Re-Thinking the Role of Indigenous Systems in Life Skills Education Among the Youth of Local Communities

Literature Review

Colonial as well as apartheid-based education viewed local indigenous knowledge as primitive and insignificant, and taught learners to believe that their cultures and everything African were inferior (Giroux, 1996; Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 1986). Throughout the colonial era, school curricula in Africa were structured within the Eurocentric explanations of what constituted scientific phenomena, while indigenous knowledge was portrayed as primitive and valueless (Shizha, 2005). After decolonisation and subsequent independence of many African states, lobby groups campaigned for the transformation of curricula, but it remained unchanged for a long time (Abdi, 2005; Shizha, 2005). There was also very little shift from the Eurocentric definitions of official knowledge and school pedagogy, and the school curriculum was still like European curricula (Shizha, 2005). Therefore, indigenous voices were still, to a large extent, ignored and subjugated, whilst Eurocentric knowledge was continuously visible in educational institutions and in society. The South African system of education was rooted in the country’s system of apartheid. Cross and Chisholm (1990:44) state that racist attitudes and differential schooling for black and white have been an integral part of South African history.