Tet Ansanm: A Global Imperative for African Youth

Globalization, while there has been no official definition of the concept, has in practice been defined by those national and corporate entities that derive the most benefit from it. As an ideology it clearly has a specific goal and purpose, as evidenced by the impact notions of progress and development have had on populations on the receiving end of globalization. It is important to critically interrogate how these notions are defined, who comes up with these definitions, and how they are adopted in the cultural transfer from “globalizer” to “globalized.” Because the African World currently experiences globalization in both “Industrial World” and “Developing World” contexts, it is to be noted that the situation presents specific and decisive challenges and opportunities for the education of African youth.At this critical juncture in African history, it is imperative to soberly examine the extent to which any progress or development can manifest under the educational systems as they are presently exist.

If the education of the youth of the African world is the antidote to the current structures/institutions that breed self-annihilating tendencies among African people as a response to the neo-colonialism which is carried along with globalization, then how must African education be structured to engage these issues on a global dimension? This paper addresses the need for the preservation of the African identity/worldview in the education of African students. It also deals with the imperativeness of cultivating critically conscious African youth and proposes the bringing of youths of the African world in regular and consistent, international, and cross-continental dialogue as a crucial aspect of cultural education on a global scale.

Globalization and the Education of African Youth

It has long been the practice of educational systems to align their curricula with the needs of their society. Today is no different as globalization, as an ideological phenomenon, gains footing the world over. As the increased integration of world markets have changed demands for labor, institutions of higher education have adjusted their curricula, recruitment practices, and admission requirements in order to provide the precise type of labor to meet market demand. These changes, however, are based in an educational philosophy that designates certain students as desirable and others as not. Among measures taken to ensure that only “desirable” students have access to higher education are intensive education reform and restructuring at the primary and secondary levels, including the implementation of standardized test-based accountability. These responses to the changing global landscape reveal a divisive trend in the access of African youth to quality education at all levels. Therefore if these trends remain as they are they will effectively diminish, in the best cases, and destroy, in the worst cases, the ability of African youth globally to be the architects of their own future on their own terms.

In order to understand the effect of globalization on the education of African youth,it is important to understand globalization as an ideological phenomenon and its effects on education.While there is no scholarly agreement on the definition of globalization,Tatto, citing Stromquist and Monkman (2000), describes globalization as having economic, social, and cultural dimensions. It “pushes the economy towards favouring free trade, privatization, foreign investment, and liberalized trade…[and] encourages new consumption patterns and lifestyles...[In addition,] the growing intensification of communication processes challenges traditions and national identities…” (Tatto, 2006, p.2). As it applies to education, globalization has provided momentum for “globalizing agents” such as the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank to influence educational policy, defining the purposes and governance of educational institutions on both national and international levels (Henry et. al, 2001, p. 3).

According to Spring (1998) organizations, such as the aforementioned have helped advance the notion of education as a producer of human capital, and thus is the motivation for the alignment of education systems with the market’s demand for labor. What does this alignment mean for the development educational curricula? It means that in industrialized nations such as the US, UK, and Australia, the curriculum is involved with the creation of forms of national identities linked with the “traditional values of western societies” (Power & Whitty, 1997, p. 7). It means that performance and accountability imperatives “lead to the fragmentation and delineation of curriculum content and the reduction in teacher and learner autonomy” (p. 10). For developing nations, this alignment will increased foreign intervention from supranational organizations and corporate entities to “aid” in the development of educational programs that will produce “highly skilled and flexible human capital” (World Bank, 2007).What does this mean for African youth?

African youth globally experiences these phenomena differently based on whether they reside in what Okrah (2004) refers to as “Western Liberal and industrial nations” or in developing nations and “traditional societies” (p. 1). However this paper will focus on the economic and psychocultural effects these schooling systems have on African youth, using the United States and the African continent as primary examples. An examination of public education in the United States, one of the leading forces in globalization, reveals the philosophical underpinnings of education in industrial nations. Similarly, a review of education on the African Continent serves reveals a failure of formal schooling and economic cultural agendas produce a curriculum that “continues to reflect and reflect the cultures of other people” (Okrah, p.5). In both cases students of African descent are underserved by these schooling systems and a serious conflict exists between the goals of state-funded schooling and those defined by Africans themselves.

According to the World Bank, “ [i]n low income countries excess demand for schooling results in private supply when the state cannot afford schooling for all. In high income countries, however, "differentiated" demand leads to a demand for private schooling, as a sophisticated clientele demands different kinds of schools.” Why would “sophisticated clientele want demand “different kinds of schools?” It is imperative to note that “sophisticated clientele” are quite aware that strictly government financed public education is not of the highest quality. Therefore, they take their children elsewhere. Those who cannot afford higher quality education send their children to public school, and their children are subject to schooling systems that adhere to educational philosophies set in place by the government. In the United States for example, education reform movements have swept the nation in an attempt to improve academic performance of American children. In international comparisons, the US has continuously underperformed in mathematics and science, especially when compared to it Asian counterparts, including its intense competitors, China, India, and Singapore.

