Over the week-end
of the 3rd and 4th of October 2009, a conference titled Critical
Thinking for Development Education: Moving from Evaluation to
Research, took
place in NUI Galway.
Organised by the Development Education & Research Network (DERN) at NUI, Galway, one of the papers presented was by Richard Borowski and Jane Plastow from Leeds University Centre for African Studies (LUCAS).
Organised by the Development Education & Research Network (DERN) at NUI, Galway, one of the papers presented was by Richard Borowski and Jane Plastow from Leeds University Centre for African Studies (LUCAS).
The two researchers traced the background to the project; the summary of their findings of which is also presented as follows:
"African Voices is a project run by LUCAS that takes African postgraduate students studying any subject at the University of Leeds, trains them in relation to the British education system and to active learning methodologies and then sends them out into Leeds schools, years 5-8, to work in a range of modes to challenge negative ideas about the continent, to help make Africa 'real' to young people, and to seek to arouse their interest in different cultures.
Children's
Negative Images of Africa
One
of the main questions this project has caused us to debate is why
children have such negative ideas about Africa. The evidence seems to
be that there are two main sources of negative image making: the
media and charity campaigns.
Images
of Africa on Television
The images that
children are exposed to in the media, and this we think would be
primarily on the television, are of an Africa that is disaster
ridden.
There is very
little cultural or documentary material shown on British television
relating to the continent; instead it appears mostly on the news and
overwhelmingly then in relation to bad news stories.
When I did a trawl
on the internet for this article to see what the BBC had been
recently saying about the continent I quickly came to an Africa site
that invited me to put in only the following keywords: civil war,
elections, famine, human rights, peace negotiations, political
parties and war. These are apparently for the BBC the things that
primarily go on in Africa.
It is no wonder
that young children see a largely undifferentiated continent of
helplessness, danger and poverty: for that matter many of their
parents and teachers probably see the same things. The only other
image of Africa that is widely pedalled relates to the exotic.
Television
Programmes
Wildlife programmes
such as the BBCs Big Cat Diaries, or ITV's appalling wildlife
drama, Wild at Heart, where Africans usually come with thick
accents and a willingness to serve while white people nobly rescue
beautiful animals, are standard fare; while occasional series and
documentaries tend to feature brave and beautiful young white people
going off to live - ostensibly alone (except of course for the TV
crew) - with Africans of the noble savage variety - Massai and San
bushmen are favourites here, demonstrating how 'aboriginal' peoples
really do have cultures, but are of course usually being squeezed out
of their peaceful lives by the incursions of such forces as corrupt
governments, predatory farmers or foreign tourism.
The brave young
white people always fall in love with these ‘aboriginals’, go
through a spiritual experience, wear some weird clothes and eat
something utterly disgusting before sadly saying goodbye to the
accompaniment of a vibrant music track.
Given this highly
selective and distorted imagery it is hardly surprising that primary
school children in the UK believe that Africans don't use mobile
phones, buses, computers, or iPods?
Or
that they think most Africans live in mud huts whereas the latest
statistics show that 38% of the continent is now urbanised, and
Africa is experiencing the greatest growth in the use of mobile
phones anywhere in the world.
Charity Campaigns on Television
Charity Campaigns on Television
The
second source of popular information is undoubtedly charitable
campaigning. Programmes such as the annual Comic Relief beano
or Blue Peter appeal bombard us with pictures of cute children
- often again outside mud huts, and on the major charity's websites
one finds image after image of poverty and suffering.
Aid Agencies: their Presence and Campaigns in Schools
Aid Agencies: their Presence and Campaigns in Schools
Within schools,
charitable giving is often encouraged as being a good thing to
promote compassion in children, but inevitably it is likely to
further promote ideas of African helplessness and of the superiority
of life in the West, not just in material terms, but arguably in
terms of the West being better, kinder and necessary to the
well-being of the world's helpless poor. At worst we would argue this
is a breeding ground for racism."
"These
people are so different, so useless, that we in the West just must be
superior", Borowski & Plastow offered this assessment of
pupils' views as a consequence of the type of information and images
of Africa referred to above.
Any similarities with the situation here in Ireland?
Any similarities with the situation here in Ireland?
Details of the links to the Conference Paper on Young People’s Perceptions of Africa can be found here.
Visit the LUCAS Schools Africa Project.