ABSTRACT
Africa is immense, not only in terms of its size and geographic diversity but, more important, with respect to the cultural, linguistic, and ethnic diversity that characterizes the people who live in its various parts. As Richard Olaniyan observed, “With almost a thousand separate language groups, a variety of climatic regions and greatly different levels of social and economic development… Africa is a continent of bewildering diversity and extraordinary dynamism.”1 This immensity and diversity might lead one to believe that it is not possible for us to discuss traditional “African” educational thought and practice in any meaningful way because there is bound to be considerable variation on such a topic from one group to another throughout the continent. This is an important issue, as Meyer Fortes made clear:
Take, to begin with, the idea of African culture: by what criteria can we include, under this rubric, both the culture of the Kung
Bushmen of the Kalahari-those gentle, peaceful, propertyless, hunting and collecting folk who have been so aptly described as “the harmless people” by Lorna Marshall-and the traditional patterns of life and thought of the sophisticated, materially wealthy, politically and socially complex, militarily organized kingdoms of West Africa-Ashanti and Benin, Yoruba and Hausa.2
