Stud Philos Educ (2009) 28:209–222

DOI 10.1007/s11217-008-9106-2

African Philosophy of Education: The Price

of Unchallengeability

Kai Horsthemke Æ Penny Enslin

Published online: 9 April 2008

Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008

Abstract In South Africa, the notion of an African Philosophy of Education emerged

with the advent of post-apartheid education and the call for an educational philosophy that
would reflect this renewal, a focus on Africa and its cultures, identities and values, and the
new imperatives for education in a postcolonial and post-apartheid era. The idea of an
African Philosophy of Education has been much debated in South Africa. Not only its
content and purpose but also its very possibility have been, and continue to be, the subject
of understandably passionate exchanges. In this paper, after discussing some of the con-
stitutive features of African Philosophy of Education, we indicate aspects with which we
are sympathetic. Our central question is whether African Philosophy of Education is the
revisioned, ‘typically African’ philosophy of education that it is claimed to be. We argue
that it has revealed certain tendencies that are remarkably similar to characteristics of
Fundamental Pedagogics, the repressive doctrine complicit in apartheid education that it
claims to replace. More substantially still (and this is a feature that has wider ramifications
for philosophy of education internationally), African Philosophy of Education, by labeling
itself uniquely and distinctly ‘African’, runs the risk of insulating itself not only from
interaction with the wider (i.e. non-African) world but also from any critical interrogation.

Keywords African philosophy
African philosophy of education
Deliberative inquiry

Fundamental Pedagogics
Philosophy-as-critical-activity
Philosophy-as-worldview

K. Horsthemke (&)
Wits School of Education, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, PO Wits,
2050 Johannesburg, South Africa
e-mail: Kai.Horsthemke@wits.ac.za

P. Enslin
Department of Educational Studies, University of Glasgow, 11 Eldon Street, Glasgow G3 6NH, UK
e-mail: p.enslin@educ.gla.ac.uk

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210 K. Horsthemke, P. Enslin

Introduction

With the birth of a democratic South Africa in 1994 and a new democratic constitution
(Republic of South Africa 1996), came a new dispensation—for education in particular.
The ‘old’ segregated, unequal and authoritarian apartheid education system based on the
ideology of Christian National Education and exemplified most starkly in Bantu Education
received its philosophical and general theoretical justification in so-called ‘Fundamental
Pedagogics’. With the advent of post-apartheid education there was a call for a different
philosophy of education that would reflect this renewal, a focus on Africa and its cultures,
identities and values, and the new imperatives for education in a postcolonial and post-
apartheid era. Thus emerged the idea of an African Philosophy of Education.
The concept of an African Philosophy of Education has been much debated in South
Africa. Not only its content and purpose but also its very possibility have been, and
continue to be, the subject of understandably passionate exchanges. In this paper, after
discussing the central tenets of African Philosophy of Education, we indicate aspects with
which we are sympathetic. Our framing question is: is African Philosophy of Education the
revisioned, ‘typically African’ philosophy of education that some of its leading proponents
in southern Africa say it is (Higgs 2003, p. 6; Ramose 2004, pp. 142, 143, 153ff, 158)? We
argue that it is not: it has revealed certain tendencies that are strikingly similar to char-
acteristics of Fundamental Pedagogics, the repressive doctrine complicit in apartheid
education that it claims to replace. Even more substantially, African Philosophy of Edu-
cation, by labeling itself uniquely and distinctly ‘African’, runs the risk of self-
marginalisation, of isolating itself not only from interaction with the wider (i.e. non-
African) world but also from any critical interrogation. This is a feature that arguably has
wider ramifications for philosophy of education internationally.

A New Philosophy of Education

What is African Philosophy of Education? What are its central claims about itself and what
it offers? How has it been defended against emergent criticism? What might be said in its
favour? Regarding the first question, African philosophy (including philosophy of edu-
cation) is commonly seen to have its roots in an oral tradition, relying substantially either
on myths, legends and traditions, or on the spoken (and/or written) communications of so-
called ‘philosophical sages’, or on postcolonial ideologies of certain African leaders.
African traditional and/or religious worldviews are frequently cited as exemplifying
characteristically African ways of philosophising, including—one would assume—philo-
sophising about education. A fourth trend in African philosophising is the direction
pursued by critical or ‘professional’ philosophy1 (see Oruka 1998, 2002). Regarding the
other questions, numerous attempts have been made in recent years both to establish a

1
This is a direction associated, for example, with the writings of Kwame Anthony Appiah, Paulin J.
Hountondji, Peter Bodunrin and Kwasi Wiredu. Although both Henry Odera Oruka and Kwame Gyekye can
be credited with recording, concurrently and independently from one another, contemporary non-academic
intellectual traditions (Lölke 2001, p. 140), Oruka was the first, in 1978 (Oruka 2002), to undertake this
classification. He has recently (Oruka 1998, pp. 101, 102) described two additional types of philosophy, the
hermeneutic trend and the artistic or literary trend—somewhat unhelpfully, because the former appears to be
subsumed by critical or ‘professional’ philosophy, while the latter contains elements of the other trends
identified previously, ethnophilosophy, sage philosophy and nationalist-ideological philosophy. See also Le
Grange 2005, pp. 128ff; Waghid, passim.

