African school curriculum as a front on which to widen access to education

Abstract

In Africa the debates over access to education do not center on what metaphors to use in describing it. Africans are less concerned about whether the talk should be of "deepening" or "extending" or "opening" or "closing" access than about the more dogged issue of the "responsiveness" of the educational system to the current challenges. Indeed, there is much more interest in pursuing the question of how the curriculum could be more rapidly revamped to deal with contemporary world concerns in African contexts such that its peoples can be effectively and efficiently empowered. For their empowerment for and incorporation in the learning systems should help them, sooner rather than later, to bridge the class and race divide, as well as the wide digital divide between the North and the South, to access the numerous untapped community and cultural institutions of learning, and to create progressive and dynamic learning societies; for how could Africans pursue the cosmetic issues of what metaphors to use when there is hardly any access to anything on a par with what one could find in the North? It is clear that one thing we can and must do is to apply our curricular development and/or reforms to the general issue of widening access to education for people who really want to be the subjects, and not objects, of the global race for efficient and effective competitiveness. Our major concern in this chapter therefore lies with how African school curriculum should be responding to contemporary world concerns. Basically, the discussion in what follows here has been inspired by the realization that curriculum is more of a process than a product; curriculum development is a cyclical-linear, and dynamic, activity; and the most influential determinant of curriculum events is societal dynamics. The most remarkable characteristic of the social dynamics of today's world is what has become widely known as "the acceleration of history." This is evident in the fast and unpredictable changes taking place on the world scene. This chapter will accordingly examine the dynamics of the acceleration of history we are all witnessing; highlight the impact on and the implications of the acceleration of history for education, as well as for curriculum; and suggest ways in which Africa can avoid relapsing into educational and curricular marginalization by adapting its curriculum reform efforts to the dynamics of a world characterized by the acceleration of history. © 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.