Schooling and education for the San (Ju|'hoansi) in Namibia: Between a rock of colonialism and the hard place of globalization

Abstract

For indigenous peoples around the world, schooling and education are fraught with extreme challenges within the current realities of globalization. Indigenous knowledge, perspectives, and pedagogy in Africa, Asia, and the Americas are rarely included in books and courses that deal with history and philosophy of education, and there is widespread belief that non-Western and indigenous educational traditions and realities are not comparable to Western educational traditions and have little to offer discussions about education (Reagan, 2005). That is, the larger discourse of educational thought and practice, as Timothy Reagan suggests in the quote preceding this introduction, has been extremely biased in its treatment of anything non-Western; instead simplistic misunderstandings and misrepresentations reify the larger effects of cultural and epistemological ethnocentrism, colonialism, and Western imperialism.

Citation

Hopson, R.K. and Hays, J. (2008), "Schooling and education for the San (Ju|'hoansi) in Namibia: Between a rock of colonialism and the hard place of globalization", Hopson, R.K., Camp Yeakey, C. and Musa Boakari, F. (Ed.) Power, Voice and the Public Good: Schooling and Education in Global Societies (Advances in Education in Diverse Communities, Vol. 6), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 171-197. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1479-358X(08)06007-5