Review

Reviewed Work(s): Sankofa: African Thought and Education. by Elleni Tedla

Review by: L. Kay Walker and Dickson A. Mungazi
Source: The Journal of Negro Education , Autumn, 1995, Vol. 64, No. 4 (Autumn, 1995),
pp. 475-477
Published by: Journal of Negro Education

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2967269

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 Book Reviews

Elleni Tedla, Sankofa: African Thought and Education. New York: Peter Lang, 1995. 236 pp. $29.95,
paper.
Reviewed by L. Kay Walker and Dickson A. Mungazi, Northern Arizona University.

In the four decades since the process of decolonization and political independence began
in Africa, African scholars have attempted to evaluate the direction that the continent of
Africa has taken in its developmental efforts. Among the questions these scholars have
asked as a way of determining that development are: What theory guides African nations
as they struggle for development? What are some of the more pressing problems nations
of Africa face today? What must African nations do to bring about new institutions that
are truly vested in the interests of the people? What kind of governments should these
nations have in order to represent the genuine interests of the people? What kind of
education do they need in order to influence the formation of new national identities and
the emergence of a fresh continental character that will give meaning to the traditions of
the past and greater impact to endeavors in the future?
This last question is the subject of Elleni Tedla's Sankofa: African Thought and Education.
The book is divided into three parts, each with distinctive, integrated features. Part one
discusses the interaction between African and Western thought processes and explains
how that interaction affects African education and society today. Part two defines some
essential concepts and components of both the indigenous and modern African educational
systems. In part three, having laid this foundation, Tedla presents her arguments for
returning to traditional African values and thought processes as the basis for education
in contemporary African society.
To understand Tedla's line of argument, one needs to trace both its title and its theme
to their beginnings. "Sankofa" is an Akan (Ghanaian) word that means "return to the source
and fetch (learn)." Following this, Tedla first urges African educators and policymakers to
reach back into the past to rediscover traditions that have been lost to them. Second, she
challenges them to renew and refine these traditions so that they will have new meaning
for all Africans, not just the wealthy and powerful, in both the present and the future.
In Tedla's view, a rejection of colonialism is ultimately a rejection of Western thought
process and Western education. This rejection necessitates a redefinition of education to
reflect the needs of Africa today and tomorrow. The first step toward this objective is to
evaluate the continent's present educational systems within the spirit of Sankofa. The
source of this renewal is indigenous African culture, history, and identity-elements that
to her suggest the power within African people to shape new directions. By utilizing
what is positive in these elements, she maintains, Africans can build a foundation for
future development. As such, she proposes that the experiences of contemporary Africans
in and out of school reflect a philosophy that is enshrined in its indigenous symbols,
including the ritual, music, dance, art, proverbs, poetry, drama, technology, and architec-
ture of precolonial Africa. That these critical features of African culture were neglected
by the colonial educational system suggests to Tedla their vitality to the future of Africa.
Yet, as she sees it, the challenge before the people of modern Africa is to revive the old
ways so that they renew modern institutions for the benefit of all Africans, educated and
uneducated, and not simply the wealthy and powerful elites. The acquisition of critical
knowledge of African traditions will also require an educational system that is consistent
with the contemporary needs of the continent.

Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 64, No. 4 (1995)

Copyright ? 1996, Howard University 475

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 To fully appreciate this book, readers also must come to terms with the author's
understanding of the African concept of spirituality and its role in education. Tedla
defines this spirituality as a metaphysical appreciation of the significant aspects of African
traditions and the affirmation of life as a powerful, culturally motivating force. Thus, she
posits that a system of education in Africa that speaks fully to this need to "go back and
fetch" traditional spirituality demands a reactivation of the valued spiritual features that
were rendered meaningless by colonial conditions. To embrace these ideas as fundamental
tenets of the content of African education would require a complete redefinition of the
essential components of the educational systems of many African nations.
The precolonial African concept of community is another aspect of Tedla's proposition.
In the African context, she notes, communities had meaning only when individuals had
meaning. Community, in the African sense (according to her definition), is a group of
people brought together by a common agenda to create and recreate itself and its purposes.
According to Tedla, social harmony, cooperation, fairness, equality, and justice were the
values emphasized most heavily in traditional African communities. Although these are
values that are critical and central to any society, she contends that renewed recognition
of them is of paramount importance to Africa. Herself an Ethiopian, Tedla utilizes her
knowledge of the traditional Amharic educational system to emphasize the value of
indigenous education for modern African societies.
In Tedla's view, the Western concept of education is also in conflict with the African
concept of education when it comes to community or societal values. The Western concept
stresses individual success and maintains that society's gain from individual effort is only
incidental. The African thought process views the success of the individual as directly
related to the welfare of society; individual needs must reflect community needs and vice-
versa. The differences between Western and African thought process ultimately give rise
to conflict between the educational policies of the colonial governments and the aspirations
of the Africans.
Ultimately, the strength of this book is found not in the novelty of its ideas but in the
strength of the author's arguments. Tedla is perhaps at her best in part three when she
points out that: (a) African sensibilities have been unfairly judged by European criteria,
(b) Africa cannot afford to lose its young to inadequate educational systems imposed
upon it by the former colonial governments, (c) makers of educational policy in contempo-
rary Africa must be knowledgeable about the cultural traditions that are important to the
people, (d) an education grounded in African thought processes will increase young
people's understanding of the values that are important to Africans, and (e) a Sankofa-
style education will prepare students to make viable contributions to the development of
Africa. Sankofa's overarching premise is that in order to provide an adequate basis of
education in Africa today, the continent's educational systems must reflect the wisdom
and teachings of its ancestors. Now that the colonial systems have come to an end, its
author maintains, Africans have an obligation to rediscover and appreciate the positive
aspects of the indigenous systems of education colonial governments tried to destroy. As
she concludes, "If Africans are to remedy the problems caused by the modern education,
they need to carefully examine the imported education system" in all its aspects (p. 165).
This is, in her opinion, the only way Africa can realistically examine its past, wrestle with
the problems of the present, and plan its future.
In all societies, change is an imperative condition of development. Yet, if change means
simply returning to the traditions of the past, then one might conclude that Africa has
no future. But this is not the basis of the argument in this book. Instead, its author
optimistically holds that traditional African education has considerable meaning to con-
temporary Africa because the systems of education introduced and maintained by the

