Barbara Trudell & Johnstone Ndunde

Language and Culture Archives Making Space for Local Knowledge: Community-based Literature and Internationalized Education Barbara Trudell & Johnstone Ndunde © 2015, Barbara Trudell & Johnstone Ndunde This document is part of the SIL International Language and Culture Archives. It is shared ‘as is’ with the consent of the authors in order to make the content available under a Creative Commons License: Attribution-NonCommercial ShareAlike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ns-sa/4.0/ More resources are available at www.sil.org/resources/languages-culture-archives Making Space for Local Knowledge: Community-based Literature and Internationalized Education Barbara Trudell Johnstone Ndunde SIL Africa PO Box 44456 Nairobi 00100, Kenya Making Space for Local Knowledge: Community-based Literature and Internationalized Education Barbara Trudell, SIL Africa (Email: [email protected] ) Johnstone Ndunde, SIL Africa (Email: [email protected] ) Summary The role of local languages in the formal education curriculum in Africa has historically been mea- ger. Centrally determined language-in-education policies typically rely on perceptions of political and economic progress, rather than on the realities of learning and cognition. Linking national unity to linguistic uniformity militates against the development and use of minority languages, to the detriment of the speakers of those languages. The influence of internationalized education further diminishes the space for local knowledge and languages in the curriculum. Where the goals of education are based on internationalized features of development and progress, the unique relevance of local knowledge to local communities is easily ignored. However, research shows that, when local language and knowledge are given a place in the formal education system, the results include enhanced learning outcomes and greater involvement by the community. One way in which local language and knowledge can be incorporated into the learning process is the development of written pedagogical materials by and for the community of speakers—children, youth and adults. This paper reports and reflects on just such an experience, a recent collaborative partnership be- tween two NGOs and a local language community, to produce community-oriented literature in Kenya. The features of this initiative are reviewed, with special attention to the perspectives of local participants regarding the process and outcomes. The paper argues that, in a context of internationalized education, community engagement in the formal learning system can reverse trends towards the marginalization of local culture, knowledge and language. 1. Introduction Education is deeply implicated in the politics of culture. The curriculum is never simply a neutral assemblage of knowledge, somehow appearing in the texts and classrooms of a nation. It is always part of a selective tradition, someone’s selection, some group’s vision of legitimate knowledge (Apple 1993:222). Local communities across Africa are repositories of extensive cultural and social knowledge – knowledge that is highly relevant to community survival and well-being. The value of this knowledge is well understood within the community, as is the importance of the community’s language for transmitting that knowledge. The pre-colonial situation described by Alidou (2003:197), in which “each group used its own language to educate its children, essentially making education lin- guistically and culturally responsive within each tribal or ethnic setting,” still exists in certain so- ciocultural contexts. However, the burgeoning expansion of formal education and the curriculum associated with it, has done much to devalue local knowledge. School subjects, taught in foreign languages, fill the learner’s day; attempting to master them takes up huge human and financial resources. Little wonder that neither children nor their parents have much time to think of the utility and value of the knowledge that shapes their lives and interactions in the community. Some would say that the place for local knowledge no longer exists, that the Western-generated curriculum of African formal education today is the only knowledge that matters today. However, if asked, community members disagree. This paper describes an initiative to develop supplemen- tary reading materials, for early primary-aged children, generated by parents and teachers in the community. Carried out in the Ukambani 1 region of Kenya, the process, the outcomes, and the re- flections of the participants all provide evidence of the relevance and utility of the local knowledge that exists in African communities – knowledge that constitutes an “untapped resource”(Dei 2008:234) for individual and community well-being. 2. Ethnicity and education in Kenya The national sociopolitical and curricular environment provides a context in which the availability and use of local-language reading materials can be assessed. Given that curriculum content repro- duces and reflects the priorities and values of those in power (Rizvi and Lingard 2010), it is reason- able to judge curriculum choices against these larger societal perspectives on ethnicity and nation- hood. The West African nation of Ghana provides some points of comparison. Coe (2005:89) maintains that in the Ghanaian state’s approach to ethnicity, features of indigenous culture and political structures are used to solidify the legitimacy of the state: The post-colonial government of Ghana has attempted to appropriate the cultural symbols of royalty in traditional kingdoms, in order to flaunt its own power, cement its legitimacy and create a national identity over and above allegiances to traditional chiefs and kingdom- or town-based identities. Coe seems to argue that this identification of the Ghanaian state with indigenous culture is almost assimilationist: In Ghana the government’s education and cultural policies are aimed at making culture a national property associated with the state. State policies and curricula make cultural prac- tices more organized and systematized (ibid.). Coe notes that the state’s intent is that this appropriation of indigenous culture into national identity be done through the curriculum, among other means. The challenge here is that teachers do not necessarily feel up to the task of teaching cultural matters, for a variety of reasons. Thus, when cultural matters come up in the classroom, many teachers can neither retain their role as teachers giving school knowledge nor appropriate the role of traditional elders (2005:187). State-sponsored cultural events and competitions actually seem to be the most effective means of transmitting the idea that the nation of Ghana is fully and intentionally multicultural (ibid.). 1Ukambani is the region of Kenya primarily populated by the Kamba people. 2 In Kenya, the state approach to ethnicity is complex with some commonalities with the Ghanaian situation—but some very different aspects as well. Gifford (2009), based on a reading of multiple expert sources on the political history of Kenya, concludes that the notion of formalized ethnic groups or ‘tribes’ was an artifact of the British colonial government system. Colonial rule “helped fix ethnic and local boundaries, defining new arenas of competition for state resources.…Through these processes, ethnic groups became political tribes” (2009:7). Today, Gifford, argues, Ethnic groups now collide in competition for the increased resources of the state, and political effectiveness is seen as the ability to promote the interests of the primary ethnic community rather than those of the nation (2009:8). The result is a deep-seated ethnic fragmentation, propagated by widespread political and economic favoritism, rather than an appropriation of the political structures and other features of indigenous cultures as in Ghana. In this context, the Kenyan curriculum as enacted in the classroom is a mix of support and disre- gard for ethnic cultures. The pattern seems to be that supportive policy and official directives ex- ist, but are not implemented with a commensurate degree of support. From early in the history of independent Kenya, issues of culture and national unity have been a curriculum concern. Bunyi 2013:683) notes that the government-appointed Ominde Commission in 1964 raised for itself the question, “What is the contribution that might be made by the curriculum towards the goal of national unity”….In answering the question, the commission looked to changes in the history and geography curricula, greater emphasis on the teaching of Kiswahili, a focus on the arts and crafts and introduction of targeted co-curricular activi- ties. The commission also recommended the revision of the syllabus so as to localize the geography and history content to Africa and to Kenya. More currently, the Primary Education Syllabus (Kenya Institute of Education 2002) notes that one of the eight national education goals is to “promote respect for and development of Kenya’s rich and varied cultures”: Education should instill in the youth of Kenya an understanding of past and present cultures and their valid place in contemporary society. The children should be able to blend the best of traditional values with the changed requirements that must follow rapid development in order to build a stable and modern society (2002:v). The syllabus’ introduction to the mother tongue subject, one of the principal subjects where culture is addressed, notes: The culture of a people is

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