Are we right to blame it all on colonialism?
The subject of history and gender in schools in a Malawian context
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31265/jcsw.v10i2.131Keywords:
gender, history, curriculum, syllabus, colonialismAbstract
The study on the history school subject showed that any reenactment of the history discipline should include the reinterpretation of identities from a historical perspective, and this reinterpretation should start with colonial history because this is where it all began. A different approach to history will have positive implications on society’s view of gender, as it will encourage the inclusion of devalued categories such as women, black women and third-world women. But does this mean that colonialism is fully to blame for all the gender issues, as is the case within the Malawian history syllabus? This paper explores the influence of colonialism on the history/social and environmental sciences primary school subject.
References
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Sibanda, M., Moyana, H., & Gumbo, S. (1994). The African Heritage (Book 1). Harare: Zimbabwe Educational Books.
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Young, C. (1995). “The Heritage of Colonialism.”In J. W. Harbeson, & D. Rothchild (Eds.), Africa in World Politics: Post-War Challenges. Boulder, San Francisco and Oxford: Westview Press.
Afigbo, A. E. (1981). Ropes of Sand. Ibadan: Caxton Press.
Allan, E. J. (2010). Policy Discourses, Gender, and Education Constructing Women's Status. New York: Routledge.
Banda, C. D.(2003). Child sexual assaults irk women activists. News from Africa. Retrieved from http://www.newsfromafrica.org/newsfromafrica/articles/art_2616.html on 7-10-2010.
Banks, J. A., & Banks, C. A. M. (Eds.) (2010). Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives. John Wiley and Sons. USA.
Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. New York: Routledge.
Carrasquillo, A., & Hedley, C. (eds.) (1993). Whole language and the bilingual learner. Norwood: Ablex Publishing Company.
Chakrabarty, D. (2007). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (New Edition). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Chipeta, D. P. (1986). Primary History Teachers’ Guide Book 5. Lilongwe: The Malawi Institute of Education.
Chrisman, L. (2003). Postcolonial Contraventions: Cultural Readings of Race, Imperialism and Transnationalism. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Creswell, J. W. (2005). Educational research: Planning, conducting and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research, (2nd Ed.). Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education.
Dolph, B. H. (2007). Culture of Malawi. Retrieved from http://www.everyculture.com/Ja-Ma/Malawi.html 07-10-2010.
Evans, S. M. (2002). Re-viewing the Second Wave. Feminist Studies, 28(2), 258-267.
Falola, T. (2001). Africa, (Vol. 1: African History Before 1885). Durham: Carolina Academic Press.
Fanon, F. (1968). The wretched of the earth. New York: Grove.
Feierman, S. (1994). “African in History: The End of Universal Narratives”. In G. Prakash (Ed.), After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements. Ewing, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish. London. Penguin.
Gerring, J. (1999). The Perils of Particularism: Political History. Journal of Policy History, 11(3), 313-322.
Ginsberg, A. E, Shapiro, J. P., & Brown. S. P. (2004). Gender in Urban Education: Strategies for student achievement. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Giroux H. (1994). Doing cultural studies: Youth and the challenge of pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 64(3), 278-308.
Hall, S. (1996). The West and the Rest: Discourse and power. In S. Hall, D. Held, D. Hubert, & K. Thompson (Eds.), Modernity: An introduction to modern societies. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Hau, S. (2006). Malawi Primary Education Curriculum and Assessment Framework (Draft). Lilongwe: Ministry of Education.
Hosken, F. (1981). Female Genital Mutilation and Human Rights. Feminist Issues, 1(3)
Kalinga, O. J. M. (1998). The Production of History in Malawi in the 1960s: The Legacy of Sir Harry Johnston: The Influence of the Role of Dr Kamuzu Banda and His Malawi Congress Party. African Affairs 97(389), 523-549.
Kayambazinthu, H. (1998). The language-planning situation in Malawi. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 19(5,6), 369-433.
Kihlstrom, J. F. (2013). How Students Learn and How We Can Help Them. Berkeley: University of California, Department of Psychology. Retrived from http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/kihlstrm/GSI_2011htm on 9-9-2015
Krashen, L. (2003). Three roles of reading: Making a difference in reading (Unpublished Paper). Orlando, FL: International Reading Association, 48th Annual Convention.
Loewen, J. (1995). Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: The New Press.
Macdonald, R. J. (1975). From Nyasaland to Malawi: Studies in Colonial History. Nairobi: East African Publishing House.
Malawi Institute of Education. (2008-2009). Social and Environmental Sciences Learners (Book 5-8). Zomba: Malawi Institute of Education.
