an undergraduate programme in economic history and an excellent third-year course called the <a href="http://www.commerce.uct.ac.za/economics/CourseInfo/ECO3016F">History of Economic Thought</a>. At Stellenbosch University, where I teach, we have created an entire course in the second year to investigate African economic history and contemporary economic development. One semester starts with the <a href="http://history-world.org/neolithic.htm">Neolithic Revolution</a> and ends with the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20780389.2014.958298#.VuaJafl97IU">economics of apartheid</a>. Another discusses current education, health and other social policies to tackle poverty and inequality. I see this course as complementary to the standard economics courses. You cannot have the one without the other.</p>
<p>Another challenge is persuading students to study economics for longer. At Stellenbosch, only one in ten first-year economics students will enrol for economics in their third year. Some students obviously fail, but most simply choose not to continue. Those who only study the discipline for a year or two will not understand the nuances of the models, as Bassier argues. </p>
<p>But no one expects me to be a psychologist with just Psychology 1, or fluent in French with just French 2. This is why universities need to encourage more of the country’s brightest minds to choose economics through to post-graduate level. This will expose more students to better analytical tools, and produce the analytical skills so desperately needed to address the vexing economic issues that face the country.</p>
<p>Science is advanced by standing on the shoulders of giants. Decolonisation, when it’s done right, can add more shoulders to stand on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56215/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Johan Fourie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A curriculum can’t be decolonised by simply removing content. This denies students the chance to participate in local policy debates and the global job market. A more nuanced approach is needed.Johan Fourie, Associate Professor, Department of Economics, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/512792015-12-22T05:22:10Z2015-12-22T05:22:10ZWant to understand the decolonisation debate? Here’s your reading list<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105753/original/image-20151214-9515-br507i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Africa was hit by an unprecedented wave of student protests against fee hikes, racism and for the decolonisation of curriculum. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Hutchings</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In 2015 the decolonisation debate, epitomised by the <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-03-26-rhodesmustfall-protest-spreads-to-other-campuses">#RhodesMustFall</a> campaign, took centre stage in South Africa. The protests sought to remove all vestiges of racism and <a href="http://www.dispatchlive.co.za/opinion/decolonise-africas-mind/">colonialism</a> from university campuses. Below is my selection of the top five books that those interested in decolonisation might find helpful.</em></p>
<p><strong>1)</strong> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Theory-South-Euro-America-Evolving-Imagination/dp/1594517657">Theory from the South: Or, How Euro-America is Evolving toward Africa</a> by Jean and John Comaroff. The book subverts the hallowed notion that knowledge comes from the global North, while the global South only provides the data. </p>
<p>The Comaroffs argue that it is the global South, particularly Africa, that is at the vanguard of global trends. They highlight themes relating to personhood, porous national boundaries and individual versus cultural rights. </p>
<p>They also reflect on democratic one-party states and offer critical perspectives on history as well as economic changes and political activism. In all, African perspectives offer innovative theoretical “scaffolding” to address global issues including xenophobia, economic downturn, democracy and HIV/AIDS. </p>
<p><strong>2)</strong> <a href="http://library.wur.nl/WebQuery/clc/1938849">Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science</a> by Raewyn Connell describes southern theory from places such as Australia, Latin America, and Asia. She argues that while theory from the global North is universally accepted, southern theory is labelled according to its geographical place of origin. It is thus made out to be applicable only in those spaces. </p>
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<p>Connell also argues that the oligopolistic publishing industry relies on a few “celebrity” authors. Almost all of them come from the North and write in globally dominant languages. While this shows the cards stacked firmly against intellectuals from the so-called periphery, Connell asserts that such authors still have agency.</p>
<p><strong>3)</strong> <a href="http://www.ohioswallow.com/book/African+Intellectuals+and+Decolonization">African Intellectuals and Decolonization</a> is an anthology edited by Nicholas M. Creary. The essays explore themes relating to the struggle to decolonise African knowledge and the roles that African and Africanist intellectuals play in that struggle. </p>
