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Afrikan education is the process of acquiring knowledge and developing the mind and character through formal and/or informal learning. Black Studies or better still Afrikana studies (which it is called) represents a radical departure in the formal educational process by bringing into the form of academy a perspective that is Afrocentric and in various explorations into the lives of Afrikan people on the continent as well as in the diaspora the discipline of Afrikcana studies is sought (meant) to provide students with in depth discourses on Afrikan systems of knowledge.
And even though there are many varieties of Afrikan education, most of them have the same basic characteristics. Discussed by Afrikan scholars they agree that Afrikan education must involve: teaching the unity of humans and nature, an ecological idea, teaching social responsibility, a social idea, teaching the importance of character, an ethical idea, teaching the importance of humility, a spiritual idea.
In previous eras (at the beginniing and still today) in Afrika, rites of passage, initiations were central to ALL education; vocational skill training was not a major part of the educational process. This meant that those with the ability to train the young used their very talents to provide the proper measures for the young to experience and achieve the desired results. These rites constitute the pragmatic manifestation of the core values of a society.
When a person was on the road to becoming a man or a woman, the initiators would provide the necessary steps and the procedures to bring the person to the goal. Then, as in most situations of this type, there would be a celebration. In Afrikan traditions, preparations for such rites tended to start at a very early age. The community accepted the fact that the child would one day end the training period, and so they started preparing for it when the child was quite young.
Testimony regarding the high level of integration that the educational process had with day to day life is seen in the fact that during infancy, lullabies were sung to the Afrikan child and served to communicate the whole history of the family to the child. When the child started to learn how to speak, the mother was careful to teach the child the correct manner of speaking and later on in the child’s development, she taught the child the correct manner of speaking and then later on in the child’s development, she taught the child the correct manner of walking.
The children heard questions such as ” What is your father’s name?”, “What is your grandfather’s name?”. All the questions were designed to connect the child to family history and cultural memory. Age group sets were a key part of this system and the character and memory of more mature children were developed through the use of fables, myths and a complex process of training that resulted in the memorisation and identification.
In ancient Afrikan societies, there were no uneducated children.
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