Impact of Western colonial education in Zimbabwe's traditional and postcolonial educational system(s)

摘要

In this study, we employ the theory of deconstruction to challenge and reject thecontention that a knowledge paradigm was non-existent among the indigenous people ofZimbabwe before the arrival of the colonisers. This is necessary because the impositionof the colonisers’ knowledge paradigm was premised on the supposed absence of anepistemology among the indigenous people. In defending the thesis that education andindeed an epistemology was in existence among the indigenous people of Zimbabwe, we submit that education is part of any given culture. In the light of this, it becomesuntenable to deny the existence of education among the indigenous people of Zimbabwebefore the arrival of the colonisers. Knowledge ceases to be the exclusive preserve of thecolonisers. It must be noted that the imposition of the colonisers’ knowledge paradigmwas accompanied by the suppression and partial destruction of the epistemology of theindigenous people.The suppression and partial destruction of the indigenous people’s epistemologicalparadigm is called epistemicide. The epistemicide that the colonisers inflicted on theindigenous people led to the exclusive dominance of their knowledge paradigm in theschool curriculum at the expense of that of the indigenous people. In the light of thisstatus quo, we present transformation and Africanisation as corrective to the unjustifieddominance of the present day curriculum by the epistemological paradigm of thecolonisers. We argue that despite the commendable proposals contained in the Report ofthe Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Education and Training (1999: 24) tochange the curriculum so that unhu/ubuntu becomes its organising principle and to allowthe co-existence of the indigenous people’s epistemological paradigm and others, inpractice the dominance of the colonisers’ epistemological paradigm remains in place. Wesubmit that the Africanisation of the curriculum is a matter of justice that demands theend of the dominance of the knowledge paradigm of the colonisers and the co-existenceof the indigenous people’s knowledge paradigm and others