<p>The first part unpicks representation and retrospection. It debunks commonly held perspectives that Africa’s decolonisation has failed or that it is all-encompassing. The second part explores perspectives on the struggle to decolonise African publics.</p>
<p>The third explores the decolonisation of knowledge. It reveals ways in which the tradition of Western metaphysical thought served to support colonialism and continues to impose Eurocentric values and norms onto African contexts.</p>
<p>Distinctly different African contexts are thus made to fit European models and are essentially misunderstood. The book’s abiding theme is the call from African scholars for African scholarship out of African contexts.</p>
<p><strong>4)</strong> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Decolonizing-Methodologies-Research-Indigenous-Peoples/dp/1848139500">Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples</a> by Linda Tuhiwai Smith. This offers a passionate discussion of the ways in which Eurocentric research methodologies and theories have affected indigenous communities. These communities are often put under a microscope, not unlike flora and fauna. </p>
<p>The book maps the historical implications of research from the global North. The second part describes indigenous methodologies coming out of work done by indigenous researchers and their communities. </p>
<p>The last two chapters, added to the second edition, describe the implications of choosing this kind of research and what it means to link research to activist scholarship.</p>
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<p>The book is written for indigenous researchers, but has also been well received by projects such as <a href="http://ccms.ukzn.ac.za/projects/rethinking-indigeneity.aspx">Rethinking Indigeneity</a> which I’m working on. </p>
<p>The first book from the project, by Keyan <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Where_Global_Contradictions_are_Sharpest.html?id=P_aTuPARGAkC&redir_esc=y">Tomaselli</a>, argues that the periphery is, in fact, the prism through which Northern methodological contradictions are best brought to the surface.</p>
<p><strong>5)</strong> Then there is the great granddad from whence much of the above discussion derives: Ngugi’ wa Thiong’o’s <a href="http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/kenya/ngugi1.htm">Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature</a>. </p>
<p>Many of the works published on decolonisation originate from Ngugi’s idea of decolonising the African mind. Imperialism, he writes, has left its mark on the minds of the previously colonised. They personalise what was once far off and different and become detached from their immediate surrounds and culture. </p>
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<p>Africans are groomed for such thinking from childhood in colonial and missionary schools. They see Africa, its languages, cultures, traditions and practices as backward, dark, evil and generally disdainful. </p>
<p>The continent is carved up in terms of imperial markers and its peoples are identified in terms of their colonisers. Tragically, African leaders in the postcolony wish for the return to colonial rule, with themselves as the new masters.</p>
<p>Ngugi argues that African intellectuals bear responsibility for popularising the decolonisation struggle. The liberation of African minds is the ultimate goal.</p>
<p>The decolonisation <a href="https://theconversation.com/search?date=all&language=en&page=2&q=Rhodesmustfall&sort=relevancy&type=all">struggle</a> continues. The protests it has sparked in recent times should motivate us to take stock of its progress.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51279/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shanade Bianca Barnabas received funding from the National Research Foundation during her PhD research. </span></em></p>Many works published on decolonisation originate from Ngugi wa Thiongo’s idea of decolonising the African mind. Imperialism, he writes, has left its mark on the minds of the previously colonised.Shanade Bianca Barnabas, Post doctoral research fellow, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/405722015-06-05T04:42:44Z2015-06-05T04:42:44ZAfrican management courses must be focused on local priorities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81398/original/image-20150512-22545-13o20z9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Management graduates from Africa are struggling to apply their classroom lessons to the working world.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">From www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Some of Africa’s economies are among the <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21638141-africas-growth-being-powered-things-other-commodities-twilight">fastest-growing</a> in the world. This boom in countries like Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and Nigeria means that the continent needs competent managers more than ever before.</p>
