Page 392 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

31 On Critical Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge and Raisins Floating in Soda Water 367

for this chapter. Few individuals from the village had been to the mountain and few
were sure what we would find or knew how to make sense of it in the manner in
which our Cape MacLear guides could or, perhaps most importantly, what a person
from the west associated with schooling, and really wanted to gain from the types
of knowledge that could be learned from this relatively small part of Malawi.

Christianity, Commerce and Civilization

Happily, three men from Makupo expressed an interest in participating in the
endeavor of climbing the mountain for education purposes. One of these men was
recently accepted to teacher’s college. In our conversations about the forthcoming
trip, we took the opportunity to talk about his future prospective professional aspira-
tions and his experiences in school, that is, what he anticipated to learn at teacher’s
college, and what he hoped to accomplish as a teacher in Malawi’s schools. Perhaps,
since he was a bit shy around a professor of education who he knew met with the
principal of the teacher’s college to discuss his application, he responded in a way
that was somewhat robotic (his answers seemed to be aimed at pleasing me).
I have always been fascinated with people’s mechanical, automated responses
about schooling, because they are so telling of things we either uncritically take for
granted or are often not aware of. So I asked this teacher bluntly, “what do you
think is the purpose of schools?” He considered the question briefly and said,
“schools bring civilization to the people of Malawi.”
“Civilization?” given any of the definitions for the term, in my brief time in
Malawi – civilization – was not exactly what I thought was Malawi’s most pressing
need, especially given this young man’s comprehension of what it meant.
His description was an essentially romanticized eurowestern view of missionary
educators “bringing light into the darkness of Africa” and diametrically opposed to
our collective assignment of going to the mountain to reclaim a knowledge for the
villagers that had been almost wiped out by colonialism. Given this “civilization”
apprehension of things for the teacher, I remained especially curious. Had my
political science professor been there with me, he would have challenged the
teacher on his answer and made him question “his history, his heritage.” Much like
the Cree communities, or my devaluing of my personal history and heritage, his
answer spoke volumes of the impact of eurowestern dominance and influence on
knowledge and its colonial impact across imposed borders.
A statement from Sicherman (1995) embodies this point clearly:
The Europeanizing of the students had long been a goal of educators in East Africa. Acting
on the premise “that European civilization...is the highest known scheme of relationships,”
teachers who knew “little of the African, his language, and his mind” were given “full
authority over African boys and girls.” (p. 25)
Sicherman’s examination of Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s experience of an
elite Kenyan colonial education, in which “(t)he motto of the school, ‘Strong to