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Need an account? Click here to sign up. Download Free PDF. Messay Kebede. A short summary of this paper. Current or proposed policy framework 4 3. Research results in support of this framework 4 4. Recommendations for policy-makers 4 Introduction 5 I. The Ethiopian traditional system of education 6 II.
The theoretical and socio-political roots of the imperial system of education 18 IV. It also enquires into the reasons why the policy was adopted in the first place.
Admittedly, the continuous political crises and economic stagnation of Ethiopia since the Revolution point to the leading role played by Ethiopian educated elite. The paper raises the question of knowing whether the adoption of an education system that completely relied on Western teaching staff and curriculum — and systematically turned its back on Ethiopian legacy — does or does not explain the infatuation of Ethiopian students and intellectuals with Marxism-Leninism in the s and s.
The suggestion is that their propensity to opt for polarizing and confrontational methods of political competition may be the result of a decentering education system responsible for cultural cracks into which radical ideas, which were then in vogue, were injected.
Though this study deals with the case of Ethiopia, its regional and international implications are obvious, given that it illustrates nothing less than the impacts of Western education on non-Western societies.
It adds to those studies that argue that the cultural drawbacks of colonization and neocolonialism are far more serious than any economic downsides. The fact that Ethiopians became psychologically decentralized, as in any colonized country, even though they were not submitted to colonization, confirms the universally uprooting impact of Western education. Current or proposed policy framework Educational policy in most countries has been designed as the best and unique method to achieve rapid modernization.
As a result, the way modernization was perceived conditioned the educational policy. This erroneous understanding led to an educational policy that advocated full Westernization through the extirpation of the traditional legacy of lagging societies. The aim of this paper is to show that, so conceived, modern education does no more than continue and even expand the colonial paradigm, which also happens to favour dictatorial regimes for the simple reason that the devaluation of tradition is also how native ruling elites adopt colonial methods and subsequently rise above their own societies.
Research results in support of this framework The research results establish that the education policy is the answer to the question why Ethiopia ended up by showing all the symptoms of a colonized country while not being formally colonized.
The alienating effect is concretely referred to the impacts of an education system based on an alien curriculum and involving foreign teaching staff. Cultural analysis easily establishes that the infatuation of the educated elite with radical ideas and polarizing political agendas and methods is a major outcome of an uprooting education system.
Recommendations for policy-makers The study suggests that the way out from the present predicament is the radical reformulation of the educational policy. However, reformulation does not mean much if the attempt to Ethiopianize the curriculum is not associated with an effort to reinforce Ethiopian traditional values and culture.
The revival of traditions in the specific sense of ensuring the emancipation of the study of Ethiopian history and culture from Eurocentric concepts is, therefore, the most urgent and primary task.
In so far as this task is not carried out Ethiopianization of the curriculum will be without avail. Stated otherwise, the Ethiopian thinking must cease to posit modernization in terms of getting away from tradition so as to achieve westernization. Admittedly, students and intellectuals have spearheaded the uprising against the imperial regime; they have also been instrumental in the radicalization of the military junta, known as the Derg, which seized power and ruled the country for 17 years.
The ethnic movements that brought down the Derg were also launched by intellectuals. In short, what happened in Ethiopia since the early s is largely the handiwork of Ethiopians educated in modern schools. Seeing the incessant political instability and persistent economic inertia of the country, one cannot help but wonder whether the nature of the Ethiopian system of education was not an accessory to the gestation of these lingering tribulations.
What else could explain the failure to stabilize and put the country to work but the emergence of an educated elite too prone to radical and oppositional views?
True, the reluctance of the imperial regime to make the necessary reforms had polarized the country and created the conditions of class and ethnic confrontations. No scholar can seriously underestimate the impact of repression and lack of reforms on the radicalization of students. Bahru Zewde, The venture into a revolutionary path is the direct product of the infatuation of Ethiopian students and intellectuals with Marxism-Leninism. Hence the assumption that the education system may have caused cultural cracks into which radical ideas, which were then in vogue, were injected.
The best way to validate the assumption is to assess the impact of modern education on the cultural setup of Ethiopian students by laying out the kind of thoughts it encourages. To weigh the cultural metamorphoses caused by modern education, a brief review of the traditional, premodern system of education is necessary. The Ethiopian traditional system of education Scholars who have reflected on the traditional system of education agree on its Ethiocentric orientation and contents.
