ABSTRACT
Much of the literature about an African philosophy of education seems to juxtapose two strands of African philosophy as mutually exclusive entities, namely traditional ethnophilosophy on the one hand, and scientific African philosophy on the other. Whereas traditional ethnophilosophy is associated with the cultural artefacts, narratives, folklore and music of Africa’s peoples, scientific African philosophy is concerned primarily with the explanations, interpretations and justifications of African thought and practice along the lines of critical and transformative reasoning. These two different strands of African philosophy invariably have a different impact on understandings of education: that is education as constituted by cultural action as mutually independent from education constituted by reasoned action. The position I argue for in this text is for an African philosophy of education guided by communitarian, reasonable and culture-dependent action in order to bridge the conceptual and practical divide between African ethnophilosophy and scientific African philosophy. Unlike those who argue that African philosophy of education cannot exist because it does not invoke reason, or that reasoned African philosophy of education is just not possible, I argue instead for an African philosophy of education constituted by reasoned, culture-dependent action. Hopefully my argument will take care of criticisms such as claims that African philosophy of education is too constrained by oral traditions and cultural experiences; that it is too culture dependent and cannot be responsive to human problems on the African continent; or that it is anti-scientific and primitive.1