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suitable educational discourse or philosophy of education for (South) Africa and to

demonstrate the virtues and viability of African traditional education in this regard.
Moreover, at least one candidate has been suggested as the root or basis not only of African
Philosophy of Education but also of African philosophy per se, namely ubuntu (or botho or
hunhu—all of which denote ‘humanness’), while another—communalism—is held to
constitute a key moral and educational principle.
In recent essays we have critically interrogated the possibility of African Philosophy of
Education as well as its purported basis and key constitutive principles (Enslin and Hors-
themke 2004; Horsthemke and Enslin 2005). But lest we be misunderstood as denying that
any value whatsoever may attach to African Philosophy of Education, we want to establish
from the outset that there are several aspects with which we sympathise. We are in agreement
with most, if not all, of the basic concerns that inspire the defence of African Philosophy of
Education. The evils of occidental pretences to supremacy—colonialism, racism, sexism, the
wholesale subjugation and exploitation of entire cultures (all manifest in apartheid educa-
tional legislation)—deserve to be condemned in the strongest possible terms. The effects of
colonialism and enforced segregation on education in particular have been and continue to be
profoundly disturbing. As German journalist Bartholomäus Grill puts it:
‘Negro children’ who had the privilege of attending a mission school had the
respective norms of civilisation drilled into their heads: individualism, work disci-
pline, rationality and responsibility, bodily hygiene, linear perception of time,
literacy. They learned that their parents’ religion is mere idolatry, that the transmitted
norms and values are primitive, that African culture prevents progress. Thus van-
ished the remnants of any feeling of self-worth that may have been left over after the
trauma of slavery. The senses, the thinking, the desires of Africans were colonised.
(Grill 2003, pp. 90, 91; our translation)
Our scepticism does not concern the role assigned to African Philosophy of Education in
terms of countervailing these effects and in contributing to a process of healing and the re-
establishment of self-worth. Broadly, it seems appropriate that education in African
schools should, among other elements, lend some support to humane values and a sense of
community. Philosophy of education in Africa should respond to the challenges that face
this continent, as has been the tendency in many academic disciplines taking up a
postcolonial stance. So the assertion of an indigenous response to colonial education and
also to Anglo American philosophy and philosophy of education should come as no
surprise. However, there are certain worrying features that characterise popular trends in
African Philosophy of Education. Our concern in the present paper is with the exposition
and critical analysis of these tendencies.
One of the most consistent proponents of African Philosophy of Education, Philip
Higgs, was previously a proponent of Fundamental Pedagogics. In response to sustained
criticism of Fundamental Pedagogics from the late 1970s on (e.g. Enslin 1984, 1990),
Higgs initially defended Fundamental Pedagogics, claiming that its critics misunderstood
and mischaracterized it: ‘‘…the history of Fundamental Pedagogics has been beleaguered
by a climate of misrepresentation … [that] threatens the demise of Fundamental Peda-
gogics in terms of its status as a human science and an academic discipline in its own
right’’ (Higgs 1991c, pp. 110, 111; see also Higgs 1991a, p. 195; Higgs 1991b, p. 148). But
subsequently (Higgs 2003, pp. 5–6) he wrote that
during the so-called apartheid years, philosophical discourse about the nature of
education, teaching and learning was dominated by Fundamental Pedagogics which