<p>The value of good managers is well-documented. David N. Abdulai, the president of the African Graduate School of Management and Leadership in Ghana, <a href="https://books.google.co.tz/books?id=Vz9zAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT29&lpg=PT29&dq=management+education+in+africa&source=bl&ots=wOkDDkZ9f4&sig=gx4hMf2efSmLOsiRhaTvqBhonhA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=v-JVVbT7G-Gc7AbX1IC4Dg&ved=0CDgQ6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=management%20education%20in%20africa&f=false">writes</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Management education helps to develop the entrepreneurs, managers and administrators needed to manage Africa’s private and public sector institutions effectively.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Africa Academy of Management <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23322373.2015.994419#.VWxvO8-qqko">launched</a> its own journal earlier this year, saying it was “the right time” for a space devoted to management and organisations on the continent. The academy said its first rationale for the journal was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the need to increase the publication and dissemination of management knowledge focused on Africa.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Universities and managers</h2>
<p>There has been a rise of management education programmes at Africa’s universities. Research by the African Development Bank, the OECD Development Centre and the United Nations Development Programme has tracked a 75% rise in tertiary education on the continent from 2000 to 2015 (see table below). Social science and management education contribute <a href="http://www.scidev.net/global/education/feature/higher-education-africa-facts-figures.html">approximately 44%</a> of graduates to economies in sub-Saharan Africa each year.</p>
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<span class="caption">Tertiary education is on the rise - but are we producing the right kinds of graduates?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">African Economic Outlook</span></span>
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<p>These programmes should prepare capable professionals to work as effective managers in different organisational settings. But I and my colleagues in management faculties have frequently been told by African management graduates that it’s hard to apply their classroom lessons in the work place.</p>
<p>This disconnect between lecture halls and offices <a href="https://hbr.org/2005/05/how-business-schools-lost-their-way">isn’t unique</a> to Africa. Employers worldwide are <a href="http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20140523130246934">questioning</a> whether graduates are actually properly prepared for the real world of work. Universities and colleges, meanwhile, complain that they aren’t getting enough buy-in from industry to make their programmes relevant.</p>
<h2>Pockets of excellence</h2>
<p>There are a few examples in Africa of business schools that are <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/e6f134f0-8907-11e3-9f48-00144feab7de.html#axzz3a0XAEwZ9">getting it right</a>. Their success seems to stem from two things: a focus on teaching African managers for the continent’s many and varied contexts and, crucially, an understanding that learning is a two-way street. The colonial style of arriving in a country and declaring your way the right way is long gone.</p>
<p>In South Africa, business schools at the universities of Stellenbosch, Cape Town and the Witwatersrand have started developing Africa-focused case studies. So, too, have Nigeria’s Lagos Business School and the Strathmore Business School in Kenya.</p>
<p>Some institutions in Europe and the US have developed a partnership-based approach. The Catholic University in Milan, Italy, offers a Master’s degree in social entrepreneurship. Through this programme, students identify and help to develop entrepreneurs in <a href="http://altis.unicatt.it/altis-ia-news-introductory-act-52-e4impact-si-e-concluso-il-middle-boot-camp-del-programma-mba-a-nairobi">Ghana and Kenya</a>. The students train these entrepreneurs to work and succeed in their local economies.</p>
<h2>Programmes for the African context</h2>
<p>Management is a multidisciplinary field. It draws from other academic disciplines like commerce, economics, engineering, psychology and sociology. It’s important that students get the theoretical knowledge they need from curricula. But that knowledge isn’t much use if students aren’t also developing the skills they need to apply it in the work place.</p>
<p>Tanzania’s economy is <a href="http://www.afdb.org/en/countries/east-africa/tanzania/tanzania-economic-outlook/">growing strongly</a>, but poverty levels are still high and the growth is not equitable. So, the discussions held in a board room in Dar es Salaam are necessarily very different to those held in New York.</p>
<p>In Tanzania, workers will largely want to meet their immediate life needs but will have to do so with limited resources and a lack of technical know-how. In New York, on the other hand, discussions are likely to centre around global expansion, penetrating global markets and managing existing knowledge.</p>
<p>Abdulai argues that most management or business schools on the continent simply mimic what is offered by their counterparts in the Western world. There is rarely any difference between the course material, the textbooks and the case studies being examined in New York and Lagos. </p>
<p>Can we really expect managers to succeed in African business environments if they are cutting their teeth on case studies that sprung from American and British boardrooms? A generation of copycat managers won’t be able to advance the continent’s economic growth, nor the <a href="http://www.oecd.org/innovation/inno/50586251.pdf">innovation that’s necessary</a> to bolster existing industries or create new opportunities.</p>
