African Family Traditions, Education and

Conception of Education

To survive and thrive, human beings need basic knowledge of their environments and the world. Children are not born with this knowledge; they learn it as they develop. Education, the process that seeks to orient children to the world, prepares them for a humane working life and the responsibilities this entails. It may occur through instruction or participation. Indigenous African views on the family and childhood provide a window for understanding African educational thought and practices.

An African worldview primes pronatalist values and attitudes and inserts childbearing into lifestyles. The legitimate way to procreate and have socially integrated children is marriage. The conjugal pair is the core of the family. Marriage interconnects the families of spouses into extendedor joint-family systems (Nsamenang, 2002). Although alternate family forms are emerging, the African still tends not to think of the family in its nuclear version.

In Africa's predominantly agrarian economies, the family is the primary socioeconomic unit and social security system for proper care and socialization and education of children. Education starts at the roots of humanity, which is the child. Education is dynamic and proactive as it targets the child at critical points of development. The unborn are regarded as “buds of hope and expectation” (Zimba, 2002), the newborn as “full of potentialities of human nature” and “entirely geared toward the future” (Erny, 1973). Children discern the tacit knowledge, skills, and values and moral [Page 62]lessons that are woven into the texture of family traditions, daily routines, and social and economic activities, rather than instructions (Nsamenang, 2002).

The seminal concept of African educational praxis is participation. Children “develop as participants in cultural communities” (Rogoff, 2003, p. 3). The curriculum is sequenced to systematically fit into the successive stages of development that the culture recognizes. It progresses as the capacities of children emerge. As such, it systematically connects children to the people's heritage, family routines, social competencies, and productive systems. The child's participatory learning and contribution to the family and community humanizes him or her. Thus, children are active learners and participants in their own development. Parents (a) guide children toward the appropriate adult identity and models, (b) communicate valued behavior and virtue, and (c) ensure that children learn acceptable values and rule systems (Nsamenang, 2002).

The foundation of learning is laid in the family before the child is born. “Behavioral taboos” that apply to both men and women are “enshrined in customs, beliefs and taboos” to ensure spousal compatibility and protect the unborn child and mother (Zimba, 2002, p. 92). Children's search for understanding, competence, and “the right ways” of the world begins with family members, long before they encounter nonfamilial peers in the neighborhood and at school. As the first educators of children, parents are the source of primary knowledge and cognitive orientation for children's start on life and school. The interactional networks within families set the pace of children's learning of culture and communicative skills. It is from such interactions that children learn the social, linguistic, cognitive, and other imperatives for cultural living.

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