Podcast 409, Teaching Africa and Challenging Perceptions in Schools (29-11-20)

2020-11-29

Presented and produced by Seán Delaney On this week's podcast I interview the editors of a book titled Challenging perceptions of Africa in schools: Critical approaches to global justice education. They are my colleague Dr. Barbara O'Toole, from the Marino Institute of Education and Dr. Ebun Joseph and Dr. David Nyaluke from University College Dublin. Among the topics we discussed on the programme are the following: How our education system is focused on a Eurocentric view of people from Africa Chimamanda and the Danger of a ...

Presented and produced by Seán Delaney

On this week's podcast I interview the editors of a book titled Challenging perceptions of Africa in schools: Critical approaches to global justice education. They are my colleague Dr. Barbara O'Toole, from the Marino Institute of Education and Dr. Ebun Joseph and Dr. David Nyaluke from University College Dublin. Among the topics we discussed on the programme are the following:

How our education system is focused on a Eurocentric view of people from Africa
Chimamanda and the Danger of a single story
What teachers are doing well when presenting Africa to their students
How history is taught impacts on the past and on life today
The need to hear the story of Africa from a different perspective
How our system encourages us to perform racism
The benefits of reading African authors to see how they represent Africa
The need to present a balanced story of Africa
Why discussing Africa with a deficit perspective needs to be balanced with a discussion of its strengths
Negative portrayal of Africa in Irish primary school textbooks
The need for unlearning: self-questioning and reflection
What critical race theory is (a theoretical framework and an analytical framework)
White Teacher by Vivian Gussin Paley
Knowledge justice
The River Between by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Things fall apart by Chinua Achebe
Books by Ali Mazrui.
How Europe is portrayed in African education
Decolonising education and Alice Feldman
How this affects every subject across the curriculum
Just Connections, Just Trade resource for teachers
The importance to develop a race consciousness and how race impacts on people’s experiences
There is a stereotype in all our work – we need to think about how we can erase them
Being in a crisis of knowledge and a crisis of solutions
Moving to a mindset of social justice can permeate every aspect of a teacher’s teaching
Relative size of Africa compared to Europe and the United States