Africa’s education system breeds stereotypes — Prof Tamale

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Ugandan academic and human rights activist Prof. Sylvia Tamale has said the education system in Africa is to blame for several stereotypes in the society.

Her argument: The education system in Africa is basically rote learning, which legitimizes colonial perspectives.

Rote learning is a memorization technique that relies on repetition to remember information verbatim, rather than understanding its meaning or connections.

According to Tamale, "those with a photographic memory will pass".

"It was deliberate on their part [the colonialists]. They taught us the French Revolution and not the Haitian Revolution or the Algerian Revolution,” she told journalists during a human rights training workshop in Kampala.

The April workshop was organized by Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum.

During the Haitian Revolution of 1791 to 1804, the slaves revolted against their French masters, and they won. Yet, Tamale said, the French Revolution of 1789 to 1799 is what the British colonial masters chose to include in our syllabus.

She said it was intentional on their part so that local minds would not be opened to the possibility that Africans can organize a revolution for their freedom.

“They didn’t teach about the Germans’ genocide in Namibia or the Belgians in Congo."

'Constructed truths'

Nevertheless, the professor said there is hope yet if Africans purpose to train themselves the skills to become critical thinkers.

“We unlearn and relearn. You have to have a high sense of reflexivity. You have to be conscious so as to do so. Unlearning means looking at life from other points of view; it entails critical thinking, even for sacred constructs.

“The struggle to unlearn deals with stereotypes and so many ‘constructed truths’,” said Tamale.

Her illustration of a young boy raised by a single mother, who is asked at school who the head of a family is, showed how flawed and rigid the education system is. 

“He writes ‘father’ yet that is not his truth. It’s constructed truth and it is constructed for a reason: maintain ‘isms’, particularly, patriarchalism.”

Tamale said even the concept of marginalization is associated with stereotypes, which pushes people to the margin and they are not seen, valued or deemed important.

She explained that marginalization comes from ‘constructed truths’ by those with power to set the social agenda or reality, such as cultural, religious and political leaders, as well as the media.

Listing marginalized groups, journalists cited: people living with disabilities, indigenous minorities, and race [in some countries], among others.

Tamale urged journalists to steer from marginalization, which works by reducing it to dualism.

“It obscures the complexity of humanity; it glazes over it."

“Human beings are made up of several selves. There are multi forms of marginalization that happen at the same time. As journalists, you must have all that at the back of your mind. It is not one marginalized issue, but several. They happen simultaneously,” she added.

She also rallied journalists to have a wider approach to coverage of human rights stories because there is “no single truth”. They should have multiple angles of a story.