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A descolonização da educação no Uganda

Published28 Jul 2015

Tags descolonização educação uganda

Pensadores e políticos do pós-colonialismo apostaram, em vários países africanos, na "descolonização da educação". Bwesigye bwa Mwesigire, advogado, escritor e académico ugandês, escreve sobre esta questão, invocando intelectuais como Edward Said ou Ngugi wa Thiong’o, focando-se no caso do Uganda.

My mother started her elementary education in the early to mid 1960s, a few years after Uganda attained independence. She has been a headmistress of various rural primary schools for a number of years now, so I ask her about the content of the education she received in the 60s and what pupils today receive. She tells me that they had textbooks that taught them about basic life in England, Canada and India among other places where the British had spread their tentacles. Little was said about us, she says. The textbooks would not have a photo/illustration of an African child/person. They read of things they would not find in their reality. The homes they saw in the books were far from the ones they lived in. Intentionally and unintentionally the image of a proper home became that of the English home.

Jamaica Kincaid, writing of her own experience as a student in a colonial school in Antigua says inOn Seeing England for the First Time:

“When I saw England for the first time, I was a child at school sitting at a desk. The England I was looking at was laid out on a map gently, beautifully, delicately, a very special jewel; it lay on a bed of sky blue – the background of the map – its yellow form mysterious, because though it looked like anything so familiar as a leg of mutton because it was England – with shadings of pink and green unlike any shadings of pink and green I had seen before, squiggly veins of red running in every direction. England was a special jewel all right, and only special people got to wear it. The people who got to wear England were English people. They wore it well and they wore it everywhere in jungles, in deserts, on plains, on top of the highest mountains, on all the oceans, on all the seas, in places where they were not welcome, in places they should not have been. When my teacher had pinned this map on the blackboard, she said, ‘This is England’ and she said it with authority, seriousness and adoration, and we all sat up. Is was as if she had said, ‘This is Jerusalem, the place you will go to when you die but only if you have been good.’ We understood then – we were meant to understand then – that England was to be our source of myth and the source from which we got our sense of reality, our sense of what was meaningful, our sense of what was meaningless – and about our own lives and much about the very idea of us headed that last list. At the time I was a child sitting at my desk seeing England for the first time, I was already familiar with the greatness of it.”

The almost complete decolonisation of Uganda’s primary education

La creatividad se aprende igual que se aprende a leer

Published17 Oct 2012

Tags sir ken robinson educação talento criatividade

lord ken robinson

Sir Ken Robinson, experto que preconiza un sistema educativo que enseñe a innovar

Tengo 60 años: irrelevantes cuando eres capaz de crear como un niño, y todos somos capaces si queremos. Nací en un barrio humilde de Liverpool, como los Beatles, creativos sin escuela. No soy buen gregario, así que no tengo partido, pero sí política. Colaboro con el Foro HSM

Un día visitando un cole vi a una niña de seis años concentradísima  dibujando. Le pregunté: "¿Qué dibujas?". Y me contestó: "La cara de Dios". 

¡. ..! 

"Nadie sabe cómo es", observé. "Mejor - dijo ella sin dejar de dibujar-,ahora lo sabrán". 

Todo niño es un artista. 

Porque todo niño cree ciegamente en su propio talento. La razón es que no tienen ningún miedo a equivocarse... Hasta que el sistema les va enseñando poco a poco que el error existe y que deben avergonzarse de él. 

Los niños también se equivocan. 

Si compara el dibujo de esa niña con la Capilla Sixtina, desde luego que sí, pero si la deja dibujar a Dios a su manera, esa niña seguirá intentándolo. El único error en un colegio es penalizar el riesgo creativo. 

Los exámenes hacen exactamente eso.

 
No estoy en contra de los exámenes, pero sí de convertirlos en el centro del sistema educativo y a las notas en su única finalidad. La niña que dibujaba nos dio una lección: si no estás preparado para equivocarte, nunca acertarás, sólo copiarás. No serás original. 

¿Se puede medir la inteligencia? 

La pregunta no es cuánta inteligencia, sino qué clase de inteligencia tienes. La educación debería ayudarnos a todos a encontrar la nuestra y no limitarse a encauzarnos hacia el mismo tipo de talento. 

¿Cuál es ese tipo de talento? 

Nuestro sistema educativo fue concebido para satisfacer las necesidades de la industrialización: talento sólo para ser mano de obra disciplinada con preparación técnica jerarquizada en distintos grados y funcionarios para servir al Estado moderno. 


Leer más: http://www.lavanguardia.com/lacontra/20101103/54063818455/la-creatividad-se-aprende-igual-que-se-aprende-a-leer.html#ixzz29YX65eBb