Right now our universities are strong on developing reproductive rather than productive thinkers, writes Tebogo Pitso.
One of the key demands of recent students’ protests in South Africa is the need for universities to transform the curriculum in such a way as to provide students with decolonised, quality education. There are many facets to the issue of a decolonised, quality education.
German philosopher Jürgen Habermas had identified three benefits that a society could derive from scientific knowledge as technical, practical and emancipatory. The technical aspects of knowledge help society to control and predict the environment in such a way as to exploit it to create human conveniences.
It refers mostly to use of science knowledge and natural resources to develop products and services (the economic aspect) that ease human existence.
The practical interests we have on knowledge relate to the need for science knowledge to help us develop a cohesive and functional society that is stable and productive.
His basic argument is that once a society becomes unstable and characterised by violence and unrest, then such a societal failure results from interactions that are mostly not driven by science knowledge or where science know-ledge has been deliberately distorted or ignored.
The emancipatory aspects of knowledge refers to what students and society can legitimately access from education to free themselves from ignorance, dogmatism, bigotry and native selfishness.
Emancipatory knowledge makes students and society access the means to critical understanding of complex issues and the means to explore new possibilities.
This is one aspect of science knowledge that has generally been eschewed and ignored in uni-versity education, especially the access to the means of exploring new possibilities which talk to the development of students and general society’s creative problem-solving and innovative abilities.
Our university education has thus over-accentuated the technical aspects of knowledge (preparation for formal employment through skills and competencies development) and under-emphasised the emancipatory aspects of science knowledge (exploration of new things).
My sense is that this is where quality in university education is put to the test and where universities become complicit in driving a neoliberal economic and political ideology, focused on developing employable graduates and less on developing students who can devise new or improved things.
Our universities are thus strong on developing reproductive rather than productive thinkers (creators and innovators), especially at under-graduate levels. There is almost no expectations in disciplines that students could contribute to this already known knowledge by means of sensing its limits in real contexts.
Learning becomes distant from real-life students’ experience and distances students from their heritage and self-pride. In this way, learning becomes the means to control and predict students’ behaviour to a point where universities become impotent when they act outside these expected behavioural precepts. Yet it is when students act outside these parameters of knowing and predic-tability that real learning occurs.
As one social commentator said, “if it is certain, then somebody else has already done it”. This control and predictability over students’ behaviour by universities also explains why they responded so violently to legitimate student demands.
Few universities read students protests correctly and few sought to find out what Habermas discovered in the 1970s about students’ protests as the search for the higher design of university models, ranging from their funding, visions and strategies to curriculum provisioning.
Habermas also attacked violent student protests as self-delusive and pernicious but accentuated their search for an improved university model that frees students from mundane workplace activities and societal assemblies bereft of active agency and critical engagement.
The discovery of the fundamental laws of physics did not occur in Isaac Newton’s time as is widely believed. Avicenna (Ibn Sina), an Arabian, recognised that objects remained at rest or moved in a constant speed in a straight line until an external, unbalanced force was introduced to change their course.
This was in the 10th century, during the golden years of Arabian civilisation, a time when Europe was experiencing high levels of inferiority. This omission was entrenched when Newton named these laws of motion under his name. Another significant omission in our education is the origins of chemistry which is derived from the word “khemeia”, meaning black.
Khemeia has been generally associated with Egypt, where chemi-stry originated as Egyptians tried various chemical reactions trying to mummify bodies of esteemed Egyptians.
This knowledge was adopted in Europe many years later for the sole purpose of trying to produce gold by chemical means, a project which failed dismally. Europe, however, played a significant role in moving chemistry from alchemy to objective science.
There are other examples of knowledge produced in Africa, the Middle East and other places which has been claimed as European knowledge.
In engineering and mathematics, for instance, there is rarely a mention of Imhotep, an ancient Egyptian architect, engineer and physician who shaped these fields of science.
Imhotep was one of the trailblazers in using scientific discoveries to produce human conveniences in the form of aes-thetic and architectural taste, a defi-nition of engineering whose purpose is to devise new or improved things.
This means that the core of engineering education is access to the means of exploring new possibilities and devising new or improved things which highlight the value of creativity and innovation, even in undergraduate university studies.
It is also rarely mentioned that Pythagoras, a European, studied Egyptian pyramids for almost 22 years to come up with his theorem in mathematics, and spent time learning in Egypt, India and the Middle East.
In fact, the theorem named after Pythagoras was discovered in Egypt long before he arrived there. The Rhynd Papyrus dating back to 1650 BCE provides evidence of the influence and sophistication of Egyptian maths in accounting, architecture and many other areas long before the Greeks, who are credited with developing maths.
The Rhynd Papyrus contains 84 mathematical problems that include division, multiplication, addition, fractions, square roots and quadratic equations arranged in terms of arithmetic, algebra and geometry.
In theology, the religion formed in the 6th century BCE called Zoroastrianism actually introduced concepts such as heaven and hell, judgement day and a holy path upon which Judaism, Islam and Christianity were to be founded and has literally been wiped out. It originated in the Middle East.
The restoration of the historical trajectory of science knowledge in our curriculum would probably make a significant contribution in making our students appreciate and critically engage knowledge rather than becoming its passive recipients.
This will compel a more systematic investigation of knowledge and its origins which could lead to students’ active agency in forming and becoming educated beyond just focusing on being workers.
University education has to become emancipatory and contribute to the democratic project of enhancing interaction through active engagement and critical debate, which would include the meanings and origins of science knowledge, hence notions of decol-onised education would become clearer.
University education would have to include access to the means of exploring new possibilities once the means of critical understanding of complex aspects of science knowledge have been accessed beyond trite transmission and absorption, as is the case in most undergraduate studies in our universities.
The call for quality, decolonised university education is the call to search for higher designs of our university education and curriculum provisioning.
In my view, it is not a call to reject any form of science knowledge but to engage it critically and creatively contribute to it as myths are debunked by a strong sense of history.
The call is thus legitimate and should be critically engaged, not quashed by the police force.
We should embrace newness when our familiar milieu is made strange by students’ protests.
* Pitso is the senior project manager for Learner Support Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Vaal University of Technology.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
The Sunday Independent