Changing politics and political culture in Tanzania : the impact on political education and civics curricula 1967-1994.

摘要

This thesis examines the limits of the curriculum in Tanzania's socio-political reforms asudthe country moves from a single- party socialist to a multi-party liberal and marketudoriented system. It focuses on the dominant influence of political culture on theudcurriculum process. The study was suggested by syllabus changes at all levels fromudprimary through to university, and drew from one of the observations made by theudPresidential Commission's Report of 1991 that Tanzanian political culture wasudauthoritarian/quiescent, and that the curriculum could contribute to the realization of audsociety which would allow political choice.udIn view of the fundamental pedagogical implications, the study contrasted the WestudEuropean liberal concept of choice with the collectivist Tanzanian political culture, itsudmanifestation in the educational philosophy, and examined how it was internalized byudeducators. Specifically, it investigated teachers' perception of the curriculum changes,udand of their role in a changed political environment. Through a conceptual modeludderived from the literature, the data (obtained from documentary sources, interviews, andudfrom a questionnaire administered to 100 school teachers and 35 teacher trainees) wereudanalyzed and interpreted.udThe findings suggested that teachers had internalized the authoritarian values concerningudthe outcomes of teaching and learning of Civics (e.g. unconditional obedience/loyalty toudauthority). It was argued that changing national political ideologies required not onlyudsurface changes in national politics but also in deeper values of the society as a whole, andudthat the facile association of Political Education with authoritarianism or Civics withuddemocracy was unsustainable.udAs this study was limited by the size of the sample and type of respondents, broad basedudresearch on the residual political cultures in Tanzania and on African concepts of politicaludchoice or pluralism might yield more convincing evidence of the political values identifiedudin this study.