Can Xhosa philosophy teach us to respect education again?
How ubuntu could solve education crises in Canada and Hong Kong.
Originally published March 6th, 2020 (Blogger)
In recent years there has been a deep-rooted disassociation between the state and its citizens — Black Lives Matter, Idle No More, March for Our Lives, the Arab Spring, the Yellow Vests movement, the Wet’suwet’en pipeline protests, and more. These movements, and others, are born out of the belief that people have been ignored, victimized, or disrespected by their governments for too long.
It’s not just sweeping social movements, however. This instability is happening on a micro-level in classrooms across the country. In my 10 years as an educator, I have heard countless students describe their high school experience as something more akin to a prison sentence than an opportunity to thrive. Years of anecdotal evidence shows me that students feel less and less connected to their school communities, their peers, and their teachers; this disassociation inevitably results in feeling disrespected.
Students feel disrespected by the education system. Staff feel disrespected by their government. Ontario’s Minister of Education is trolled on Instagram by hundreds of high school students.
Why has respect for education seemingly vanished? More importantly, what are teachers supposed to do about it?
How Ontario Disrespects Gender Studies
Did you know that Ontario high schools can offer a Gender Studies course? Did your high school have one? Unlikely. My decade of experience has introduced me to exactly one — yes, one — person who teaches this course.
A joint research team from the Universities of Toronto and Waterloo analyzed 50 years of data on gender representation in curriculum, both at the Ministry of Education and in colleges and universities across Ontario. The title of their findings is damning enough: “Women Rarely Worthy of Study”. Their research makes it clear: Canada may have an international reputation as a champion of gender equity and progressive values, but the reality is that women are not represented in any meaningful way in high school curricula. This is despite the fact that since the 1980s, the Ministry has required all curricula to include representation for women.
The data is clear — women, and gender studies, have been purposefully excluded from meaningful representation in Ontario high school curriculum.
Why did this happen? The study points to one of the favourite boogeymen of Ontario educators, former Conservative Premier Mike Harris and his “Common Sense Revolution”. One of the byproducts of his time in office was the removal of equity officers from school boards. This meant no eyes on curriculum to ensure representation. Instead, the burden was placed on private resource publishers, like Nelson or Macmillan, to include gender equity in their content…and since they weren’t beholden to the same standards as Ministry curriculum writers, the content suffered. The rise of online networking in the 2000s allowed women to form their own gender equity groups to compensate for this gap, but the data is clear — women, and gender studies, have been purposefully excluded from meaningful representation in Ontario high school curriculum.
Closing the Umbrella in Hong Kong
In June of 2019, protests erupted across Hong Kong. Mainland China was proposing a new law that would allow Hongkongese citizens to be arrested and tried in China for political crimes; many Hongkongers felt this violated the “one country, two systems” agreement that guaranteed their independence.
This “Umbrella Movement” — named after the umbrellas used by protestors to shield their identities and protect them from projectiles — had been gaining momentum since 2014. To many international observers, it seemed as though it could bring about true democratic reform in China. Yet it was swiftly suppressed by the Chinese military, police, and government. In its place a new form of citizenship education arose: government enforced and monitored; based on nationalism and identity politics; and completely antithetical to the desires of Hong Kong students.
Suyan Pan, a researcher from The Education University of Hong Kong, studied the effects of the crackdown on civic engagement in Hong Kong. Prior to the crackdown, Pan sent out 2,600 surveys and had a return rate of 82%. Afterwards, however, only 400 were sent out, of which only 75% were returned. This alone speaks to the fear of reprisal Hongkongers felt post-crackdown. Pan’s research proves this. After the failure of the protests, more Hongkongers than ever felt higher levels of dissatisfaction with their government, alienation from their national identity, ignorance of how to operate in a political system, and a desire to permanently leave Hong Kong. Despite the government enforcing a civic education program, citizens of Hong Kong felt less civic engagement than ever before.
“I Am Because We Are”
Women are disrespected by the Ontario Ministry of Education. Hong Kong is disrespected by mainland China. Both of these struggles have ramifications for their respective education systems — lack of representation in curriculum.
The problem is disrespect. The solution may lie in one of the poorest places on Earth: the Xhosa townships on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa.
Some may hear “Ubuntu” and think of the Linux operating system. Its origins are far older — ubuntu is a 2,000 year old Sub-Saharan philosophical principal shared by many diverse African nations, including the Xhosa. It can be translated as “I am because we are”, “humanity towards others”, or “a person is a person through others”. It is a communal respect for race, culture, language, and generation, built in to the understanding of what it means to be a citizen in relationship to others. A decade of research in the Xhosa township schools shows the difference that ubuntu makes in civics education. Here, teachers of all ages and backgrounds agree that when it comes to education, there is an “inner domain” of privilege, and and “outer domain” of oppression. The goal is to move from the outer to the inner. Yet this cannot be accomplished with mutual respect: ubuntu. In the townships, students and teachers learn what research calls “hybrid citizenship”: the freedom to move between modern and traditional values, communal responsibility and individualism, Western and non-Western ideals. Ubuntu is what allows this movement to happen without judgement, denial, or censure. Ubuntu is what allows everyone to learn.
It is a communal respect for race, culture, language, and generation, built in to the understanding of what it means to be a citizen in relationship to others.
Could ubuntu have allowed women and gender studies more representation in the Ontario curriculum? Could ubuntu have bridged the gap between students and government in Hong Kong and avoided draconian overreach? Perhaps we Western educators need to take a closer look at non-Eurocentric practices and philosophies, if we truly intend to create an education system based on justice and equity for all.
Mario Mabrucco is a educator with almost 20 years experience teaching literacy, arts, and social sciences to youth in Canada, Greece, France, Italy, and Monaco. He has a M.Ed in Curriculum and Education Policy from the University of Toronto, and designs curriculum for the National Film Board of Canada. Read more of Mario’s work on Medium or follow him on Twitter: @mr_mabruc
WORKS CITED
Fine-Meyer, Rose, & Llewellyn, Kristina. (2018). Women Rarely Worthy of Study: A History of Curriculum Reform in Ontario Education. Historical Studies in Education/ Revue d’histoire de l’éducation, 31(1), 54–68.
Kubow, Patricia. (2018). Exploring Western and non-Western epistemological influences in South Africa: theorising a critical democratic citizenship education. Compare, 48(3), 349–361. doi:10.1080/03057925.2017.1305881
Pan, Suyan. (2019). Identity, civic engagement, and learning about citizenship: university students’ experiences in Hong Kong. Compare([online first]), 20. doi:10.1080/03057925.2019.1687286
