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