Day 2 Lesotho Presentation Minutes

Lesotho Working Group

 

The research is preliminary research on Church schools and how language works in those schools because of the colonial model of educaiton is very relevant today

 

First Phase 

 

research is being done, trying to discern the colonial influence

wanting to re-look at that

 

missionary - school to be the foundation of missionary work in this country

church created the colonial curriculum - ‘darkness to the light’

top down

there was a consultation but not taken up 

integrated curriculum for primary 

new idea of ‘creativity and entrepeneurship’

creativity extracted from the everyday lives of students 

traditional belief ritual would not be discussed in a church school but is a lived experience…certain elements of cultural life cannot come into the curriculum but that’s changing 

 

two schools…

 

Soofia was started by Muslim community (top performing)

unconventional 

more freedom to share data collection 

less conventional in the way they teach

teaching methods that are prescribed

teachers themselves do not read for leisure and therefore do not translate this with students

no appreciation of reading for leisure or creative writing 

everyone thought that ‘reading for leisure’ meant academic reading 

English is a second language 

language is instrumental and not storytelling 

the reason the research is 

 

government school  - Leribe School 

bureaucracy in terms of disseminating research to the students 

 

Findings:

teachers were passionate about language education 

less creative language education

most 

 

northern region of lesotho (zulu influence)

influence on students and how they learn 

sesotho in south

 

Questions

 

What do students say in their writing?

 

 

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Do you have a list of reference texts about the colonial education process, that you can use to point to the continuity or discontinuities about how this process is implemented today?

 

We have archival research material but not for what exists in the schools today.

 

How does the reading and writing relate to each other and to publishing?

What you have in the region is the movement of people 

Lara is the word for read and the names of families they will speak the same thing 

The church disrupts the movement of people and the different languages they carry

Shires in different places, speaking different language

 

‘to read is to write’ 

Zulu influence of ballad writing and reading 

 

own language is the denegrated 

 

strong culture of oral  and poetic work

mix of crazed poetry with a kind of rap, done mostly by men

this is not in school

someone will come with a story and beat and tell the story and three minutes they will remember years later

that art is not appreciated in how the languages taught

storytelling and producing their own literature, something they are doing, making an anthology of stories 

colonial influence : some of the stories sound as though in England, so would use the ‘authentic’ idea of an English story. People frown upon an artists’ work that is not replicating shakespeare 

English medium schools - learn in English from pre-school but do sesotho as a subject

they try to transport english into sesotho 

use english rules to try to explain sesotho 

 

went into schools and worked with students on writing

this is very important 

if you don’t have a wide vocabulary you can’t write

 

with the sesotho stories they were very hard to edit because people were moving between ‘shakesearean’ sesotho and contemporary sesotho. people in the urban areas think they would have to write about living in the rural areas in past times because in the colonial imaginer does not include contemporary or urban sesotho

 

how could our oral traditions could be taught like reading 

how can our oral traditions work in the school

grandparents would not reprimand but instead tell a folk tale which would be about what you did wrong and how

there would be something very amazing

 

doing standard I in 1956 which was what it was like when he was in school

when i had to forget i was at home 

when shona was not taught at all

i know how to love in shona, but not in english

sublime, artistic etc remained in a place that was not touched

church meant looking at the image was a simple 

experience that a generation 

you had to be able to speak in english to be a garden boy

if you can be shoe cleaner, why learn English

Bala - relation to work and colonial 

 

Margaret Trowell - prodigal son, pictures for Africans 

anachronistic rural idyll 

the bible and th

 

soma - twi

read and study 

read and write is the same 

 

oral curriculum

the ability to put a story together from scratch

the question afterwards from the parent telling the story, that’s the assessment

intervention in a system that is about assessment 

how do you put something like oral learning into a system based on colonial models of assessment

dissonance with schemes that we are infiltrating

school - girls and boys separated, life skills taught, both sexes together to see if they learned what from what they saw, see how they learn to interact etc

look at traditional learning and how things were done

life skills: there in curriculum, not there in teaching the kids 

should be there reflected on the report

we will have to convince the school

we would ask the schools to look at the method itself 

 

Ra: something very interesting in lesotho

many of the poets, especially the women, the first thing they said was

time 

women say: ‘to be bewitched’ (loya)

 

Lerato: growing up witchcraft is something that is evil and women’s 

interested in how women / young women are using the term ‘bewitched’ in oral recital space

what is the claim around this term?

 

Lerato: opening this power with my voice (against the history of repression of women’s power)

it’s historically associated with evil but things like root medicines (Christians say ‘devil’s work’)

Awakening of witchcraft

When you back to who you are, you run into spritual elements

There is a war going on between who I am and who I am taught to be

Poetry sessions 

female poet performed with a christian band, the effect that it had, everyone was getting chills, but there was something in the air,

she was christian by upbringing but has ‘the calling’.

should she follow this. people will say they bring ‘havoc’

poetry sessions/own that…

call to caution around questions of authenticity

‘this is not me’ 

how do you make use of traditions without making a claim to authenticity

going to traditions, there is an idea of an intrinsic entity or truth but actually traditions and identies are framed in a multiplicity

in black diaspora and on the continent and there is an essentialism in the black arts movement…queerness becomes not applicable

how do you deal with complications of the translations that are taking place

identity is not a silo 

how my ancestors used to live is important to research but it is not possible to be purist in terms of how to view identity

borrow and draw from many aspects of practices

being a local in many places 

‘the calling’  to work with something that is not Christian, doing something with something else

there is a negotiation with what happens

 

there is something about this project and its applicability more widely

 

George: traditions are myths

they are fictions produced by all kinds of things

but it’s important to think about how those things come into play

right now we might choose to call ourselves something, another moment something else

identities are made up 

the mark of the conjuncture, the moment that we are currently in

now as planetary subjects, we speak with the material we’ve got

it is the generative effect/generative

what brings me back to the question of ‘who am i’ is that it was never told by me

 

Response to Nana’s question about the essentialist question and the impossibility of the queer

In the struggles for justice one of the responses is to insist on a specific way of pronouncing a tomato

to call negritude essentialist is also essentialism

queerness resides in the life practices

use the term life practices instead of life skills

historical element and contextual one but also the 

 

Carmen: un-chronological timeline

very important that we come from different places with different knowledge practices

‘queer’ is epistemological in some places

as I’m involved in empirical research 

very aware of the empirical data that is collected (what teachers do, what students think) comes with a colonial burden

did these questionnaires get developed by students and teachers (to undo this power relations)

was there a pre-test to see if the questions are leading? 

how was the process developed itself?

 

this first phase was about testing our research practice

out of this we now know that there should be two languages for questionnaires

written english does not make sense

we also would like to bring into effect more collaboration with students and teachers in the framing of the research, its questions and its use

some of the questions come with pre-assumptions

 

Emma: Africa Cluster to meet by the wall and then join the lunch.

 

Second Phase 

others are Christian schools