However, education reform in the US is primarily focused with two things: the improvement of student performance on standardized tests and the reduction of the reported “achievement gap” between white students and minority students, particularly students of African descent. Both of these focuses have roots in the economic basis for public education. Education law makers believe that increased centralization of education curricula and the institution of state-designed, standardized tests will improve the performance of American students. This would improve the quality of the countries human capital, thus allowing the US to maintain or improve its position as a global economic leader and competitor. Yong Zhao argues, however, that this focus is misguided. He contends that the competitive advantage for the US has always been the “creative, risk-taking, can-do spirit of its people” (Zhao, 2006, p. 30). The move towards a school curriculum preoccupied with students passing tests will diminish that competitive advantage.

According to Zhao, some of the US’s major competitors have initiated education reform “aimed at more creativity and innovative thinking among its citizens” (Zhao, 2006, p. 30).Education reform in the US also neglects the “the lack of a curriculum that focuses on international issues and prepares students to actively engage in global affairs, and (2) the lack of opportunities for impoverished children to participate in the globalization discourse” (p.30). Additionally, reformers have been preoccupied with the “achievement gap” between white students and their minority counterparts. It is important to remember that American students across the board, not simply students of African descent, have underperformed on standardized tests. Much state-funded research on the topic indicates much interest in this misdirected initiative. However this preoccupation with gaps is part of a historical tradition in American education that has never seen African students as “desirable” students and would rather not focus on the improvement of the education system as a whole.

According to Leslie Fenwick (1996), an image of African American students as pathological has infiltrated the U.S. educational system since desegregation. Since the “integration” of US schools, there has been an “invention and mass application of psychological and educational labels that would serve to both create and constrain the educational experiences of the African American child.” She explains that terms such as ‘culturally deprived,’ ‘culturally disadvantaged,’ ‘culturally different,’ ‘socially rejected,’ and ‘at risk’ that have been used to label African American students all have the same basic meaning and “persist racist notions about the African American child as biologically, culturally, linguistically, psychologically, and socially deficient and/or deviant.” (Fenwick, 1996, p.2) Therefore, in the eyes of the U.S. public school system, students of African descent are defective and must be fixed. This labeling has led to the overrepresentation of African youth in remedial and special education. Students not in these programs are often effectively pushed out of school through the administration of standardized testing, and other measures.

Even access to what low quality education is available is limited when it comes to African students, who too often find themselves in public schools.Linda Darling-Hammond (2005) explains that changes in the economic climate have created a situation where education, especially higher education, is the key to basic survival and economic success. Surveys of employers reveal that entry-level positions increasingly require higher-level basic skills in addition to post-secondary degrees. She explains that due to persistent dynamics of the U.S. social hierarchy, minority students, including many African students, have less access to quality teachers, materials, equipment, laboratories, etc. than do their white counterparts. In other words, existing inequalities in the United States school system are exacerbated by the forces of globalization, which create an environment likely to send students of African descent into a spiral of downward mobility (p. 166 – 168).

The case for continental Africans is not much different. The goal of colonial imperialism was to create for Europeans an economic situation that would benefit them exclusively (Adbi, 14). In Africa, the situation called for mental enslavement first and foremost through psychological destruction. In order to do this the existing systems of learning had to be discredited, devalued, and removed. They would be replaced with narrow European learning structures designed to maximize the exploitation of Africans and assure their submission to European dominance (Abdi, 15). Globalization, the rearticulation of European/Euro-American imperialism, carries with it as similar implicit ideology as colonialism: “progress.” “[G]lobalized systems of European governance, culture, languages, and presumed racial superiority…” (Abdi, 2006, p.20) also accompany globalization as it gains footing worldwide. Thus, both of these ideologies consider the direction of progress for Africans to be away from their indigenous worldview and cultural practices towards those of the West.

If culture refers to the various aspects of day-to-day living that people use to respond to their social and physical environments, and worldview, which simultaneously is informed by and produces culture, can be defined as the ways in which people make sense of the universe, then what effect does ‘deculturation’ have on education? Education, according to Mwalimu Shujaa (1994/1998, 15), is the process of intergenerational transmission of knowledge of values, spiritual beliefs, aesthetics, skills and all things unique to a particular cultural orientation that will ensure cultural endurance and continuity. If education is also, according to Na'im Akbar (1998, p. 1), the process of drawing forth inner potential that is yet unexpressed into consciousness so that it may be used to the benefit of that individual and their society, what happens when culture is removed from the educational process?

