Education for liberation and self-reliance By J.K.NYERERE

Education for liberation and self-reliance

Nyerere's educational philosophy, an integral part of the socialist project, focused largely on self-reliance, total liberation and empowerment of the person and society, and the active integration of education throughout one's life and in every aspect of human existence. The philosophy was represented through two broad policy positions: education for self-reliance and adult education. A closer examination of the philosophy demonstrates the universal relevance of this approach to education, especially in severely underdeveloped former colonial societies that desire to transform a colonial model of education by building a self-reliant, egalitarian, human-centered socialist project.

Colonial policies of education were not intended to equip the colonized subjects to confront the profound challenges that peripheral capitalist development imposed on the colonial state. In fact, the tiny fraction that obtained colonial education was trained to transmit, reproduce, and protect imperial values, culture, and interests of exploitation, inequality, individualism, and subservience. In many respects, the products of colonial ideological education represented some of the most severe neocolonial contradictions of alienation highlighted by Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks (1967Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin, white mask. London: Grove Press.) and Okot p'Bitek's Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol (1984p'Bitek, O. (1984). Song of Lawino and song of Ocol. London:Heinemann.).

In December 1961, Nyerere highlighted the daunting challenges that confronted the newly independent country: ‘The majority of our people are still illiterate in any language; we have on the average, one doctor to every 25,000 people …’ (Nyerere, 1961aNyerere, J. K. (1961a). It's up to us: Uhuru na Kazi. Africa Today, 4–5., p. 4). The situation was so bad that Nyerere could not even find enough trained Africans to run the newly independent state. This sad state of education required urgent and radical transformation. Accordingly, Nyerere declared the urgent need to increase the number of educated Africans. Since education was central to the project of national liberation, equality, empowerment, and the formulation and implementation of a socialist project in Tanzania, Nyerere declared that:

We must, of course, at the same time – and this we recognize – pay attention to adult education … Adult education must include teaching new methods of agriculture, new ideas of health, and generally spreading the realization that every individual has a part to play in the development of Tanganyika. (Nyerere, 1961aNyerere, J. K. (1961a). It's up to us: Uhuru na Kazi. Africa Today, 4–5., pp. 4–5)

Education, he emphasized, must lead to the total liberation of the citizen and the larger society by creating a sustained commitment to cooperative work, equality, and development (Nyerere 1968aNyerere, J. K. (1968a). Freedom and socialism. Dar es Salaam:Oxford University Press., p. 267; see also, Nyerere,1974aNyerere, J. K. (1974a). Education for liberation. In Development dialogue. Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjold Foundation., 1974bNyerere, J. K. (1974b). From Uhuru to Ujamaa. Africa Today, 21, 3–8., 1974dNyerere, J. K. (1974d). Man and development/Binadamu na Maendeleo. Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press.). Nyerere further elaborated his philosophy of education for eradicating poverty and inequality, which highlights the universal importance of his contribution to education for active participatory liberation globally:

[Education] must also prepare young people for the work they will be called upon to do in the society which exists in Tanzania – a rural society where improvement will depend largely upon the efforts of the people in agriculture and in village development … It must produce good farmers; it has to prepare people for their responsibilities as free workers and citizens in a free and democratic society; albeit a largely rural society. They have to be able to think for themselves, to make judgements on all issues affecting them; they have to be able to interpret the decisions made through the democratic institutions of our society, and to implement them in the light of the local circumstances peculiar to where they happen to live …. (Nyerere, 1968bNyerere, J. K. (1968b). Education for self-reliance. In Freedom and socialism (pp. 30–35). Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press., p. 274)

Specifically, he further observed, the central purpose of education

is the liberation of Man from the restrains and limitations of ignorance and dependency … The ideas imparted by education, or released in the mind through education, should therefore be liberating ideas; the skills acquired by education should be liberating skills. (Nyerere cited in Hall & Kidd, 1978Hall, B., & Kidd, J. R. (Eds.). (1978).Adult learning: A design for action.London: Pergamon Press., pp. 27–28).

On adult education, which was critical to fighting ignorance, poverty, disease, and neocolonialism, Nyerere noted that it must be integrated into the larger socialist project:

If we are to make real progress in adult education, it is essential that we should stop trying to divide up life into sections, one of which is for education and another, longer one which is for work, with occasional time off for ‘courses.’ In a country dedicated to change we must accept that education and working are both parts of living and should continue from birth until we die. (Nyerere, 1973Nyerere, J. K. (1973). Ten years after independence: Freedom and development. Dar es Salaam:Government Printer., pp. 300–301)

Accordingly, rapid changes were introduced in education. These changes included expansion of primary and secondary education, expansion of teacher training colleges, transformation of the curriculum, with particular focus on science, mathematics, and agriculture, rapid expansion of adult education, focused campaign on the eradication of illiteracy, concerted efforts to promote gender equality and increase the enrolment of girls and women in school, and the sensitization of the school system to socialist objectives and obligations. In 1967, Nyerere's policy of Education for Self-Reliance reinforced the commitment to education for the liberation of the entire society from the indignation of manual labor, resentment of rural environment by students, social inequality, and elitism. Schools were also expected to become self-reliant (see, e.g., Legum & Mmari, 1995Legum, C., & Mmari, G. (Eds.). (1995). Mwalimu: The influence of Nyerere. Trenton, NJ: African World Press., pp. 51–55). In keeping with the commitment to education for the total liberation of the society, in 1974, TANU opted to provide universal primary education to every child by 1977. This was a major commitment in a country with very limited financial resources.