The Ethiopian Orthodox Church assumed the exclusive task of designing and propagating an education system whose central subjects were the religious beliefs, values, and practices of the Ethiopian Church. Pankhurst, The system had three distinct and successive stages, which can be said to correspond to elementary, secondary, and higher levels. This elementary education was dispensed to students who became ordinary priests and deacons. Students who wanted to pursue higher levels of study had to go to the great churches and monasteries.
Milkias, Milkias World history was taught at the third level: the ancient world and the histories of the Jews and the Arabs made up the substance of the teaching.
The focus on the Christian doctrine and values, the use of indigenous languages, and the extensive reading of books and textbooks that are impregnated with native contents bear witness to the fact that the subject of study was Ethiopia, its legacies, characteristics, and history.
Not only did the materials deal with Ethiopian history, customs, languages, and values, but the spirit of the education system was also to produce scholars able to serve the Church and, by extension, the country with a sense of dedication to its characteristics and sense of mission. Take the Ethiopic text known as the Kibre Negast: it establishes kinship between the rulers of Ethiopia and King Solomon of Israel, the favourite nation of God.
It also imparts a direction to history such that Ethiopia is where the sun rises and sets. The impregnation of students with the spirit of Kibre Negast enabled them to see the world from the viewpoint of Ethiopia. In a word, the discourse centered Ethiopia by endowing it with a specific mission, which became the repository of its national identity. Messay Kebede, The author of this paper gives the answer that the Ethiopian version of the Kibre Negast specifically refrains from assigning a Semitic or Sabaean origin to Queen Saba.
Moreover, the connection that it establishes between the Ethiopian ruling elite and Judaism is cultural rather than racial.
See Messay Kebede, , pp. The emphasis on serving the Church did not entail the exclusive confinement of the traditional system to the formation of priests, deacons, and church teachers. Wagaw, This extension to the secular society was a natural consequence of the basic and all-embracing cultural function of religion in Ethiopia.
Religious instruction conveyed the norms of social behaviour, the meaning of the social hierarchy, and the rights and duties attached to the social status of individuals. The education system was thus both mundane and spiritual: it taught a religious belief that was inextricably intertwined with a definite social system and a mode of life. Alemayehu, The source of this freedom emanated from the complete autonomy of the Church from the state in terms of education.
On the contrary, church education transcended political rivalries to concentrate on what was permanently Ethiopian, and so was an agent of unity and national cohesion. Kalewold, Modern critics of the traditional system have, of course, no trouble exposing the severe shortcomings of the traditional system of education.
Thus, Mulugeta Wodajo points out that the techniques and the contents of the education system were not particularly apt to develop the understanding; nor were they liable to cultivate the intellectual faculties of creativity, criticism, and imagination. Wodajo, Ibid, Some critics have underlined the discriminatory nature of the church education, since only parents who were Orthodox Christian could send their children to the traditional schools.
Wagaw, Where critics are unanimous and most vociferous is in their denunciation of the total expulsion of scientific courses from the traditional system of education. Being basically religious, the teaching had little inclination to include scientific and technological components.
The reluctance changed into an outright rejection as the religious doctrine progressively turned into a rigid dogma. Ibid, viii. The latter is a shortcut to development: what Europe has achieved through a long and gradual process of evolution can be captured and rapidly disseminated by an appropriate system of education. And as science, technology, and enlightened beliefs and values are the distinctive features of modernity, no better means exists to effect a rapid modernization than through the adoption of the Western system of education.
For Ethiopia, the adoption of the Western system meant an abrupt shift from the religious content of the traditional system to a secular teaching, just as it implied the dissolution of the traditional conservatism by the inculcation of the innovative spirit characteristic of modernity. Accordingly, the formation of an educated elite entirely opposed to the characteristics of the traditional elite became the major goal of the new system.
The task was particularly difficult: the traditional system directly counteracted the effort of modernization by its very purpose of producing a mind that repudiates whatever is not sanctioned by tradition. Given its complete irrelevance and opposition to the modern world, the traditional system of education was beyond salvation. It had to be entirely rejected and replaced by modern schools.
Before making a judgment on the wisdom of the decision to virtually eliminate church schools, one must reflect on the characteristics of the system that replaced the traditional education.
But it is one thing to say that the system had to be changed, quite another to entirely throw away the old in favour of an alien system. The path taken by Ethiopia was not to update, modernize the traditional system; it was to erase past practices so as to implement a new system.
