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The amalgamation of traditional African values and liberal democratic values in South Africa : implications for conceptions of education

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dc.contributor.advisor Venter, Elza
dc.contributor.advisor Pitsoe, Victor
dc.contributor.author Letseka, Moeketsi
dc.date.accessioned 2016-11-24T10:44:19Z
dc.date.available 2016-11-24T10:44:19Z
dc.date.issued 2016
dc.identifier.citation Letseka, Moeketsi (2016) The amalgamation of traditional African values and liberal democratic values in South Africa : implications for conceptions of education, University of South Africa, Pretoria, <http://hdl.handle.net/10500/21805> en
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10500/21805
dc.description.abstract This study investigated the seemingly conflicting and incompatible ideological positions that post-apartheid South Africa appears to straddle. On the one hand, South Africa is an aspiring liberal democracy courtesy of its constitution of 1996, which is liberal in that it enshrines a wide range of rights and freedoms for the individual. On the other hand, the same constitution recognises the institution of traditional leadership, whose claim to power is hereditary and not by popular vote. Thus the study established that South Africa is an aspiring liberal democracy that is also heavily steeped in African traditions and cultures. It offered a rebuttal of the view that existence and recognition of traditional institutions of politics and governance in a liberal democracy is a fundamental contradiction. Drawing on the literature the study showed that liberal democracies such as Japan, the United Kingdom (UK), Belgium, The Netherlands and Spain, have had monarchies from time immemorial. But their monarchies are not a hindrance to either liberalism or liberal democracy. The study underscored the importance of Ubuntu as a socio-cultural discourse in South Africa, more so given that South Africa is an African country whose population is 80 per cent African. Concomitantly the study proposed a philosophy of education that amalgamates some aspects of liberal education with some aspects of African traditional education. Aspects of liberal education that were found to pertain to the amalgamation are ‘cultivating humanity’ and ‘narrative imagination’, while aspects of African traditional education are the values and principles implicit in Ubuntu, the latter understood as a humane normative concept. At a practical classroom level the study proposed that such an amalgamated philosophy of education would be attained through storytelling and the teaching of history through chronology and causation. As a form of ‘narrative’, storytelling reveals the finite in its fragile uniqueness and illustrates how the past influences and shapes the present, and how the present determines aspects of the past that are useful and meaningful today. Similarly the teaching of history through chronology and causation enables the students to organise their historical thought processes and construct their own probable historical narratives. The teaching of history through chronology and causation therefore offers the students multiple opportunities to gain a better understanding of historical events, and lessons that can be learn from such events. en
dc.format.extent 1 online resource (xvi, 305 leaves) en
dc.language.iso en en
dc.subject.ddc 370.1140968
dc.subject.lcsh Education -- South Africa -- Philosophy en
dc.subject.lcsh Moral education -- South Africa en
dc.subject.lcsh Educational anthropology -- South Africa
dc.subject.lcsh Values -- Study and teaching -- South Africa en
dc.title The amalgamation of traditional African values and liberal democratic values in South Africa : implications for conceptions of education en
dc.type Thesis en
dc.description.department Psychology of Education en
dc.description.degree D. Ed. (Philosophy of Education)


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