Fallism as decoloniality : towards a decolonised school history curriculum in post-colonial-apartheid South Africa

The 2015/16 student protests in South Africa, dubbed #MustFall protests, signalled a historic moment in the country’s post-colonial-apartheid history in which student-worker collaborations called for the decolonising of the university and its Eurocentric curriculum and, by extension, basic education and its Eurocentric curriculum too. Since then, there have emerged two dominant narratives of decolonisation in South Africa. The first is what I call a nativist delinking approach that recentres decolonial and Africa-centeredness discourses, ontologies, and epistemologies relatively separate from Euro-north and American-centric ones. The second is a broader, inclusive approach to decolonisation, which this study adopts. However, both these dominant narratives fail to counter much of the knowledge blindness informed by a false dichotomy advanced by positivist absolutism and constructive relativism that defines the sociology of education, including many of the calls for decolonisation. Thus, through a decolonial conceptual framework and Karl Maton’s Epistemic-Pedagogic Device as a theoretical framework, fallism as decoloniality is adopted in this study to propose ways to transcend the Eurocentrism that characterises the current school history curriculum in South Africa, as well as the nativist and narrow provincialism of knowledge. Equally, an argument is made for the advancement of an inclusive decolonial project that is concerned with relations within knowledge and curriculum and their intrinsic structureshttps://upjournals.up.ac.za/index.php/yesterday_and_today/article/view/3745pm202

Fallism as Decoloniality: Towards a Decolonised School History Curriculum in Post-colonial-apartheid South Africa

The 2015/16 student protests in South Africa, dubbed #MustFall protests, signalled a historic moment in the country’s post-colonial-apartheid history in which student-worker collaborations called for the decolonising of the university and its Eurocentric curriculum and, by extension, basic education and its Eurocentric curriculum too. Since then, there have emerged two dominant narratives of decolonisation in South Africa. The first is what I call a nativist delinking approach that recentres decolonial and Africa-centeredness discourses, ontologies, and epistemologies relatively separate from Euro-north and American-centric ones. The second is a broader, inclusive approach to decolonisation, which this study adopts. However, both these dominant narratives fail to counter much of the knowledge blindness informed by a false dichotomy advanced by positivist absolutism and constructive relativism that defines the sociology of education, including many of the calls for decolonisation. Thus, through a decolonial conceptual framework and Karl Maton’s Epistemic-Pedagogic Device as a theoretical framework, fallism as decoloniality is adopted in this study to propose ways to transcend the Eurocentrism that characterises the current school history curriculum in South Africa, as well as the nativist and narrow provincialism of knowledge. Equally, an argument is made for the advancement of an inclusive decolonial project that is concerned with relations within knowledge and curriculum and their intrinsic structures

Trends in African philosophy and their implications for the Africanisation of the South Africa history caps curriculum : a case study of Odera Oruka philosophy

A Kenyan philosopher, Henry Odera Oruka (1944-1995), conceptualised and articulated the six trends in African philosophy. These are ethno-philosophy, nationalistic-ideological philosophy, artistic ( or literary philosophy), professional philosophy, philosophic sagacity and hermeneutic philosophy. In this article, we maintain that the last three of these trends, namely professional philosophy, philosophic sagacity, and hermeneutic philosophy, are useful in our attempt to contribute to Africanising the school history curriculum ( SHC) in the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement ( CAPS) in post-apartheid South Africa. Against this background, we make use of Maton's (2014) Epistemic-Pedagogic Device (EPD), building on from Bernstein's (1975) Pedagogic Device as a theoretical framework to view African philosophy and its implications for the Africanisation of the SHC in CAPS in post-apartheid South Africa. Through the lens of Maton's EPD, we show how the CAPS' philosophy of education is questionable; untenable since it promotes 'differences of content'; and is at the crossroads, i.e., it is stretched and pulled in different directions in schools. Ultimately, we argue that Oruka's three trends form a three-piece suit advertising one's academic discipline (professional philosophy); showing South Africa's rich history told in the words of African elders ( sage philosophy); and imploring school history learners to embark on a restless, unfinished quest for knowledge in the classrooms in post-apartheid South Africa