Education the African way

Friday, December 20, 2019

Education in Africa has not always been in classrooms

Though education is as old as humanity is in African societies, imperialists like to insinuate that missionaries found Africans in the tabula rasa state: blank, being nothing, knowing nothing. The opposite, however, is true.

Since time immemorial, Africans have possessed massive bodies of knowledge ranging from survival and life skills, food production to conservation.

This system of education is called Traditional African Education (TAE). Fafunwa defines TAE as, “the form of learning in Africa traditional societies in which knowledge, skills, and attitudes of the tribe were passed from elders to children by means of oral instruction and practical activities.”

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