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was seen to provide the foundational landscape for apartheid education in the form
of the system of Christian National Education. As such, Fundamental Pedagogics
was regarded as a crucial element in the hegemony of apartheid education as it
revealed itself in the system of Christian National Education (see for example, Higgs
1994a, b).
Within 3 years, Higgs went from self-declared ‘proponent’ (Higgs 1991a, p. 195) to ‘critic’
(Higgs 1997, p. 100) of Fundamental Pedagogics, now acknowledging its proximity to
Christian National Education (Higgs 1994a, p. 299)—something he had denied earlier
(Higgs 1991a, b, c). Thus, he declared that the criticisms were justified (Higgs 2003, p. 6),
now leading the call for a new philosophical discourse of education. Initially, he turned to
postmodernism (Higgs 1997) as pointing the way towards a means of ‘revisioning’ phi-
losophy of education. ‘‘Postmodernism as a site of conflicting ideas and practices, can
make a contribution to philosophy of education when it provides elements of an opposi-
tional discourse for understanding, challenging and responding to changing cultural and
educational shifts in the twentieth century’’ (Higgs 1997, p. 105). Higgs had earlier stated
(Higgs 1994a, p. 301): ‘‘a new theoretical discourse is needed in South Africa in order to
encourage and promote those processes that have been set into motion’’, by which he
meant post-apartheid policy aims such as ‘‘the development of human potential, so that
every person is able to contribute freely to society, advance common values’’ (African
National Congress Education Department 1994, p. 2; quoted in Higgs 1994a, p. 301) and
‘‘a democratic ethos and a culture of human rights by educational programmes and
practices conducive to critical discourse and experimental thinking, cultural tolerance, and
a common commitment to a humane, nonracist and nonsexist social order’’ (Department of
Education 1997, p. 7; quoted in Higgs 1997, p. 100; Higgs 1998, p. 11). This new discourse
he came to identify in ‘African ways of thinking and of relating to the world’ (Higgs 2003,
p. 6), seeing its articulation as located within the African renaissance. Higgs’s writings
have done much to articulate this approach and to make the ideas of a range of African
writers known to a South African audience (see for example Higgs 2003, pp. 6ff).
Nevertheless, Higgs’s claim that there is a ‘new’ discourse is at best only half correct,
since the new bears a strong resemblance to the old. But we should take into account the
Africanist stance that Higgs espouses. He distinguishes (Higgs 2003, pp. 9–10) between a
conception of African philosophy held by those who ‘‘defend the professional integrity of
their discipline against the popularization by cultural nationalists’’ and the conception of
‘‘those who … emphasise the specificity of the content of whatever is produced by African
philosophers in the practice of ethnophilosophy’’. He initially appears to favour the
interpretation of African philosophy provided by Oladipo, who argues that the issue is ‘‘the
extent to which African philosophers have been able to use whatever intellectual skills they
possess to illuminate the various dimensions of the African predicament’’ (Oladipo 1992,
p. 24; quoted in Higgs 2003, p. 10), but Higgs seems to move away from this. He ends up
in an ambiguous position by embracing traditional African thought and practice as ade-
quate and sufficient for, indeed as constitutive of, African Philosophy of Education. (Higgs
2003, pp. 15–16)
In terms of educational practice, African Philosophy of Education is practiced mainly in
Africa by those trying to come to come to grips with African educational issues and
problems. That is, in its most plausible form, i.e. critical or ‘professional’ philosophy,
African Philosophy of Education would seek to address pressing practical issues and
problems. These include democratisation of the classroom, establishing relevance and
sensitivity to social and cultural context within curricula and syllabi, issues around

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HIV/AIDS education, educational redress and transformation, etc. But some of its pro-
ponents make a more expansive set of claims about its nature and standing, and these are
our concern, particularly that it is a new and revisioned philosophy of education. The
resemblance to Fundamental Pedagogics of some of its key constitutive features indicates
to us that it is not.2

More of the Same?

Unlike Fundamental Pedagogics, education policy since 1994 emphasises redress and
equal access in a democratic system committed to human rights. Nonetheless, while
southern African proponents of African Philosophy of Education clearly endorse this new
educational order, elements of their position also resemble key characteristics of Funda-
mental Pedagogics, in form (both are cast as unfalsifiable) as well as content (both are
underpinned by a more or less explicit cultural as well as epistemological relativism).
While Fundamental Pedagogics has supposedly been abandoned in South African
education since 1994, some of its features are echoed in the turn to African Philosophy of
Education. The most obvious of these lies in the apparently common assumption that
society consists of a defined set of distinct groups each with its own culture or life- and
worldview. Correspondingly, there is a theoretical orientation appropriate to each group
(see Makgoba 1996; Van Wyk 2005 on the African worldview and African lifeworld,
respectively). Even if this was empirically a plausible assumption in the heyday of Fun-
damental Pedagogics, it surely cannot be so now. Especially with the impact of
globalization on most societies and the increasingly cosmopolitan character of our society,
like most others, the evidence simply does not support a view so sociologically simplistic.
Postmodern theory has effectively revealed how cultural difference is no longer signified
by ‘‘unitary or individual forms of identity because their continual implication in other
symbolic systems always leaves them ‘incomplete’ or open to cultural translation’’ (Bhaba
1990, quoted in Peters 2000, p. 12). Moreover, normatively speaking the principles of our
Constitution and the vision of democracy and human rights it endorses assume a degree of
integration—indeed of me´lange. If our empirical claim is accepted but not the normative
one, a consequent problem is: Who decides on the characteristics of an ascribed African

