Toward a Decolonized Moral Education for Social Justice in Africa

Abstract

Many moral and social problems affecting African people and development could be associated with (neo)colonial moral education problems in Africa: perpetuation of excessive materialism, individual competitiveness, and demonization of African traditional values. To solve African moral problems and realize Pan-African goals, we need a more contextualized approach to moral education in schools that takes into account moral values from African context. Hence, this paper proposed strengthening moral education in Africa through a decolonial educational approach that disrupts the conventional through anti-colonial curricular and pedagogical practices of moral education for social justice. It first conceptualized moral education and social justice and reviewed literature on moral education in Africa to illuminate its colonizing elements. The proposed decolonized moral education model, critiquing Kohlbergian moral development theory as ignoring the (neo)colonial struggles of colonized and Indigenous people, draws on Ubuntu philosophy, Afrocentricity, and postcolonial theories to develop five processes for the decolonization—(a) Indigenous knowledge, values, and practices’ consciousness raising, (b) moral diversity mapping and comparison, (c) critical evaluation of Indigenous moral disrupters, (d) prosocial anger toward historical/ongoing moral annihilation and complicity, and (e) Indigenous moral agency. The curriculum and practice implications of the Model are discussed.