Building an authentic African philosophy of education based on the African concept of personhood

Abstract

AbstractThis paper’s central task is to demonstrate how the African concept of personhood provides a suitable grounding for an authentic African philosophy of education. An authentic African philosophy of education is one in which there is a constant search for underlying principles for reflecting on the foundation, nature, and justification for the need and desirability of education in Africa. Scholars have drawn diverse implications from the African concept of personhood, especially in the areas of normative ethics, social and political, and legal philosophies. However, sufficient attention has not yet been paid to how the African conception of personhood could drive fruitful theoretical engagements with the foundations, nature, and justification of the African philosophy of education. This paper attempts to fill this gap. With the combination of critical literature review and philosophical methods of conceptual and logical analyses (and argumentation), the paper argues for the centrality of an African concept of personhood to the questions of the foundation, form (nature), and justification of an authentic African philosophy of education. The paper concludes that a personhood-based African philosophy of education provides a plausible framework within which these questions can be fruitfully engaged.