2
Fundamental Pedagogics cast itself as a discipline that used ‘the scientific method’ and, by virtue of this,
as the only authentic method for studying education. By deploying ‘the phenomenological method’ the
Fundamental Pedagogician was supposedly able to acquire an understanding of the phenomenon of edu-
cation by means of ‘radical reflection’ on the education situation, which would then be described in terms of
a set of pedagogic categories and corresponding criteria. Within this approach, etymology was given a
philosophically fundamental, legitimising function (see Du Plooy et al. 1982, esp. chapter 1; De Jager et al.
1985, again esp. chapter 1; see also Luthuli 1981, pp. 8, 9). Leading Fundamental Pedagogicians (e.g.
Landman and Gous 1969) described their science as free of metaphysical assumptions. Yet, in the practice
of education,
accompanying the child on the way to self-realisation … must be in accordance with the demands of
the community and in compliance with the philosophy of life of the group to which he belongs. In
this way the South African child has to be educated according to Christian National principles.
(Viljoen and Pienaar 1971, p. 19; emphasis ours)
Fundamental Pedagogics was criticized and roundly rejected by many involved in conceptualizing a new
educational order after apartheid, not only because of its obvious endorsement of segregation and the racist
elements of the Christian National doctrine, and its adherence to theocentric (Christian) truth and values, but
also for its authoritarian (and androcentric) conception of the child (Enslin 1992).

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identity? What about those African parents who may not want their children to be con-
stituted as ‘Africans’ by the schooling system, preferring a more cosmopolitan identity?
In several ways African Philosophy of Education, like Fundamental Pedagogics,
embraces devices deployed to make it immune from criticism. A major effort was
undertaken to define Fundamental Pedagogics as ‘its own science’, with its own language.
Similarly, insofar as it is informed by ethnophilosophy, African Philosophy of Education
has been depicted ‘‘as some objective, neutral truth which cannot itself be questioned and
undermined, thus making [it] some universal ‘thing’ which should be valorised as scientific
inquiry’’ (to use Yusef Waghid’s characterisation; Waghid 2004c, p. 60; see Ramose
2002a, pp. 234, 235, for an endorsement of such a perspective). While Waghid denies that
African Philosophy of Education constitutes ‘‘an objective body of truth’’, he claims that its
methods of investigation of ‘‘educational issues related to the African ‘lived experiences’
on the African continent’’ make it ‘‘a mode of scientific inquiry’’ (Waghid 2004c, p. 60).
Fundamental Pedagogics tended to use dense and frequently inaccessible language, often
characterised by an impenetrable vocabulary likely to bamboozle disciples and critics
alike, and to contribute to insulating it from criticism.3 As P.C. Luthuli put it, in his
application of Fundamental Pedagogics to ‘black-orientated education’, ‘‘…no group or
individual is able to interpret the philosophy of life of another people objectively unless he
is part thereof’’ (Luthuli 1982, p. 80).
The preoccupation of Fundamental Pedagogics with etymology as a substitute for
argument is also echoed in Mogobe Ramose’s style of African Philosophy of Education.
For example, Ramose elaborates on the ‘rheomode’, a ‘mode of language’ he considers not
only suitable for but also characteristic of African philosophy:
The African philosophic conception of the universe is …pantareic. On this view,
‘order’ cannot be once established and fixed for all time. …One of the implications
… for the dominant world-view based upon fragmentative thinking is that our idea of
fact and truth must change. It is no longer unproblematical to hold that a ‘fact’ is an
objective state of affairs. …To make such an assertion without reference to the
relationship … between the supposedly ob-jective state of affairs and the declarant is
to ignore unduly a crucial dimension in the construction of ‘facts’. Our idea of truth
must be reviewed from the stand-point of rheomodic thought. According to rheo-
modic thought, truth may be defined as the contemporaneous convergence of
perception and action. Human beings are not made by the truth. They are the makers
of truth. (Ramose 2002a, pp. 234, 235)
Ramose seems to be oblivious to the obvious response: Who is the maker of this particular
truth, then? And why should others embrace it? He continues,
Seen from this perspective, truth is simultaneously participatory and interactive. It is
active, continual, and discerning perception leading to action. As such, it is distinctly
relative rather than absolute. (Ramose 2002a, p. 236)

3
See, for example, J.L. Du Plooy, G.J. Griessel and M.O. Oberholzer:
Pedagogics has been enabled to inhabit its own home, maintain its identity de facto-ly and de juris-ly.
The term and concept de juris gives rise to a discussion of the autonomy of pedagogics. …Peda-
gogics as a ‘‘child’’ of philosophy has become … an independent science in its own house in which
those practicing it—pedagogicians or educationists—have jurisdiction to do so. It is entitled to
legislate for itself. (Du Plooy et al. 1982, p. 209)

