In our first article we provided some glimpses of how authoritarian and oppressive educational systems were created to miseducate, mislead and control people. In this article we are going to examine the education for liberation analysis that the curriculum is used as a weapon on the battlefield of the classroom to control whose story is told, what kind of knowledge is considered to be important, and whose views are seen as valid.
The curriculum shapes people’s imaginations. For oppressed people it disarms them of their own state of being.
Colonizers and internal colonizers
After a ceremonial independence, in countries like Sudan the elitist group which had supported the colonial system inherited that system from their colonial masters and became the guardians of the colonial project. They never considered initiating a decolonizing process which could awaken the people to understand themselves and lead to the creation of an inclusive, progressive system for the people within it. Instead, they became internal colonizers who helped the people to forget who they were. Consequently, Islamo-Arabism became a weapon of destruction in Sudan, producing generations of confused people who claim identities which are inauthentic.
The colonial and internal colonizer’s education systems do not teach people to be who they are. People are taught to forget themselves and this makes them dependent on the mercy of whoever is behind the system. This kind of education trains people to fall in love with cultures other than their own and makes them ashamed of their own roots. It makes them accept the worldviews of their oppressors, and this keeps them highly guarded within the system rather than empowering them to liberate themselves.
By contrast, liberatory education doesn’t teach people to fit into the system that was created to control and miseducate them. It educates with the aim of changing that very system by enabling people to discover new ways of thinking and living based on their own power, identity and history. Instead of saying, “Get this type of training so that you can be given a job to survive within this shaky system”, liberatory education says, “get this type of knowledge to question, understand and transform the system into one which serves the people”.
Epistemicidal education
The epistemicidal education of the internal colonizers has done more damage in Sudan to African memory than in any other country within the continent. Imagine someone flying from Khartoum in Sudan to Kampala in Uganda who writes on their social media page, “I am heading to Africa!” – as if they are traveling to Africa from another planet. I can’t blame them for their ignorance because the elitist system has used all the state machinery to convince everyone that Sudan is an Arab Islamic republic not an African state or even simply a Sudanese state.
Many Sudanese had no interest in, or links to, their neighbouring African brothers and sisters because those who directed the system made sure they heard nothing good about the mother continent at whose heart they are seated. It was only after war broke out between the main militia groups on 15th April 2023 that some Sudanese discovered that they are actually African! And that they have African sisters and brothers who were ready to give them refuge after most of their assumed brothers in Arabism – who the Islamo-Arabist elites cherished – had denied them help.
Social media content creators who found themselves in east African countries after the outbreak of the current war learnt that what the system had been feeding them about their fellow Africans was wrong. They discovered that these countries have in fact more peaceful people and more welcoming environments than the propaganda of the Khartoum regime had been claiming.
Vloggers residing in the lush parts of tropical Africa were greatly inspired by the natural and manmade beauty of this part of the continent. They started creating videos to educate their followers – mostly Sudanese – who had never had the opportunity to visit these parts of the mother continent. Educating their followers about the region’s greenery, cultures and major historical sites is a very commendable effort. But some of these content creators still say, “When I came to Africa”. This shows the urgent need for some serious re-education and an awakening from the identity slumber caused by the elitist epistemicide – a self-awareness erasure imposed on them systematically by both the colonial and post-colonial elites.
Oppressed peoples of the world have been trained to erase their memories. Educational systems have produced confused people who despise themselves and who celebrate origins other than their own. Because of their conditioning they strive for values which do neither serve nor liberate them as deserving people.
An African curriculum
A good curriculum should aim to produce progressive intellectual trajectories that advance consciousness rather than producing submissive masses who conform to the system’s assimilations. What if an African child’s history lesson started with the strength of their ancestors, not with the colonial conquest? What if the child’s history books taught them about the polymath genius Imhotep who lived around 2700 BCE and who was the father of medicine, science and architecture long before Hippocrates the father of western medicine was heard of? Or about Queen Ahhotep who resisted the Hyksos invasion of the mother continent around 1570 BCE?
Instead of internalizing colonization by teaching children about how John Hanning Speke discovered Lake Victoria in 1858 and named it after his Queen – who never set foot there – why not teach them the truth? African people lived in that part of the world long before the so-called explorer arrived. Natives had already discovered the lake and given it names like Nnalubaale, Nyanza and Ukerewe. In fact, Speke was guided to the lake by local people. But, strangely, the colonial history curriculum teaches the grandchildren of those very guides that someone came from Britain and discovered a lake for them!
Rather than using organized religion to teach children about people like Abu Lahab, Abu Jahl and others who never believed in the existence of God, and who rejected the message that you believe came from God, why not use the space in the curriculum to teach children about their ancestral Gods like Apedemak, Mon, Sebiumeker, Amun, Amesemi or Dedun! But the elitists’ epistemicidal education would never make such a mistake. It would breed consciousness and that makes the masses ungovernable.
The liberatory curriculum
Liberatory curriculum is about doing away with systematic epistemicide. It’s about waking people up so that they understand that their oral traditions are not ‘primitive’ but a living archive. The drumming is more than just music. It has historical rhythms, spiritual communion and mathematical precision. Living life in the village is not a sign of backwardness. It brings shared knowledge and mutual instruction.
Language is not just a medium of communication. It’s the lens through which we view and understand the world, so the decolonisation of language is crucial. Using the oppressor’s language reinforces the very system that liberatory education is supposed to fight. Liberating the curriculum by prioritising teaching in indigenous languages is important because liberation is about restoring the worldview and the sense of self of the oppressed. To learn in one’s own language is to recover power over one’s own thoughts, cultural imagination and history. Moreover, research from UNESCO shows that children learn their own languages much more easily than languages which are not native to them.
Curriculum is not just matter of content or subjects. It’s the shared worldview that shapes how one sees oneself as an individual and how one sees the community and the world at large. It’s the vehicle that carries the cultural memory of critical awareness and identity.
Education should be more than just the memorizing of given data and the passing of exams. It must raise the level of consciousness so as to foster a sense of justice, identity and purpose. It must be about empowering the student to imagine paths of untraveled possibilities and infinite questioning and not just about reproducing existing structures and obedience.
Education for Liberation is about a complete reimagination of how we evaluate and teach the masses. It’s about making it possible for the children to see themselves in their learning. When children learn the wisdom of their ancestors from the start, education enables them to reclaim themselves. A generation learns not to conform to the norms of the system but to transform it.
By Mohammed Yagoub