Indigenous education in Africa: a survey, analysis and synthesis of emerging themes in published literature
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Date
1978
Authors
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Publisher
University of Dar es Salaam
Abstract
This dissertation represent on incision, not into an established body of knowledge, but into potentialities of an area of inquiry with relevance for present day education and research. For well over one hundred years, there have appeared a spoke of publication on the area of indigenous education in Africa. But many of such publications are scottered and difficult to located. However, the information contained in most of them does not appear to the widely known, even among many professional educationists in Africa today. The first purpose of this dissertation was thus to identify and organize the scottered publication in order to provide a possible integrated source for study and reference on the area of indigenous education in Africa. The second purpose was to make a broad review of the origins and growth of the publications thus identified. Finally, it was the concern of the dissertation to undertake an analysis of the contents of some of the same publications. In chapter, the research issues for each of the dissertation purpose are raised and the main analytical frameworks in the forms of broad assumptions, propositions and evaluative criteria are formulated. A documentary survey, analysis, critique and synthesis constitute the main features of the method used. And in chapter II through The results of the investigation have been reported, as is summarized here below. The progenitors of the “study” of indigenous education in Africa were mainly pre-1900 foreign travellers, explorers, missionaries and early colonial government officials. Coming mainly from western cultures where the image of Africa and its peoples had been damaged since the pre-slave trade period, they produced largely prejudiced writings on some aspects of indigenous education. Since around the beginning of this century, many more writers representing more organized disciplines such as evolutionary, social and cultural schools of anthropology, developmental psychology and professional education have become increasingly interested in the investigation of indigenous education in Africa. This time, disciplinary biases, perhaps much more than the factors of ethnocentrism, have given rise to varying conceptual and methodological perspectives on indigenous education. The accumulated knowledge on the topic of indigenous education as found in the cited publications contains features of both uniformity and diversity. Features of uniformity are largely reflected, among other things, in the widespread attitude towards education as a lifelong and life-space process of learning; as being concerned more with social than merely with individual personal development; in the stress on practical performance than on memory work alone; and in the observation of the media of learning as being largely coterminous with many of the activities of the everyday process of living. In other respects, the same publications reveal that indigenous ‘’system’’ of education have been as different as there are various African societies. Ecological adjustments to different natural environments, historical vicissitudes, culture contacts and development, sex and age of individuals, among other factors, have contributed to a greater or lesser degree to the variation in the setting, organization, purpose, contents and methods of indigenous education across the African continent and, to some extent, within each society. In chapters XI, a summary of the study findings is presented, firstly, in terms of emerging themes in the ‘’type’’ and ‘’growth’’ of published literature on the area of indigenous education in Africa. Secondly, emerging themes on the ‘’study’’ the ‘’nature’’ and the ‘’utility’’ components of the ‘’tentative’’ knowledge on indigenous education in Africa are presented. Chapter XII concludes the investigated through reflections on the findings and give pertinent recommendations. As a tentative body of knowledge, the study attempts, on the one hand, to provide a description of potential contributions to general education at all levels of formal education, and on the other hand, to enrich the professional education of teachers in the area of educational foundations. As a form of educational thought, the subject of indigenous education is viewed as an important source of some useful ideas with potential contribution to the principles, policies and practice of present-day education. Finally , as an area of scientific investigation, the study points to the problems confronting ‘’studies’’ of indigenous education and make suggestion as to how they could be overcome, thereby helping to make the area of indigenous education become an attractive field of modern educational study and research.
Description
Available in print form, EAF collection, Dr. Wilbert Chagula Library, (THS EAF LA1501.O3)
Keywords
Education, Indigenous, Africa
Citation
Ocitti, Jakayo Peter (1978) Indigenous education in Africa: a survey, analysis and synthesis of emerging themes in published literature,Masters dissertation, University of Dar es Salaam, Dar es Salaam.