Mbilinyi, M. (1992). Research Methodologies in Gender Issues. In R. Meena (Ed), Gender in Southern Africa: Conceptual and Theoretical Issues. Harare: SAPES Books.
McCarthy, C. (1998). The uses of culture: Education and the limits of ethnic affiliation. New York: Routledge.
McCutcheon, G. (1995). Developing the Curriculum. White Plains, NY: Longman.
McLaren, P. (1997). Decentering whiteness: In search of a revolutionary multiculturalism. Multicultural Education, 5(2), 4-11.
Migration News (2006). Malawi. Retrieved from http://www.queensu.ca/samp/migrationnews/article.php?Mig_News_ID=3559&Mig_News_Issue=20&Mig_News_Cat=5 on 23-10-2010.
Mikell, G. (Ed.) (1997). African Feminism: The politics of survival in Sub-Saharan Africa. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.
Ministry of Education (1999). Education Statistics. Lilongwe: Ministry of Education.
Mohanty, C. 1991. Under Western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses. In P. Mongia (Ed.), Contemporary Postcolonial Theory (pp. 172-197). London: Arnold.
Moje, E. (2000). Changing Our Minds, Changing Our Bodies: Power as Embodied in Research Relations. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 13(1), 1-18.
Mokhtar, G. (1980). UNESCO General History of Africa, (Vol. II: Abridged Edition: Ancient Africa), Oakland, CA: University of California Press,.
Needman, D. E., Mashingaidze, E. K, & Bhebe, N. (1984). From Iron Age to Independence: A History of Central Africak. Harlow: Longman.
Ntata, P., & Biruk, C. (2009). “The challenges of doing gender research in developing countries”: Focus on Malawi. Journal of Comparative Social Work, 1. .
Perry, N. (2002). Using qualitative methods to enrich understandings of self-regulated learning. Educational Psychologist, 37.
Prakash, G. (Ed) (1994). After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements. Ewing, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Ross, E. W. (2006). The Struggle for the Social Studies Curriculum in the Social Studies Curriculum: Purposes, Problems, and Possibilities. New York: Albany.
Said, E. (1978). Orientalism: Knowledge as Power:Some Notes in Progress by Dr. John C. McDowell. Retrieved from http://www.geocities.com/johnnymcdowell/papers/short_papers-Edward_Said_Orientalism.html on 15-06-09.
Seidman, S. (2008). Contested Knowledge: Social Theory Today. (4th ed.). Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishers.
Sewpaul, V. (2013). “Inscribed in Our Blood: Challenging the Ideology of Sexism and Racism. Afflia, 28(116).
Sharra, S. (2014). Malawi: Misdiagnosis: Mother Tongue Policy and English Proficiency in Malawian Schools. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/201410021212.html on 07-09-2015.
Sibanda, M., Moyana, H., & Gumbo, S. (1994). The African Heritage (Book 1). Harare: Zimbabwe Educational Books.
Siddiqui, A. (2006). Gendered performance and systems of knowledge/power: A Foucauldian analysis. Retrieved from http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Anthropology/21A-231JSpring-2006/24F9834D-D32C-4A95-AB92-9F93C7B3D33B/0/sidd_paper_2.pdf on 20-06-09.
Spivak, G. C. (1990). The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. New York and London: Routledge.
Spivak, G. C. (1999). A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Towards a History of the Vanishing Present. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Stanley, W. B., & Nelson, J. L. (1994). The foundations of social education in historical context. In R. Martusewicz, & W. Reynolds (Eds.), inside/out: Contemporary critical perspectives in education (pp. 266-284). New York: St Martin’s:
Taylor, S., Hinchliffe, S., Clarke, J., & Bromley, S. (Eds.) (2009). Making Social Lives. Milton Keynes, The Open University.
Vansina, J. (1966). Paths in the Rainforest. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Williams, E. (2002). Investigating bilingual literacy: Evidence from Malawi and Zambia: Book reviews. International Journal of Education Development, 22, 689-703.
Young, C. (1995). “The Heritage of Colonialism.”In J. W. Harbeson, & D. Rothchild (Eds.), Africa in World Politics: Post-War Challenges. Boulder, San Francisco and Oxford: Westview Press.
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2015-12-18
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Katenga-Kaunda, A. P. K. (2015). Are we right to blame it all on colonialism? The subject of history and gender in schools in a Malawian context. Journal of Comparative Social Work, 10(2), 167–194. https://doi.org/10.31265/jcsw.v10i2.131
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