Ali A. Abdi

Education in Somalia : History, destruction, and calls for reconstruction

In pre-colonial traditional Somalia, education was dispensed through informal systems of communal interaction. With the arrival of colonialism in the mid-late 19th century, formal programmes of learning were slowly but steadily established. These were limited in scope and were essentially designed for the purposes of colonization. With independence in 1960, the education sector developed very quickly with pre-1991 civilian and military governments building hundreds of schools, training tens of thousands of teachers, adopting the Latin script for the writing of the Somali language, and successfully implementing nation-wide literacy programmes. But with the collapse of the Somali state in 1991, all modern systems of learning in the country were destroyed by the fighting factions, and Somalia has since been a country without any formal programmes of education. This paper first looks at the history of education in Somalia, then it describes and analyses the nature as well as the magnitude of destruction, and ...

Decolonizing Philosophies of Education

The experiences of colonialism, in their psycho-cultural, educational, philosophico-epistemological and social development dimensions have been extensive, and with respect to the lives of the colonized, severely limiting in their onto-existential locations and outcomes. I will not go more than warranted into detail in terms of the immediate and enduring impact of this heavy world phenomenon on the immediate lived contexts of the colonized. It was, ipso facto, intensive, extensive, formative and undoubtedly deformative in relation to the hitherto globalizing interactions that have become the derivatives of such experience

Integrated Education and Black Development in Post-apartheid South Africa: Critical analyses

With the integration of the education system in liberated South Africa, social development expectations should be justifiably high, especially for the countrys long-oppressed black majority. The concretisation of these expectations is being, or will be, determined by a myriad of converging and diverging possibilities and difficulties. This article focuses on the problems of education and development in post-apartheid South Africa, with a sustained emphasis on the importance of looking beyond the current political triumph. The new areas of constant and consistent focus must become, the author proposes, the disturbingly uneven terrains of educational attainment and long-term socio-economic development. By stressing the urgency of these cases, the article highlights actual possibilities as well as the magnitude of hindering factors in educational development that are still affecting millions of lives in the new South Africa. The article ends with a call for the pragmatic reconstitution of South Africas development education actualities to make this country a prosperous space for all South Africans now and into the future.

Identity Formations and Deformations in South Africa: A Historical and Contemporary Overview

With the end of apartheid in South Africa , emancipatory expec tations are justifiably high for the long-oppressed Black population of that country. Apartheid (or apartness ) was a system of racial segregation that had its roots in 19th century South Africa. The term’s conceptual origins are traceable to an English daily columnist, Edmund Garrett, who, in 1895, had this to say about race relations in South Africa:

Global Multiculturalism: Africa and the Recasting of the Philosophical and Epistemological Plateaus

This article focuses on the problematic relation between African worldviews and their attendant educational and epistemological systems, on the one hand, and the dominant European discourses that have attempted to negate the validity of those, both in historical and contemporary Africa, on the other hand. The article first deals with its subtitle (i.e., it critically problematizes and interrogates the way African knowledge systems and cultures have been portrayed mainly in the writings that emanated from the European metropolis) and how this has facilitated not only false and untenable perceptions about the continent and its people but, as well, the continuing psychocultural colonization of Africans. In its domain of analyzing culture and its conceptualizations and practices, the article minimizes the fixed categories of the case and assumes a more active and multidirectional intersection of culture, society, and overall social being. Via its concluding remarks, the article proposes the possibility of more equitable spaces of critical global multiculturalism as the sine qua non for the achievement of a transformationalist and non-exclusionist trend of human emancipation and development.

Sociology of Education: Theoretical and Conceptual Perspectives

The objective of this first chapter is to provide an understanding of the ways in which educational systems, structures, and processes connect with various aspects of society, including dominant values, political goals, and ideologies. Key terms, major concepts, and theories in sociology of education will be introduced so that the reader is equipped to reflect on, contextualize, and understand the content of the subsequent chapters from both an insider’s (emic) as well as outsider’s (etic) perspective. In the first section of this chapter we give a definition of sociology; many of the terms and concepts in sociology of education come directly from sociology. The main part of the chapter then provides a general outline of the functions of schooling, several of which lie outside our taken-for-granted assumptions about the purposes of education. Next comes a discussion of the ways in which education systems vary worldwide. Finally, the reader will find a thumbnail sketch of the dominant theories in sociology of education.1

EUROPE AND AFRICAN THOUGHT SYSTEMS AND PHILOSOPHIES OF EDUCATION : 'Re-culturing' the trans-temporal discourses

This essay problematizes the place of African thought systems and philosophies of education in the European Canon. It also looks at the theoretical and analytical perspectives this Canon has spread across the globe, which trivialized Africa histories, epistemic realities and epistemologies. The essay engages a brief summary of the works of select but prominent European philosophers and situates them in the context of European colonialism and post-colonial discursive hegemonies that continue to marginalize African worldviews and ways of knowing. To analytically counter-weigh these hollow assertions about Africa, the article introduces new as well as previously well-known, anti-colonial writings by both emerging and established African philosophers and cultural critics. The essay also makes use of other works that are relevant for this exercise. At the end, the essay proposes possible ways of advancing and harnessing the rich and life wise, effective platforms and trajectories of African thought systems and philosophies of education.

Critical Perspectives on International Education

In the knowledge era, indeed, the struggle is between knowledge that is both resource and product in a world of fast capitalism and knowledge as mutual engagement in processes of shared critical social construction, and thus, more culturally inclusive and socially productive. The former has been taken for granted since the aftermath of the Second World War, but is now facing serious criticisms for its avaricious market approach. Today, the idea of knowledge as an economic product, commodified, for sale on a global market, is no longer palatable.

Decolonizing Educational and Social Development Platforms in Africa

Abstract This essay aims to engage, mainly from theoretical perspectives with analytical eclecticism, a historical and contemporary analysis of African educational and social developmental contexts. It relays the real colonial connections that are still attached to this context. The essay relates the historical location as well as the socio-cultural embeddedness of the African philosophy of Ubuntu, which may have indirectly facilitated the initial entry of colonialism. It critically locates the thick philosophical and epistemological problematics that have previously and again, post-factually limited the foundational reconstructions, and by extension, the relevance of Africa’s learning and related possibilities for achieving social well-being. At the end, the essay calls for the urgent decolonization of Africa’s philosophies and epistemologies of education, so that learning contexts can aid the now non-delinkable desires, indeed, needs for social development.

Decolonizing Global Citizenship

The growth of global citizenship education scholarship across the work of scholars in multiple areas of research can only be described as remarkable in the past little while. Therefore, it is the intention of this book, coming out of a conference on the topic, to explore conceptualizations and cases of global citizenship education as it is currently being taken up in different locations.