Discourse Patterns in First Language Use at Hcme and Second Language Learning at School: an Ethnographic Approach

Literature I 27

In the colonies, and non-Portuguese missionaries were often held in
suspicion for not being loyal to Portugal (Bertulli,1974): this prevented
progressive stands also in educational matters.

Decolonization varied considerably across countries and continents, was
in a few cases the result of mass participation in a revolutionary
process, but in most cases represented the transfer of political power to
the Indigenous dominant class. Everywhere independence was seen as a
liberation in both cultural and structural terms, but particular political
configurations in each country gave different meaning to this aspiration
across a wide spectrum of policies. Independent young nations had to
reconcile the divergent demands of cultural specificity and uniformity to
models still well in charge of the world economic order.

In Africa, the typical neocolonial solution consisted in considering
uniformity paramount, while paying lip services to an African culture
demoted to folklore, and reacting to the excesses of the colonial period;
in education, the split was more clearly along class lines, with a
narrowly 'African* curriculum for the peasantry and a ^lEuropean^l one for
the urban Elites. Only where a new culture had been created in the
process of a long, popular struggle for independence was this dualism
demystified: some nations did not find much pride in proving that they
were able to carry on the colonial policies on their own, but rather
wanted to use the newly found confidence in their own culture to
transform the modes of social production (^,... national liberation Is
necessarily an act of culture* - Cabral,1980:143).

Between these extremes, the majority of African nations struggled with
problems of production, war, natural disasters, and with ill-defined
language and education policies, while launching far-reaching programmes
of Africanization in the attempt to avoid mass reactions to 'the post-
independence betrayal of hope* <wa Thlong'o,1985:122). But it Is intere-
sting to note that

... while the necessity of an Africanization of the curriculum is
recognized, too little attention is paid to the problems raised by
an Africanization of the teaching style. It looks as if cultural

<<   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   >>

More intriguing information