The decision to leave out the legacy emanated, moreover, from an unfair criticism of the traditional system. Granted that the traditional education had been quite reluctant to include scientific studies, the truth remains that the indiscriminately negative evaluation of tradition by norms borrowed from another culture is a one-sided approach. Not only is such a criticism alien to the very notion of human pluralism, but it also promotes Western culture to the rank of universal culture.
The question whether a Tabula Rasa policy was wise is all the more legitimate the more the expected benefits of the new system proved evasive.
Indeed, so radical and rapid a shift was bound to encounter great difficulties. The causes of the failure are no doubt multiple. Some of them emanate from a rapid change that failed to provide the appropriate material and human conditions.
Others are products of misconceptions and policy impediments. These causes will be examined with some detail with the view of understanding how the deficiencies of the education system have a hand in the radicalization of the intelligentsia. With few supporters, he stood up to the stubborn opposition of the powerful Ethiopian Church and most members of the nobility. That is to say the inauguration of modern education in Ethiopia did not occur under favourable conditions.
It had to be instituted against powerful conservative forces in a socio-cultural condition that completely lacked the necessary material and human requisites. Sure enough, thanks to the effort of the previous emperor, Menelik II, some rudiments of modern education existed.
Menelik had created one modern school in , and some Ethiopians had become exposed to modern education. Unfortunately, most of these Ethiopians, who could have provided the necessary transitional administrative and teaching staff, were exterminated during the Italian Occupation of All the efforts of Menelik and Haile Selassie himself, first as Regent and since as Emperor, to provide a transitional staff were thus annihilated.
As most of the pre-war educated Ethiopians combined traditional training with modern education, they could have secured a smooth transition. Because of their extermination, the post-war effort to establish and spread modern education had to rely exclusively on expatriate advisors, administrators, and teachers. This unequal distribution resulted in a very low level of enrolment in modern schools. On the secondary level, estimated average enrolment for the appropriate age group on the continent and in Ethiopia was 3.
Balsvik, Equally low was the budget allotted to education by the imperial government. Some such low levels of expenditure negatively affected the quality of the teaching. In other words, the limitation became a source of grudge for young Ethiopians who could not enrol or continue beyond elementary education. On the other hand, unemployment became a primary concern for those who did enrol and reach high schools and even university level.
The alarming number of graduates who could not find jobs in the cities was a clear indication that the education system was producing more people than the economy could absorb. The promise of a better life, which was one of the arguments that the imperial regime used to make modern education attractive, was thus flatly contradicted.
Instead, schools and colleges produced disillusioned students who fell prey to revolutionary ideas. On the severe material and human shortcomings was grafted an educational policy that lacked direction and national objectives. That the curriculum tended to reflect at all levels courses offered in Western countries was a glaring proof of their harmful influence. What is more, the external teachers were neither fully qualified nor appropriately trained. Besides financial, infrastructural, and technical problems, the introduction and development of modern education thus faced the paramount issue of Ethiopianization.
Curricula as well as textbooks came from abroad. There was little in the curricula related to basic and immediate needs of the Ethiopian society. Multiple Locations, United States. With his unbending antipathy to any kind of social reform, from the s onwards Selassie became out of touch and indifferent to the suffering of his people. No trivia or quizzes yet. For additional information, see the Dmperor Shipping Program terms and conditions — opens in a new window or tab No additional import charges on delivery Delivery: Learn more — opens in a new window or tab.
Odinga rated it it was amazing Apr 30, The wise mind of emperor haile selassie i should the European powers have all the pomp and ceremony? Skip to main content. Minimum monthly payments are required. Aug 21, Theo rated it it was amazing. Ras rated it it was amazing Apr 12, Yet chattel servitude was not entirely eradicated. Learn More — opens in a new window or tab Returns: Visit my eBay store. Seller information rockymtntext Published by Frontline Books.
Check out this selassie item we found for you. The Italian invasion of Ethiopia in the s led to a five-year exile in England, from which he returned in time to lead his country through World War II. Selassie was also instrumental in the founding of the Organization of African Unity in , but he fell short of the ultimate goal of a promised democracy in Ethiopia. The corruption that grew under his absolute rule, as well as his seeming indifference to the famine that gripped Ethiopia in the s, led finally to his overthrow by the armed forces that he had created.
Haile Selassie was an enlightened monarch in many ways, but also a man with flaws like any other. This short biography is a sensitive portrayal of Selassie as both emperor and man, by one who knew him well.
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