Given Nyerere and TANU's unwavering commitment to education, enrolment in primary school increased from 825,000 in 1967 to 1,532,000 in 1975. The number kept on growing at a fast pace until the ‘collapse’ of the socialist project in 1985. Many more girls and women successfully completed various levels of education as well (Nyerere 1977aNyerere, J. K. (1977a). The Arusha Declaration ten years after. Dar es Salaam: United Republic of Tanzania., pp. 11–12). It is, therefore, not surprising that Nyerere's educational philosophy has become quite relevant in the field of education in challenging and transforming western model of colonial education. Kassam (1994Kassam, Y. (1994). Julius Kambararge Byerere. Prospects, XXIV(1–2), 1., p. 1), for example, observed that Nyerere's:

philosophy of adult education resonates with the concepts of ‘conscientization,’ empowerment and liberation very akin to the ideas expressed in Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, while his ideas on adult learning are very similar to the theories and principles of adult learning of such renowned adult educators as Malcolm Knowles of the United States and J. Roby Kidd of Canada.

Although Nyerere's policy of education contributed enormously to the socialist formation and, as a result, the country enjoyed one of the highest literacy rates and school enrollments in Africa, the policy was constrained by a number of problems. For example, a number of pupils and practitioners were frustrated by the inability of school administrators to translate some of the policies into action. In addition, a number of schools did not properly integrate self-reliance into the curriculum. Poor planning in a number of academic institutions also led to intellectual and academic underachievement. The hostile international economic conditions and the persistent ecological violence that eroded the ujamaa vijijini also deprived the policy of the desperately needed resources for its successful implementation (Legum & Mmari, 1995Legum, C., & Mmari, G. (Eds.). (1995). Mwalimu: The influence of Nyerere. Trenton, NJ: African World Press., pp. 54–55).

Conclusion

Nyerere's philosophies ‘flow together – in particular, an exemplary commitment to improving the conditions of the poor, as well as his theorizing about the nexus of development, freedom, empowerment, egalitarianism, and participation’ (Schneider, 2004Schneider, L. (2004). Freedom and unfreedom in rural development: Julius Nyerere, Ujamaa Vijini, and villagization. Canadian Journal of African Studies, 38, 344–392., p. 347). His philosophy of African socialism, using a synthesis of the ‘best’ of African traditional values and culture and appropriate Western industrialized technology, was an innovative and practical project to address severe poverty, dependency, inequality, fragmentation, and oppression in Tanzania. In this instance, Nyerere also demonstrated that there is no contradiction between modernity and traditional African values. He sought to reconcile the two. The philosophy also identified, elevated, and celebrated African personality in agency- and human-centered development efforts at a time when indigenous values and cultures were presented as formidable obstacles to development and modernization.

Nyerere's application of voluntary socialism to an agrarian and rural society did not only challenge the dominant Marxist interpretation that focused largely on proletarian revolution in a developed capitalist society, but also offered the possibility of undertaking socialist projects in agrarian societies elsewhere in the world. Nyerere's philosophy of education for liberation was integrated closely into the larger project of socialist liberation and transformation of the society. This philosophy has become an important part of global conversation about the role of education in the total liberation of societies. The awards given to Nyerere in recognition of his global influence confirm his global legacies in the field of education and liberation.

The collapse of the socialist experiment under intense and deliberate external forces, complicated by internal contradictions, has also become an important conversation about the possibilities of constructing socialism in peripheral capitalist societies. The conversation is more heated in the ‘postsocialist’ Tanzania, where the free market economy and multiparty political system are closely identified with moral decay, increasing economic inequalities, widespread corruption, and fragmentation of the society (see, e.g., Ibhawoh & Dibua, 2003Ibhawoh, B., & Dibua, J. I. (2003).Deconstructing Ujamaa: The legacy of Juluis Nyerere in the quest for social and economic development in Africa. African Journal of Political Science, 8, 60–61., pp. 60–61). In addition, Nyerere did not only preach Pan-Africanism, he championed and practiced it in the struggle for the liberation of southern Africa and the formation of the OAU (changed to AU), EAC, and SADC. In fact, no African leader in history has played a more important role in the practical liberation of Africa and for African unity than Nyerere. His commitment to global solidarity and eradication of poverty and inequality also made him the unrivalled voice of the global South for over three decades. In fact, his influence continues to shape the conversations about the North–South relations and the need for solidarity in the global South