Whose african education is it?

Abstract

This chapter draws on studies carried out over the last five years, most recently Matengu’s analysis of education policy in Namibia, and on indigenous parents’ views of what they aspire to for their children. This research illustrates contradictions between Namibia’s policy that, on the one hand, expresses a value on the country’s linguistic and cultural diversity, while on the other hand aims for a globally (Euro-Western) defined national standard ‘for all’. These built-in policy contradictions thwart the possibility for local, contextual solutions, a need as expressed by indigenous parents without which equitable outcomes within the education system cannot be realized. It is in this context that interviews with severely marginalized indigenous parents from San societies show how parents want their children to retain valued indigenous ways of living, and to be educated to take part in the modern, globalized world by being adequately prepared to obtain jobs in the formal economy. In such ways, the parents send a message to education planners for a system that ceases to be discriminatory, and that is adapted to the needs of local indigenous communities by being inclusive and promoting social justice for all.