<p>The current management education system evolved to meet the economic growth needs of developed countries. But African economies are emerging: they have a different set of sustainable development priorities. </p>
<p>Perhaps universities should approach this issue by thinking like managers. They could start by conducting needs assessments in the market that’s waiting for their graduates. Armed with this knowledge, they will have a better idea of how to shape their course work. Alongside this, African management teachers need to develop learning material that is unique and relevant to the continent.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40572/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shiv Tripathi works for University of Stellenbosch Executive Education Limited in honorary capacity as International Advisory Board Member,
He is affiliated with United Nations Global Compacts' Principle for Responsible Management Education as member of its' Working Group on 'Anti-Corruption in Management Curriculum' and 'Poverty and Management Education'. </span></em></p>Africa needs management graduates – but they must be taught with the continent’s specific challenges and requirements in mind.Shiv Tripathi, Professor of Business Management, Mzumbe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/417902015-06-04T04:36:56Z2015-06-04T04:36:56ZSouth African students must be given the chance to read what they like<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82958/original/image-20150526-24745-175czop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Detractors argue that decolonising the curriculum to include writers like Steve Biko (who was much admired by former president Nelson Mandela) will lower standards.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mike Hutchings/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>University curricula in South Africa are still largely European or American in origin and focus. In some spaces, though, academics are starting to shift the terrain by introducing an African-centred curriculum. </p>
<p>In the past few months, the state of the curriculum at South Africa’s universities has become a <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-time-to-take-the-curriculum-back-from-dead-white-men-40268">hot topic</a>. This debate is part of a <a href="http://www.thedailyvox.co.za/rhodes-must-fall-the-movement-after-the-statue/">larger discussion</a> about post-apartheid transformation. Some commentators have <a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/2015/05/21/uct-can-retain-quality-or-play-politics">suggested</a> that decolonising curricula will lower academic standards. </p>
<p>But early evidence from an 18-month-old research project suggests that altering elements of the curriculum boosts student engagement and expands the canon so that African experiences are taken seriously.</p>
<p>The project involves two <a href="http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20121023192747849">historically advantaged institutions</a>, the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Rhodes University. The third, Fort Hare, historically catered for <a href="http://www.sarua.org/?q=content/university-fort-hare-history">black students</a> and was financially disadvantaged. </p>
<p>We have conducted qualitative research on curriculum content and students’ experiences to trace what happens when Humanities curricula are deliberately changed to shift an institution’s dominant ideologies. The research has focused on African-centred courses across several disciplines, including education development, film and media, gender studies, history, linguistics, philosophy, psychology and social anthropology.</p>
<p>While the two cases studies mentioned here are too few to represent what is happening across Humanities faculties, it is enough to illustrate the qualitative shifts that are possible.</p>
<h2>Disruption by (curriculum) design</h2>
<p>The first case study comes from a third-year course run by UCT’s department of social anthropology. For one of their assignments, students have to review an <a href="http://www.discoveranthropology.org.uk/about-anthropology/fieldwork/ethnography.html">ethnographic</a> work through two lenses: its politics of representation and the sorts of evidence it provides for the claims it makes. Students can choose from a list of 89 ethnographies or representations of culture. Sixty-one of these are related to Africa. </p>
<p>Importantly, the forms of representation are not limited to “traditional” anthropological texts. The list also includes African novels and poetry, on the grounds that while anthropology may have been closed to black African narrators during colonialism, it was never possible to silence them. They were not able to become anthropologists by the norms of the time, but they still were able to make pertinent commentary about culture.</p>
<p>The course convener argues that these texts can provide as much depth of representation as so-called scientific anthropological accounts. This approach upends the power relations of who was “allowed” to speak with authority about Africa at a particular point in the discipline’s history. </p>
<p>For instance, in Okot p’Bitek’s Song of Lawino, an epic poem based on the oral tradition, Lawino explains to her husband that despite colonisation, culture is not so easily changed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Listen Ocol, my old friend,</p>
