What were you taught about Africa as a child in school?

what age do you mean? we did a year of african/asian studies in 9th grade. at one point i could fill in all the countries on a map of africa, which i don't think i can do now.

My 6th grade teacher had lived in Africa for many years, and we studied about Africa for most of the year. I believe she had lived in Côte d'Ivoire, Mozambique, and Kenya, so those were the countries we focused on. She was a great teacher.

Nothing after that, but I could have taken a semester long history class in high school on Africa. Chose something else.

I learned they built a coca cola bottling plant there. And that's all.

I think we did some stuff about the scramble and maybe a teeny tiny bit about decolonisation.

The school also got in a South African exile to tell us about Apartheid.

The usual tedious-as-fuck assemblies of African tribal dancing exhibitions.

i'm not sure we were taught anything about it beyond 'famine is bad - LOOK' and 'Apartheid is bad'

Apartheid = "Separate playgrounds, separate schools, separate roads and cycle paths, ....."

Did make it sound like a sort of 'exclusive' disneyland...

.. "No you see, the white people are in the minority, but they get the bigger playground with better swings on it and that..."

Bear in mind, that where we grew up we had crap playgrounds, falling to bits, and packed to the rafters with rough kids sos you could never get in or on anything. Which had nothing to do with any black kids by the way...

Moral of story: Don't talk down to the kids, tell them the WHOLE story.

i'm not sure we were taught anything about it beyond 'famine is bad - LOOK' and 'Apartheid is bad'

-- blueski, Friday, 11 July 2008 13:27 (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Lucky you! We got the "famine is bad" bit, but one of our geography teachers was vocally (& v tediously) pro-apartheid, believe it or not. This would have been about '81-'82.

A few years earlier, in junior school, the sum total of our knowledge about africa was that it was a place where people were starving and that (v helpful, this) we should think about them when we were eating our meals.

In retrospect, it's bloody pathetic, really, isn't it?

we had "ghana day" in the 4th grade. it kind of warped my perception of africa so that to this day i consider ghana to be like the central african nation and everywhere else to be kind of ancillary.

too right.

A tale I remember but from where, I do not: Some kids in class drew pictures of Africa, most did the usual jungle scenes with 'natives' and such like, one child from SA did what looked like a suburban street scene, lights, trees, cars etc. "That's what Johannesburg looks like" she says.

i should say the amount we learned about africa was not significantly disproportionate to the amount we learned about south america or much of asia

Not as a child, not in school. In fact about seven years ago. Our local church, doing the Parental thing as Amber was carrying the banner in church parade.

A visiting vicar recounting the sermon he gave about God, showing a murky glass of water, and how 'purification' i.e. living a pure life is better (magically switches it for a glass of evian to general oohs), then saying that if you let God into your life, it's like THIS! (puts evian through a sodastream and now the water is FIZZY! and no good for anything except drinking!

You know, just when you get to thinking religion gets a bad rep, you find it's actually worse than you remember.

http://www.beergrilled.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/bush_dance_01.jpg

I had to build a map of Africa in 6th grade social studies with representations of the various geographic areas: jungle, savannah, desert, etc. I did a great job, but turned it in late and received a 50%.

I'm sure that there were several units on the history of Egypt - King Tut was on the cover of my 9th grade history text, so we must've covered it.

I learned a lot about Africa in Sunday School - we watched Cry Freedom and stuff.

Absolutely nothing.

I knew people who were missionaries in Zaire whose children spoke Lingala as a first language until they moved back here. From them, I learned that African people ate grubs and needed more sources of clean water in their villages, and that they went to school in one-room buildings/huts much like our pioneer ancestors (there was an old one-room school down the street from my house). We studied absolutely nothing about Africa in school, I'm pretty sure.

One of the modules in our Geography O-Level was about farming in West Africa. Specifically Ougadougou, as I recall. At junior school I think we learned a bit about David Livingstone. Can't think of much else.

How interesting, I never thought about that big blank spot until you asked. I guess I knew about apartheid from other sources, but the major source was probably having read The Power of One in sometime around, oh, age 15.

actually, the clouds are clearing:

"Elk Woman, Elk Woman, your house is burning!
You said, You said, I am afraid..."

i should say the amount we learned about africa was not significantly disproportionate to the amount we learned about south america or much of asia

yeah central/south america is what really got shafted in my middle school/high school curriculum. we had a year split between africa and asia, a year of european history, but everything from mexico south was just treated as a sort of footnote to u.s. history. some discussion in current-events classes (el salvador and nicaragua were all over the news then), but nothing substantive except maybe during discussion of the monroe doctrine. i was one of these lefty kids always trying to bring up the history of american imperialism in the hemisphere, but i didn't get a lot of traction with teachers or classmates.

We learned how to correctly pronounce "Niger".

We learned about the Ghana, Mali and Songhai empires in middle school and we read Things Fall Apart and Cry the Beloved Country.

In high school I learned that the original Jews were actually black and that the Greeks stole everything they knew from the Timbuktu library.

One of the modules in our Geography O-Level was about farming in West Africa. Specifically Ougadougou, as I recall.

Ha, I was going to say this too, that all I specifically remember was stuff about the economy, GDP, etc of Burkino Faso. Knowing that Ougadougou was the capital of Burkino Faso, which was formerly known as Upper Volta, was about all the knowledge I think I ever got from Geography O-Level.

This was the last year of real O-Levels, before they invented GCSEs, I think. 1988? I'm pretty sure it's not on the syllabus now.

See, we learned about ancient Egypt, the pharaohs, pyramids and all that as part of humanities at the beginning of secondary school BUT THEY NEVER TOLD US EGYPT WAS PART OF AFRICA or even where it was, it was just "this place" where "these things happened".