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Again, he fails to anticipate the obvious implication that this particular truth is also
‘relative’. It follows from these examples that relativism about truth is inconsistent, if not
incoherent, and all but sinks the linguistic vehicle touted for ‘African philosophy’ (see
Horsthemke and Enslin 2005, p. 57). Apart from the profound logical and epistemological
problems raised by Ramose’s thoroughgoing relativism, his unquestioning embrace of ‘the
rheomode’ is puzzling. How ‘African’ is a philosophical language if its logic and rationale
draws on Greek metaphysics, i.e. ‘the epistemology and philosophy of the conqueror’
(Ramose 2004, p. 139)? Moreover, such a move is rather reminiscent of Fundamental
Pedagogics, where etymology and conceptual stipulation are substituted for philosophical
argument.4 This has assisted in rendering both types of theory impervious to criticism. In
particular, the problem with the rheomode language or rheomodic thought that is taken to
characterise African philosophy is its constant fluidity without absolute fixities. If the space
it ‘occupies’ cannot be represented, other than as being in perpetual flux, then it is rendered
immune to critical interrogation: it will always remain ‘beyond’, offering no object of
interrogation.
A further example of this is Ramose’s engagement with the idea of ubuntu, which he
refers to as ‘the basis of African philosophy’, ‘the root of African philosophy, …the
wellspring flowing with African ontology and epistemology’ (Ramose 2002a, p. 230):
‘‘African philosophy in general [,] and … ubuntu philosophy particularly for South Africa,
must be inscribed in the research agenda aimed at the construction of a new philosophy of
education in South Africa’’ (Ramose 2004, p. 158). After providing what is a complex set
of stipulative definitions, rather than a ‘philosophical discussion’ (as Ramose claims he
does; Ramose 2004, p. 149), of ubuntu (‘understood as ‘being human’, ‘humanness’;
Ramose 2002a, p. 2315) and umuntu (‘the emergence of homo-loquens who is simulta-
neously homo sapiens’; Ramose 2002a, p. 231), respectively, Ramose refers to
an indissoluble link between umuntu and ubuntu. The link is between ontology—
umuntu—and epistemology and ethics [–] ubuntu. (Ramose 2004, p. 149)
He continues:
The logic of umuntu and ubuntu shows that being is always an indivisible one-ness or
whole-ness. As the concrete manifestation of being, umuntu may be regarded as the
temporarily having become. (Ramose 2004, p. 150; see also Ramose 2002a, pp. 231,
232; Ramose 2002b, p. 324, 325)
Our critique elsewhere (Horsthemke and Enslin 2005, pp. 65–68) of Ramose’s position
concerned the following facets: the characterisation of ubuntu as the basis or philosophical
foundation of African philosophy (Ramose 2002a); the demand for the inscription of

4
A noteworthy example in this regard is found in a recent article by Michael B. Adeyemi and Augustus A.
Adeyinka, whose analysis of the concept of education, and its implications (Adeyemi and Adeyinka 2003,
pp. 426, 427), closely mirrors that given by fundamental pedagogicians (Luthuli 1981, pp. 8, 9; Du Plooy
et al. 1982, pp. 2, 3; De Jager et al. 1985, p. 9).
5
A striking parallel to Ramose’s exposition here exists in Fundamental Pedagogics theory:
Only man ‘‘exists’’. This does not suggest that there is nothing else but man, but that man exhibits a
mode of existence (mode of being) which sets him aside from all everything else which is
…Existence is a mode of being which is characteristic of man and which constitutes him as a human
being. This implies that existence indicates the humanness of man. The same basic idea is to be found
in the category ‘‘Dasein’’. In the category Dasein there is already reference to what is further
explained by the category existence. The idea of being present is embedded in the prefix ‘‘Da’’. Man
is, therefore, not an isolated being. (De Jager et al. 1985, p. 151)

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ubuntu philosophy in the research agenda aimed at the construction of a new philosophy of
education in South Africa (Ramose 2004, p. 158); the purported usefulness of ubuntu as a
principled action-guide, in view of all kinds of practical ethical, political and educational
problems; and the account given of ubuntu, both in terms of the values and principles it is
held to embody as well as in terms of its alleged uniqueness and distinctness. Taking issue
with recent attempts to forge a link between ubuntu and ethical values elsewhere, Ramose
states:
To argue … that … the insights of the ubuntu ethic are not African but universal …
is at best to conceal the philosophic character of ubuntu and, at worst, to deny that
ubuntu has any philosophic character at all. To dissolve the specificity of ubuntu into
abstract ‘universality’ is to deny its right to be different. (Ramose 2002b, p. 327)
This raises the legitimate concern whether Ramose is not thereby contributing to the self-
marginalisation of African philosophy and some of its central ideas. Moreover, the net
implication of his painstaking etymology is arguably that if ubuntu—whether in the
ontological and epistemological sense as a ‘concept’ or in the ethical sense as a ‘value’
(Ramose 2004, p. 149)—is either unexceptional or (worse) problematic, then the very
foundation of African philosophy would be threatened (see Horsthemke and Enslin 2005).
To date, no defence of African Philosophy of Education against our criticisms has been
forthcoming, apart—that is—from what appears to be a common sociological sleight of
hand, as in the observation that our
position is disturbingly devoid of self-reflexivity. There is no evidence of a con-
sciousness of how their race and class positions them, and of how the Western
discourses they have taken up in their educational journeys (have) dispose(d) them to
work in particular ways, and also of the blind spots their ways of researching/writing
create. (Le Grange 2005, p. 137)
It is not unusual for those who are critical of politically correct stances to be accused of
manifesting ‘imperialist tendencies’ (Le Grange 2005, p. 128), of race- and class-based
prejudice, or to be told that they are disqualified from commenting on African philosophy
and its communalist streak because they are not located ‘inside’ the discourse. It is difficult
not to perceive these moves as amounting to ad hominem arguments.
This demand for ‘reflexivity’ raises the following questions:
• Whose voices determine what constitutes an African Philosophy of Education?
• Who is allowed to speak and who is disqualified—and on what grounds?
• Is deliberative commentary on the state of (philosophy of) education in South Africa
today determined by race and class membership?
• If we declare our race and class positions (what about gender?) can we then enter and
stay in the debate?
• If not, how is absolution sought and achieved by those suffering from suspect
positioning?
• Do proponents of African Philosophy of Education who are themselves Caucasian,
middle class and/or male also have to declare their positionality?
• Do these requirements have any bearing on the content and quality of what they have to
say?
• Does our critic require all philosophers to confess how they are positioned? If any
philosopher’s work does not include such a confession, does it disqualify it from further
consideration?