<p>The ways of your ancestors are good,</p>
<p>Their customs are solid</p>
<p>And not hollow,</p>
<p>They are not thin, not easily breakable</p>
<p>They cannot be blown away</p>
<p>By the winds</p>
<p>Because their roots reach deep into the soil.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This speaks to the tension between social continuity and social change, which is a key thematic that anthropology has attempted to analyse. Song of Lawino is able to present this thematic to students through the oral tradition. In doing so it foregrounds African ways of being in the world rather than colonial representations of African ways of being in the world. Students are able to engage with the key concerns of the discipline from a locally centred standpoint. </p>
<p>As part of the course, students must carefully and critically engage with the ways in which knowledge carries colonial histories. This is seen through the way that people are represented or how they represent themselves in a piece of work. They have been taught throughout their undergraduate degree to be critical of the things they read rather than just accepting traditional ideas of who is an authority and who is excluded from debate.</p>
<h2>The doors that Steve Biko opens</h2>
<p>The second case study comes from a foundation course that I convene and teach. It is designed to allow first-generation university students access to the <a href="http://edglossary.org/hidden-curriculum/">hidden curriculum</a>. These unspoken rules and assumptions are often taken for granted by students who come from privileged backgrounds.</p>
<p>Students at South African universities usually learn about the core concepts and genres in the social sciences through the Euro-American canon. In this course, we use Steve Biko’s <a href="http://abahlali.org/files/Biko.pdf">I Write What I Like</a>. Biko, who was murdered by apartheid police in 1977, pioneered the Black Consciousness movement in South Africa. Complex concepts like identity, race and socialisation are easily grounded in Biko’s work. Importantly, these concepts are presented in terms that resonate with South African students. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82957/original/image-20150526-24740-u0t3b3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82957/original/image-20150526-24740-u0t3b3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=798&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82957/original/image-20150526-24740-u0t3b3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=798&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82957/original/image-20150526-24740-u0t3b3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=798&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82957/original/image-20150526-24740-u0t3b3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82957/original/image-20150526-24740-u0t3b3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82957/original/image-20150526-24740-u0t3b3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Steve Biko, who was murdered by apartheid government operatives in 1977.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The book has been extremely well-received. At the end of the first class in which we discussed I Write What I Like, a student approached me and said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I want to thank you for these classes and the material. But you must be prepared for people to speak very loudly in your class. This is Biko, they will think they know more than you!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I replied that, as black South Africans, they may well know more about this particular form of identity politics than I did as a white Zimbabwean/South African social scientist. She laughed and said: “I didn’t know the university could open up such spaces for us as students!” The text gave this student and the knowledge she brought with her greater legitimacy within the university space.</p>
<h2>Greater engagement</h2>
<p>These case studies show that students in the Humanities engage more critically with the material they are set. Students are asking themselves, their classmates and their lecturers much more difficult questions. This level of engagement can only have positive benefits for the university as an institution which drives intellectual thought and for the development of an active citizenry. </p>
<p>The research project is still ongoing across the three institutions, with much more data to be collected. But these preliminary findings suggest that academics have been engaged with notions of an African curriculum for quite some time and that they are finding creative solutions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41790/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shannon Morreira receives funding from the National Research Foundation. </span></em></p>Evidence from an 18-month-old research project suggests that making elements of the Humanities curriculum more Afro-centric boosts student engagement.Shannon Morreira, Lecturer in Education Development , University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/386942015-04-09T10:07:55Z2015-04-09T10:07:55ZStruggling with racial biases, black families homeschool kids<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77120/original/image-20150406-26496-uo448i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Homeschooling for black children is increasing.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&search_tracking_id=rnmcz_JXAomneKWv1xBSiQ&searchterm=school%20black%20kids%20mother&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=801780">Mother image via www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Homeschooling, <a href="http://www.nheri.org/research/research-facts-on-homeschooling.html">common</a> among white Americans, is showing an increase among African- Americans kids as well. African-Americans now <a href="http://www.nheri.org">make up about 10%</a> of all homeschooled children in this <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21568763-home-schooling-growing-ever-faster-keep-it-famil">fastest-growing form of education</a>.</p>
