African Folklore: An Encyclopedia - Marshalls University

African Americans 215
Education and Folklore after Independence
Inheriting contradictory notions of vernacular culture, independent African governments
have had ambivalent feelings toward folklore; while it is a symbol of the nation and a rich
heritage, it also seems to contradict the goal of progress and modernity. African
academics have often been at the forefront of persuading their governments of the
importance of tradition. Government and academic interests in vernacular culture
converge in the field of education. State promotion of folklore has often used education
as a site of intervention, not only because schools are nominally under government
control and a way to reach the nation’s children, but also because academics focus on
their domain of education. Government and academic efforts to recuperate vernacular
traditions have also revived functionalist reasons to justify their promotion, with the
argument that folklore educates and integrates society and thus is valuable to the nation’s
development.
The data for this section is sporadic and full of gaps, dependent on if, and where,
documents and articles that spoke to cultural policies and school policies in various
countries could be found. The postcolonial intersection of folklore and education in
Africa is a literature that needs to be developed.
In West and southern Africa (and perhaps throughout Africa), cultural traditions are
often showcased as performing arts (dance, music, drama, and drumming) to create
national art forms. The showcasing of different ethnic traditions on one stage represents
the national polity, at the same time as it heightens the connection between a particular
style and an ethnic group. State-sponsored national, regional, and provincial level arts
festivals took place in Nigeria and Ghana in the 1960s and 1970s, and in Namibia in the
1990s, some of which were organized for schoolchildren. Some of the national cultural
competitions for artists and students were driven by international level festivals, such as
the Second World Black Festival of Arts and Culture, held in Lagos in 1975, or South
African Development Community regional arts festivals in the 1990s. Performing arts
festivals in these countries have became a way of representing the nation and a way of
speaking across many linguistic boundaries. Teachers and students are more subject to
political pressure and sometimes easier to organize, through school cultural troupes and
clubs, than community level or Western-trained artists.
When folklore has been included in school curricula in African primary and secondary
schools, it has been incorporated into academic subjects and national school
examinations, as a different kind of content within a Westernized frame of knowledge. In
Kenya, the teaching of oral literature in the schools is explicitly marked by the goal of
nation building: folktales are chosen for their ability to show the similarity or unity of
Kenya’s many ethnic groups and for their moral purpose which can help the nation
develop. Oral literature is included in English literature classes and is part of the national
examinations. Verbal art seems to be most easily integrated into African schools, both
ideologically and practically, and is generally done so through vernacular language
classes. Yet because of the ambivalence of governments, as well as students and teachers,
the presence of “folklore,” as either performing arts or systematized school knowledge,
may be sporadic or uneven in schools, despite official promotion and policies. In some
countries, especially in francophone Africa, schools may not be involved at all in local
language or cultural instruction. Africanization may not appear through folkloric dances