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The reasoning here appears to be as follows. Those who are ‘indigenous’, ‘African’ in an
ethnic sense, and/or who have experienced the brutality and oppressiveness of colonialism
and apartheid cannot but embrace African Philosophy of Education. If they do not, this is
because their ‘senses, thinking and desires’ (cf. Grill 2003, p. 91) have been colonised.
Whereas those who are not ‘African’ cannot coherently criticise African Philosophy of
Education, because they are not on the ‘inside’, as it were, not part of the ‘African
lifeworld’ (Van Wyk 2005). Extant defences of African Philosophy of Education tend not
only to be designed to resist critical interrogation but also to be inconsistent: they are
characteristically silent on the phenomenon of white male middle-class academics
embracing ubuntu, African communalism, the African renaissance and the Africanisation
project. (This is all the more telling in instances where the academics in question are
former defendants of Fundamental Pedagogics.) While it certainly cannot be detrimental to
be mindful of any impairment that may threaten one’s ability and practice regarding
rational deliberation, and of possible culture-, race- and class-related ‘blind spots’, the
assertion that one is necessarily prone to these is not only reductionist. It is also
inconsistent—since it could be turned against itself.

African Philosophy of Education in a Deliberative Context

This exclusionary tendency sits uneasily next to Waghid’s defence of deliberation as a

feature of African Philosophy of Education. In his significant contribution to the debate,
Waghid endorses the assumption that ‘‘an African philosophy of education invokes and
advocates rational deliberation and argumentation’’ (Waghid 2005, p. 81; cf. also Waghid
2004aa, p. 44; Waghid 2004b, p. 132). His emphasis on ‘modes of deliberative inquiry’, on
enabling voices in secondary and tertiary classrooms (Waghid 2004b, p. 132), adds a new
and important dimension to the debate about African Philosophy of Education. Yet, some
of the philosophical ideas expounded here are debatable. Among the problems we have
identified are the following: Kwame Gyekye’s notions of a ‘culture-dependent rationality’
(Waghid 2004a, p. 39; Waghid 2004b, pp. 134, 135; Gyekye 1997, pp. 19, 236) and
‘minimalist logic’, as opposed and preferable to ‘excessive logical reasoning’ (Waghid
2004a, pp. 40, 41, 43, 44; Waghid 2004b, pp. 134, 135, 138, 140; Waghid 2005, pp. 82, 84;
Gyekye 1997, p. 29); and the ideas of ‘the African experience’ (Waghid 2004a, pp. 36, 37,
44) and ‘the African classroom’ (Waghid 2004b, p. 138) (emphases ours; note the col-
lective singular employed in both instances: as if there actually is something like ‘the’
African experience or a homogeneous entity like ‘the’ African classroom). We will, briefly,
discuss the first two of these ideas, culture-dependent rationality and the idea of ‘mini-
malist logic’, which Waghid borrows from Gyekye and applies to an ‘African(a)
philosophy of education’ relevant for South Africa.
In the first case, the idea that rationality is a ‘culture-dependent concept’ is presented
with little additional argument. It is clearly inconsistent, in that the verdict that rationality
is culture-dependent is itself a transcultural, i.e. culture-independent, rational judgement.
(Of course, it might be claimed to be ‘culture-dependent’ itself—which, however, raises
the question as to why anyone else ought to find it compelling.) On the other hand, if one
accepts—for the sake of argument—that Gyekye’s idea is coherent, then this has profound
implications for deliberative exchange. Quite simply, cross- or inter-cultural discursive
exchange could not happen. The incommensurability of rationalities would render such
deliberative dialogue and inquiry impossible. ‘‘Gyekye’s notion of a culture-dependent
rationality’’, Waghid suggests, ‘‘can be related to a critical re-evaluation of received ideas