<p>However, the reasons for black kids to be homeschooled may not be the same as white kids. <a href="http://jbs.sagepub.com/content/43/7/723.abstract">My research</a> shows that black parents homeschool their children due to white racism. </p>
<p>This may come as a surprise since, for many, we live in an age of <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2010/05/28/197390/when-colorblindness-isnt-colorblind/">alleged color blindness</a> and <a href="https://news.vice.com/article/half-of-america-thinks-we-live-in-a-post-racial-society-the-other-half-not-so-much">post-racialism</a>, characterized by the declining significance of race and racism. </p>
<p>My research found strong evidence to suggest that racism is far from being a thing of the past.</p>
<p>I found <a href="http://academic.udayton.edu/race/2008electionandracism/raceandracism/racism02.htm">covert institutional racism</a> and individual racism still persist and are largely responsible for the persistence of profound racial disparities and inequalities in many social realms. Schools, of course, are no exception, which helps one understand why racism is such a powerful drive for black homeschoolers. </p>
<p>In the Spring and Fall 2010, I interviewed 74 African-American homeschooling families from around the US. While the size of my sample does not allow me to claim that it is representative of the whole African-American homeschooling population, it was nonetheless large enough to allow me to capture the main reasons why black parents tend to homeschool their children.</p>
<h2>Eurocentric curriculum and teachers’ attitudes</h2>
<p>When it comes to schools, there are at least two important areas of concern: the curriculum and teachers’ attitudes and behaviors.</p>
<p>School curricula continue to promote a worldview developed by Western civilization. This wholesale <a href="http://knowledge.sagepub.com/view/counseling/n377.xml">Eurocentric orientation</a> of most schools’ curricula, in a society that, ironically, is becoming increasingly brown, speaks volumes about a pervasive <a href="http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-ethnocentrism.html">European ethnocentrism</a>, that is, the notion that every one in the world thinks and does or should think and do like Europeans. </p>
<p><a href="http://genius.com/Peggy-mcintosh-white-privilege-unpacking-the-invisible-knapsack-annotated">Peggy McIntosh, an anti-racism activist</a>, often cites a list of things she can take for granted as a white woman. Her list reflects the nature of the curriculum that students grow up being exposed to.</p>
<p>As she says: “When I am told about our national heritage or about civilization, I’m shown that people of my color made it what it is;” as well as “I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that attest to the existence of their race.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77121/original/image-20150406-26483-1wr0m1d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77121/original/image-20150406-26483-1wr0m1d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77121/original/image-20150406-26483-1wr0m1d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77121/original/image-20150406-26483-1wr0m1d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77121/original/image-20150406-26483-1wr0m1d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77121/original/image-20150406-26483-1wr0m1d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77121/original/image-20150406-26483-1wr0m1d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As school curricula is Eurocentric, African-Americans find themselves quasi-excluded from the curriculum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&search_tracking_id=rXPHTL6YTUCr8AHctG9qTw&searchterm=europe%20school&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=2155837">Boy image via www.shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For black people, <a href="http://journalofafricanamericanmales.com/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2014/02/Lundy-2014.pdf">as I found</a>, it is a totally different experience. Indeed, while European culture and thought are implicitly presented as universal and Europe as the only place from which great ideas and discoveries originated, Africa and African-descended people find themselves quasi-excluded from the curriculum. </p>
<p>As one of the fathers with whom I spoke in Atlanta succinctly articulated, “All we learn about is their stuff, and we know nothing about our stuff, our history, our culture.”</p>
