Revisiting African Traditional Education to Promote Peace through Education in Africa
Keywords:
African Traditional Education, Education, Africa, KenyaAbstract
African traditional values are the principles, standards and qualities, which Africans traditionally held dear for perpetuation of culture and society. They are the values that guided human action towards a common good. There are certain things that Africans found intrinsically valuable, that gave them a distinct cultural personality and enabled them to contribute to knowledge and history. Some of these include the sense of community life, sacredness of life and respect for authority and elders.These values of African traditional education can be revisited to infuse peace and unity in today‘s fragmenting society. Peace here is taken to mean the non-violent, non-exploitative, cohesive, tolerant and united co-existence between people and respect for the social environment. This paper will document the dominant African cultural values and attempt to assess the contribution of these values to the promotion of peace in modern times. This is a library-based research, which involves a desk review ofarticles, documents and internet sources to draw facts and use the information to provide suggestions for promoting peace. It will try to bring out the salient values of African culture and see how these can be adapted to today‘s world to enhance peaceful co-existence and thus lead to change in public consciousness and habits to improve the quality of life. The findings of the study will highlight viable options for African societies to come out of their cultural quagmire and suggest ways of preserving values that lead to national cohesion and development.