How Not to Do Transformative Education in Africa: Nosing Out Red Flags in Decolonisation

Abstract

Transformative education is an approach to learning that aims to fundamentally change the way learners engage with knowledge and their environment. While all modes of education lead to some form of change, transformative education seeks to create a fundamental change in the way people think and act. From the onset, the nerve to embark on transformative education in Africa is geared towards giving Africa agency: that she may rise above her prevailing circumstances. Nevertheless it must be pointed out that transformative education is but one trend, out of many others, that seeks (like the gadfly of the African conscience) to sting and stir the continent into action. But if care is not taken, transformative education will, like many other preceding ideological trends in the awakening of the African conscience, chant the cart to the edge of the cliff where its ruin and that of the entire continent is inevitable. Thus, for transformative education to be effectively executed, there is cause (especially in contemporary Africa where strong winds of change blow across the continent) to examine, as this paper seeks to do, the factors that led to the demise of other ideological trends and to chart a way forward for the efficient implementation of transformative educational ideals in Africa’s combat against the remnants of colonialism. We are, however, strongly critical of the decolonial process, of static culture and tradition, particularly from the traditional philosophical perspective. Africa must embrace modernization which is different from westernization.