<p>This results in a general school-sanctioned ignorance about Africa and its descendants and in a disdain for the black experience, as I found through my interviews. Eventually, this becomes a pervasive and potent form of institutional racism.</p>
<h2>Racial stereotypes harm black kids</h2>
<p>Furthermore, the attitudes and actions of white teachers (<a href="http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/2006030_1.pdf">who make up 85% of all public school teachers</a>) were questioned by many of the African-American parents <a href="https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=african+american+homeschooling+as+racial+protectionism">with whom I spoke</a>. They consistently portrayed white teachers as “overly critical, unresponsive, unqualified, insensitive, offensive, mean, hypocritical, and using double standards.” </p>
<p>Indeed, many white teachers seem to bring into the schools the many racist stereotypes and attitudes that have been ingrained in them, in particular the notions that <a href="https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=african+american+homeschooling+as+racial+protectionism&start=10">blacks lack in intelligence, or are notoriously lazy and bent on criminality</a> .</p>
<p><a href="http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ839497.pdf">Studies of the impact of negative white teachers’ attitudes</a> on the school experience of black children reveal that there are two areas where teachers’ unchecked prejudices have been particularly visible and tragic: the over-referral of black students to special education programs and to the criminal system.</p>
<p>Indeed, <a href="http://www.nyclu.org/issues/youth-and-student-rights/school-prison-pipeline">African-American students are more than twice as likely</a> to be labeled cognitively “deficient” than white American students. Although they only make up 17% of the student population, they nonetheless represent 33% of those enrolled in programs for the mentally challenged.</p>
<p>What appears to be a <a href="http://www.nyclu.org/issues/youth-and-student-rights/school-prison-pipeline">false and incorrect labeling</a>, has a dire impact on the ability of black students to attend college and achieve social mobility. </p>
<h2>Harsh school punishments</h2>
<p>Likewise, black students account <a href="http://www.nyclu.org/issues/youth-and-student-rights/school-prison-pipeline">nationally for 34% of all suspensions</a>. In reality, harsh school punishments have become one of the primary mechanisms through which the <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/tsr/education-under-arrest/school-to-prison-pipeline-fact-sheet/">school-to-prison pipeline </a> operates, pushing large numbers of black children out of school and into the “justice” system to feed the prison industrial complex that has blossomed over recent years.</p>
<p>Certainly, the parents I interviewed were very much aware of and concerned about the “traps” set by many public schools for black children. One mother in New York poignantly declared, “I say America does not love my children. You know the statistics about prisons and all that. They have a plan for my children, and I am not going along with it.” </p>
<p>Given this state of affairs, it is hardly surprising that a growing number of black parents, frustrated with a school system that is quick to criminalize and disenfranchise their children, turn to homeschooling as an alternative.</p>
<p>Thus, for many black parents, homeschooling equates with a refusal to surrender their children to a system that they see as bent on destroying them. For them, it is an act of active and conscious resistance to racism.</p>
<h2>African-American homeschooling</h2>
<p>By taking the constant threat of harassment and discrimination out of the picture, homeschooling provides African-American parents the space and time to educate and socialize their children for optimal personal development. </p>
<p>I found the home education is planned and delivered primarily by mothers, who stay at home, or work from home. This mother-led home education process is commonly observed among homeschoolers.</p>
<p>In general, two strategies are commonly observed among black home educators: imparting self-knowledge and self-esteem through positive teaching about Africa and African-Americans. </p>
<p>While finding ready-to-use educational materials can be challenging, most parents reported creating their own materials, by drawing from different sources, such as books, documentaries, the internet, field-trips, etc. </p>
<p>Many go out of their way to provide exposure to black people who have achieved greatness in their domain, for instance, literature, science, or history, in an effort not only to educate their children about their history and culture, but also to instill racial pride and confidence in them. </p>
<p>In other words, many black homeschooling parents engage in <a href="http://icher.org/blog/?p=585">racial protectionism</a>, so that they will have the self-confidence and knowledge necessary to face and overcome the hurdles that white racism appears to place in their path.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38694/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ama Mazama does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar finds black parents are homeschooling kids to protect them from racism and what they see as a Eurocentric education.Ama Mazama, Associate Professor and Graduate Director, Temple UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.