The nature of education in Africa before the colonial era was more pragmatic and attached to the people’s ways of life. The result of “deculturation” is the creation of a learning process that alienates the individual from their self and from their community. (Akbar, 1998; Fanon, 1952/1967) This is not to say the direct causality exists because everywhere people have agency. Still, there is no drawing forth of inner potential in the European system of education for Africans. There is no such intergenerational transmission African cultural values. In fact, the system purposefully distorts the possibility of genuine African development. (Abdi, 2006, p. 15)

The Promise of African-centered Education and Critical Intra-Diaspora Dialogue

Scholars and educators alike have proposed the implementation of African-centered pedagogy because it is intended to directly serve the needs of students of African descent. This is akin to African scholars who argue for returning indigenous knowledge systems to African education (Puplampu, 2006). African-centered education places the African student at the center of the educational process as its subject. It cultivates the identity and it provides what Na'im Akbar (1998) calls a “legacy of competence” which is the transmission of accumulated knowledge to the student (Akbar, 1998, p. 7).For African students everywhere, this education would include an educational philosophy, curriculum content, as well implementation strategies that are culturally relevant and works to develop critical consciousness. This would develop African youth who can not only participate in the global market, if they so choose, but can also decide to engineer new possibilities for themselves and their progeny.

Proponents of culturally relevant pedagogies consider this mode of education to meet and bring together the academic and social needs of ethnic minority students (Ladson-Billings, 1994; Gay, 2000; Irvine, 1991). Gay describes culturally relevant pedagogy as using “the cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning more relevant and effective.... It teaches to and through the strengths of these students. It is culturally validating and affirming" (p. 29). This is important because it serves to culturally reorient African students everywhere. Not only this, but it also passes on to student what Na'im Akbar calls “acquired immunities.” This task would instruct students in “rituals of self-protection” against social and psychological disease. The benefit of this, Akbar explains, is that it protects Africans against “continuing to produce in each generation those who by their mis-education continue to impede our progress.” (Akbar, 1998, p. 9-12)

This notion is taken further in his deconstruction / reconstruction / construction paradigm, the critical element of African-centered pedagogy. Deconstruction deals with recognizing the pervasive destructive influence of European based cultural structures on African people, whether it is language, laws, or religion. The reconstruction element works with correcting the errors discovered during the deconstruction phase, be they self-alienation or cultural mis-orientation, etc. And the construction phase is consciously and deliberately committed to the development of knowledge and practices dedicated to promoting the welfare of African people. In other words, construction is devoted to education and, therefore, knowledge that works to counter the forces that created the problems in the first place. (Akbar, 1998, p. 56-61)

If globalization is the continuation of racist, imperialist, white supremacist practices instituted during the colonial period (Abdi, 2006), and if the effect of globalization on African education on the continent and in the Diaspora is the same “deculturization,” mis-education, self-alienation, dehumanization, and pathologization (Abdi, 2006; Puplampu, 2006), then education and learning systems of African people must be rooted in the aforementioned components of African-centered pedagogy. This is what has been referred to as African-centered education in the Diaspora African context and indigenous education in the continental African context. Thus, African-centered education, both on the continent and abroad, incorporates these elements into a libratory framework designed to meet the academic and social challenges presented in this era of globalization.

As previously mentioned, globalization has had similar affects on continental Africans as well as Africans living in the Diaspora. Everywhere in the African world Africans are confronted with Western modes of education and notions of “progress” and/or “development.” While, the experiences of the African world have been similar, each geographic space has had its own successes and has endured its own tragedies. For example, the Transatlantic Trade of Enslaved Africans tragically impacted Africans on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. In the Caribbean, the Haitian Revolution set a precedent for Black liberation, but it remains unfinished (James, 1989). Africans on the continent have political states, which most Diaspora Africans outside of the Caribbean lack. What is the importance of this?

It is beneficial to note that both Na'im Akbar (1998) and Ali Abdi (2006) include a crucial element in their proposals for the counter hegemonic education of African students. As previously mentioned, Akbar calls for the transmission of “acquired immunities” in African-centered education as protection against the forces which seek to undermine African sovereignty. Abdi calls for a “counter hegemonic praxis,” which would involve in addition to indigenous education an “intermesh[ment] and continually intermixing with the achievement of others across the globe.” (Abdi, 2006, p. 25) These “others” first and foremost must be members of the African world. This is because just as the education of Africans in the Diaspora is incomplete without Africa, the education of Africans on the continent is incomplete without including the Diaspora.