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and an intellectual pursuit related to the practical problems and concerns of African
society’’ (Waghid 2004a, p. 39; see also Waghid 2005, p. 83). No, we would argue, it
cannot: since such critical re-evaluation would involve applying the tools and principles of
a rationality not dependent on culture. Similarly, when Waghid asserts, ‘‘deliberative
inquiry becomes a mode of philosophical activity which requires that one engages care-
fully with the other so as to arrive at independent interpretative (rational) judgements’’
(Waghid 2004a, p. 42), he appears to adhere to a notion of transcultural rational judgement.
Indeed, he must do so, for his verdict to be at all compelling.
Waghid, ‘‘following African(a) philosophy of education’’, lists certain ‘‘necessary
conditions that underscore deliberative inquiry: firstly, critical, reflexive engagement with
the positions of oneself and the other; secondly, listening to what the other has to say, no
matter how ill informed or unwise the other’s evaluative judgement is or might be; and
thirdly, less structured formality and the application of a minimalist logic in conversa-
tions’’ (Waghid 2004a, p. 42). After attempting to reconcile the first two of these
conditions, Waghid elaborates on the third: ‘‘less structured formality and a minimalist
logic in conversations do not mean that structure and logic ought to be dismissed in
deliberative discourse, but rather that an excessive emphasis on formal rules of dialogue
and logical reasoning should not in any way exclude people from engaging with one
another’s point of view’’ (Waghid 2004a, p. 43). Waghid’s emphasis on a ‘minimalist
account of logic’ and his disparagement of ‘excessive logical reasoning’ invite two
observations. First, logic is arguably not a quantitave matter, a matter of degree. Second,
Waghid is silent about what is permissible or acceptable under the proposed dispensation:
(what degree of) fallacious reasoning? contradiction? inconsistency? incoherence?
When viewed with African Philosophy of Education’s shared tendency with Fundamental
Pedagogics to insulate itself from critique, Waghid’s claim that ‘‘deliberative inquiry is
central to what makes African philosophy what it is’’ (Waghid 2004b, p. 127; see also Waghid
2004a, p. 44) is questionable. In deliberative theory it is widely accepted that all affected by
decisions must be allowed to participate freely and equally in making them, in making calls
for justice, in debating the terms and the agenda of the discussion. In seeking consensus, the
best argument is accepted by participants in deliberation, i.e. issues are settled by the exercise
of public reason (note: not of ‘culture-dependent rationality’ and/or ‘minimalist logic’). In
addressing the problem of the dominance of some over others in deliberative contexts, Iris
Marion Young pays some attention to the need to include those who have been marginalised,
by broadening deliberation to be more communicative, accommodating speaking styles of
marginalised groups through greeting, rhetoric and narrative (Young 1996). There may well
be a need for additional measures to ensure the representation of marginalised groups in the
making of policy (Young 1990). But to specify some form of exclusion of those expressing
dissenting views is a new turn that contradicts central principles of deliberation.

On a Possible Direction for African Philosophy of Education

A plausible view appears to be that African Philosophy of Education shares a range of

concerns with philosophy of education elsewhere and that there is a distinctive set of
concerns in African Philosophy of Education, arising from particular historical and socio-
political circumstances. Thus, it might be claimed that African Philosophy of Education
has different priorities to philosophy of education elsewhere. If it is correct to argue that
philosophical and educational priorities will emerge from life experiences and from the
ways these are socially articulated, then one might assume that, given that the life

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experiences of Africans on the African continent are commonly different from those of
learners elsewhere, the philosophical and educational priorities will also differ.
Given, for example, the experience of ‘indigenous’ Africans of physical and mental
colonisation and oppression, it stands to reason that African Philosophy of Education
would have as priorities matters of transformation and redress in education. If philo-
sophical and educational concerns and priorities arise from different forms of social life,
then those that have emerged from a social system in which a particular race or group has
been subordinate to another must be suspect. This cannot mean, however, that particular
historical and socio-political circumstances yield or bestow automatic validation or justi-
fication of the content and objectives of African Philosophy of Education, in the sense of
rendering it immune to criticism from without.
If philosophy has any critical function at all within educational discourse in (South)
Africa, as elsewhere, i.e. if it is to transcend the perception of ‘philosophy-as-worldview’
that some of its proponents share with Fundamental Pedagogicians, then this must be its
capacity and commitment towards critical scrutiny and interrogation of popular concepts
and traditional African teachings and ideas—without any accompanying requirement to
provide any ‘tell-tale’, artificially self-incriminating autobiographical details or similar
narrative. Even in a postcolonial context, a critical stance seems to us to be a defining
feature of philosophy of education. This acknowledgement can surely be made even while
conceding the need to question and contest ‘‘the traditional boundaries of philosophy and
philosophy of education between indigenous people’s philosophies and the Anglo-Amer-
ican tradition [as a] long-overdue engagement, between indigenous philosophies and the
colonial Western tradition’’ (Marshall and Martin 2000, p. 15).

