Baringo Great Rift Valley Geopark retweetledi
In Kenya,
1. Students don't know any history, not even European history. Maybe West Africans learn about King George and Napoleon, but here, they learn neither about Queen Elizabeth nor Dedan Kimathi. They lack what Yvonne Owuor called "historical intelligence," the very idea that all problems have historical roots.
2. Even if I try to teach continental and global history, which I have tried to do because it's my training, students will refuse to learn it. I once tried to explain neoliberalism to my class. One student got angry, told me white people have always hated us and there's nothing we can do about it, walked out of the class and dropped it altogether for the semester. The other students told me communism doesn't work and capitalism is here to stay. The students are told by the media, and even by some lecturers, that no one will employ them for knowing anything. The Ministry of Education changed the system in 2018 saying that Africans don't need knowledge, only practical skills. Kenya's president said that history is useless because knowing when Vasco da Gama came to Malindi can't help us build sewers.
So the problem isn't European knowledge any more. This narrative that Africans are taught about Europe and not Africa is outdated. It was what the Ngugi wa Thiongo's said when curriculum was taught by the missionaries. So they did a thorough job of teaching about Europe. Things have changed. These days we don't teach Europe either. We now teach abstractions with no connection to lived reality, whether that reality is African or not. I know because I'm in the system.
And even Woodson cautioned about vocational (or practical) training for Africans. One has to go back to the Booker T vs WEB Dubois debate of the 1890s. When "practical" is applied in African education, it entails what David said on my channel: sewing, cake baking and sandal weaving. In Kenya, it means frying eggs, slaughtering chicken and making sandwiches. In some cases even swimming in the grass (yes, it happened). Woodson said that vocational training for black Americans was usually mediocre and outdated. That's the model that was brought to Africa.
The sabotage against African education changed in the 1990s. The culture problem was replaced by anti-intellectualism. That's an even deeper problem than mere European knowledge. Anti-intellectualism means no knowledge at all, practical or otherwise.
@joyfwen
David Hundeyin@DavidHundeyin
Over the past few weeks, many Africans got to hear about the Strait of Hormuz for the first time ever. What caused this huge information gap? A story about how Africans are educated into complete ignorance about their own reality by @joyfwen
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