476 The Journal of Negro Education

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colonial governments were irrelevant to the needs of the Africans. In this regard, Tedla
not only demonstrates clear understanding of African thought and its relationship to the
educational processes but also skillfully develops a line of argument that readers can
easily follow and understand. Her work represents a commendable effort in delineating
the issues from their proper perspective. More importantly, it shows that she is an articulate
African scholar who perceives problems of national development from the perspective
of clear knowledge of the kind of education Africa must pursue to solve them. Sankofa
thus emerges as an accurate portrait of a continent that, although still emerging from
colonial conditions, is struggling to develop in a world of conflicting values. U

Black Wealth, White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality, by Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas
M. Shapiro. New York and Great Britain: Routledge, 1995. 242 pp. $22.95, cloth.
Reviewed by Rodney D. Green, Department of Economics, Howard University.

Black Wealth, White Wealth opens with an evocative racial comparison of income and
wealth which reveals that although half of the top 10 earners in the U.S. are Black, virtually
no Blacks are included among the wealthiest 400 Americans. Indeed, the wealth levels
for those Blacks who have "made it" into the American middle class are shown to be
only 15% of the wealth level of Whites in the same income category. These and other
presented data suggest that if Blacks are disadvantaged relative to Whites in terms of
income-and they are, earning on average less than 60% of White household income-
then they are completely eclipsed when it comes to wealth.
This tale of two middle classes is part of an even bleaker tale of two unequal nations
within America, a tale Oliver and Shapiro attribute to three historical processes: the
racialization of state policy, the economic detour, and the sedimentation of racial inequal-
ity. These three concepts reflect, respectively, how government policy has systematically
reduced Black capacity to accumulate wealth by historically limiting access to land, hous-
ing, and other wealth builders; how Blacks have been prevented from forming thriving
businesses because of institutional barriers to their serving the entire domestic market,
leaving Blacks in impoverished niche businesses; and how the cumulative effects of Black
oppression have cemented Blacks to the bottom of society's economic hierarchy.
The story begins in chapter one, in which the authors revisit Reconstruction's failure
to provide the freedmen with elementary productive property-the proverbial 40 acres
and a mule. They move next to a review of the Federal Housing Administration's role in
deliberately blocking Black home ownership from the 1930s through the 1970s, followed
by a contemporary account of how redlining and mortgage discrimination have deepened
Black economic deprivation. They also review the ways in which macroeconomic forces
such as globalization and deindustrialization have undermined Black economic well-
being. For example, they point out that these forces have eliminated over half of the Black
industrial jobs in the Great Lakes area in the last two decades.
In chapter two, Oliver and Shapiro sketch a sociology of race and wealth in America,
wrestling (perhaps too briefly) with the race/class debate and invoking Marx and Weber.
With this backdrop, they offer additional historical and anecdotal evidence for the three
historical processes noted above. Chapter three presents a discussion of the data constraints
past researchers have experienced in attempting to study wealth distribution in the U.S.
The authors surmount such difficulties themselves by using the relatively new Survey of
Income and Program Participation (SIPP) data set to measure individual net worth (all
wealth) and net financial assets (net worth minus housing equity and automobile value)
as they artfully describe the trend of deepening economic inequality between the races
since the 1980s. This theme is extended further in chapter four, in which two startling

The Journal of Negro Education 477

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