The Threat of Self-Marginalisation

What about the possible objection that our claims of similarities between Fundamental
Pedagogics and some expressions of African Philosophy of Education are merely trivial,
that they point to no more than minor coincidences? We doubt that they are, and we
maintain that, in some of its significant expressions in South Africa, African Philosophy of
Education is an obstacle to the development in Africa of a philosophy of education that can
have a constructive impact on the educational challenges facing the continent, in the
context of international debates in philosophy of education.
The similarities we have described go beyond a preoccupation with etymology per se,
the development of a language of its own that is sometimes impenetrable, and the fantasy
so reminiscent of apartheid ideology: that the world’s population comprises discrete,
clearly delineable cultures. For these features together constitute a position that conse-
quently is immune from criticism. We fear that the insistence on immunity from criticism
repeated in the versions of African Philosophy of Education that concern us not only
threatens to close down debate with those on its ‘outside’. This tendency also poses the
threat common to other versions of ‘the politics of cultural affirmation’: that of the pursuit
of ‘cultural preservationism’ (Benhabib 2002, pp. 75, 77) that requires the enforcement
from within of correct interpretations of the culture. To this potential for authoritarianism
we must add the observation that just as Fundamental Pedagogics was inclined to project a
view of the child as helpless and in need of being led to adulthood within a restricted
definition of an ‘own culture’, so African Philosophy of Education is open to an insistence
on educational aims that have to reflect correct interpretations of this ‘own’, African
culture (see Adeyemi and Adeyinka 2003; Horsthemke and Enslin 2005, pp. 60–61).

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There is also the substantial concern that, together, the features of African Philosophy of
Education that echo elements of Fundamental Pedagogics could, as indeed happened with
Fundamental Pedagogics, take it away from international engagement with other philos-
ophers of education. If African Philosophy of Education is to avoid the isolation of its
philosophers of education from the discipline’s international community it needs to
reconsider those tendencies towards cultural nationalism—in favour of its more open,
deliberative, critical, professional versions.
Having indicated tendencies in African Philosophy of Education that are (surprisingly?)
similar to the supposedly now discredited Fundamental Pedagogics, where does this leave
us? We suggested earlier in this essay that we are sympathetic to some of the concerns of
African Philosophy of Education. We share its commitment to addressing the effects of
colonialism and apartheid on (South) African education; African Philosophy of Education
should indeed tackle the problems of education in Africa. We oppose not this line of
argument but rather the tendency to take the next step so firmly in the direction of the
politics of recognition, to ‘‘promote the telescoping and hardening of cultural and political
identities’’ (Ivison 2002, p. 10), that it threatens to be an exclusively culturalist defence of
the educational and other rights of indigenous citizens. (Although many of the proponents
of this tendency hardly qualify as ‘indigenous’, this should not in any way disqualify them
from deliberative participation.)
While culture and difference will inevitably loom large in the ongoing debate, we
suggest that they should not do so to the exclusion of other elements necessary to the
postcolonial project in African education. For example, the ideal of extending the exercise
of democratic citizenship to all on the African continent requires the development of a set
of capabilities—most crucially to take part in governance of African societies and their
institutions—that are globally desirable and go beyond the promotion of single, bounded
identities. If this is not so, then an urgent task for African Philosophers of Education must
be to dismantle much of the philosophical underpinning of post-apartheid education policy,
which embraces suspect concepts that originated in the West—like human rights, consti-
tutional government and—indeed—critical inquiry. New educational policy in South
Africa appears to take a principled stance in favour of such inquiry, with regard to teaching
and learning. Among the seven critical cross-field outcomes specified by SAQA (South
Africa Qualifications Authority) are the following:
Learners will
• identify and solve problems and make decisions using critical and creative thinking.
• collect, analyse, organise and critically evaluate information. (Republic of South Africa
1997).
In order to be compelling, such policy needs not lip service but to be to be enacted.
The issues we raise pose a challenge to philosophy of education as practised interna-
tionally through its organizations, networks and journals committed to promoting dialogue,
collaboration and global exchange. Should philosophy of education embrace the politics of
identity by accepting the claim that philosophy of education comprises a set of competing
and incommensurable ‘philosophies of life’, reducing the activity of philosophy of edu-
cation to a polite parading of our different philosophies, in a museum whose rules require
us to appreciate the exhibits but to eschew critique?

Acknowledgements We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for engaging with this paper and
offering helpful feedback and, especially, to the editor for his comprehensive, detailed and sympathetic
suggestions.

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African Philosophy of Education 221

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