In high school I learned that the original Jews were actually black and that the Greeks stole everything they knew from the Timbuktu library.

were you studying in Tendentiousness High?

Pashmina - do you think of Egypt as part of Africa now? A lot of the way people think about Africa now is to have a distinction between the continent as a whole and "sub saharan Africa" (or something like that), with the latter being the "real" Africa.

One thing I have picked up about this continent is that different parts of it are very different from each other, to such an extent that talking about the continent in aggregate might not really be that useful.

Aye, we did similar with Egyptian stuff to Pashmina, I think in primary school, as I don't think it fitted in to anything I did in secondary. It certainly had nothing really to do with history or Africa, it was just a thing.

I would have assumed Britishers would have received more info than Americans in most cases, but it's hard to tell from this thread.

I think there was some context-free geographical stuff in middle school -- filling in country names, basically, which was pretty stress-free for everyone given that you knew locating Germany or India would form the bulk of any test, and finding Gambia wasn't going to be anything but extra credit.

I think there was a brief bit on colonialism in high-school history, where you learned that the answer to any colonialism-related questions would probably be "Rhodes."

In my small (six-person?) AP history class, during the lead-up to World War II, there was a sudden incongruous 15-minute section on the Italian invasion of Ethiopia that was pretty clearly put there for my benefit, which was actually kind of sweet.

Egypt. In choir, we once sang a song in Swahili.

("Sweet" like aww, not sweet like awesome.)

So does everyone have this same experience, then, where you think back to your knowledge of the world around age 18, can't recall ever being actively taught it at school, don't feel like the parents spent that might time sitting around explaining history/geography to you, and yet you seem to have absorbed stuff somewhere along the line anyway? I assume it sneaks in sideways from just reading random stuff, but it's still strange to think about...

The first thing that really sticks out in my mind was talking about famine in Ethiopia. Then in 4th grade our teacher assigned everyone in class an African country and we had to do a report on it both on paper and with a presentation to the class. I got Lesotho but was hoping for Madagascar.

In high school geography there was some more attentive study, but mostly involving mountain ranges, rivers, that kind of stuff. Nothing overly cultural, unfortunately.

I remember learning about the per capita GNPs of Burkina Faso, Swaziland and Lesotho in 7th grade and thinking that I could possibly buy any of them for pocket change.

We had specific focus in 9th grade geography and 10th grade world history on Africa, possibly surprising for a public school in the suburban Twin Cities but there you go.

I know we studied Africa in 9th grade Global Studies (along with Asia and South and Central America) but all I remember is our teacher reading an account of female genital mutilation.

I think we talked more about flora and fauna than the people.

i remember learning there is a difference between north africa and the rest of africa. also that apartheid is bad, but by the time i got to high school apartheid was over yay!

i think i had a grade school teacher tell us that we could remember what apartheid meant because 'apart' was in the word. i remember having to know about 'animism' and the 'triangle trade'

i think we read something out of the sundiata in high school too

I think the course was AP World History. We memorized the names of all African countries, read a fair bit about different regions and tribes and colonization, and I got to see a lot of pictures of my teacher standing next to a VW bus in the 1970s in different parts of the continent.

Then again, he also won some national education prize, so that class might not have been typical.

Oh yeah, triangle trade. And we read Sundiata. All I remember is that he was crippled so they didn't kill him when he was a boy and then he came back to kill them.

the most i remember was some talk about apartheid and nelson mandela, and a video we watched in social studies about early humans in africa. this video was prefaced of course by my teacher saying "i don't believe in evolution but this has some geography stuff about africa in it" and then while we watched the video she filed her nails. that sort of business comprised 90% of that class.

All I remember is that he was crippled so they didn't kill him when he was a boy and then he came back to kill them.

lol i don't even remember this much

apartheid! (um, exclamation point for the enthusiasm I had for the class, not the institution of apartheid, obviously). I remember we watched a film about Steve Biko, covered Mandela and his eventual rise, and the origins of afrikanner rule.

I really should stop reading this thread because I just keep wondering if I could somehow enroll as an observer in my high school class. Did I mention the same teacher did macroecon/us government and had (mock) shrine to Greenspan?

"kilimanjaro rises like olympus above the serengeti"

I don't remember being taught anything about Africa except it was one of the seven continents and it's where slaves had come from.

We did study a little bit about Libya and the Gulf of Sidra in junior high and read Things Fall Apart in my senior year (a book that I was disappointed to find had nothing to do with Husker Du.)

The first thing that really sticks out in my mind was talking about famine in Ethiopia. Then in 4th grade our teacher assigned everyone in class an African country and we had to do a report on it both on paper and with a presentation to the class. I got Lesotho but was hoping for Madagascar.

In high school geography there was some more attentive study, but mostly involving mountain ranges, rivers, that kind of stuff. Nothing overly cultural, unfortunately.
-- dan m, Friday, July 11, 2008 2:56 PM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

This reminds me that in an English class (for some reason, probably to teach us about writing and giving speeches) we each had to pick an African nation and give a three minute report on it. I chose Cameroon because I liked their football team at the time. :P

I liked Cameroon because of the deadly lake that spewed CO2! I read about that in National Geographic, though.

So ... was that the 94 World Cup, roxy, with the "dog lifting leg" victory dance for goals?

Oh wait no, that was 90, wasn't it

It was after the '90 Cup, yeah.

I think in junior school we also read some stories about Anansi the Spider Man, there used to be a schools TV show about him in the 70s.

Got into the Cameroon football team during the 1990 World Cup, when they beat Argentina in the first match and probably should've knocked England out.

And cos Roger Milla was a superstar.

in 3rd or 4th grade my whole school (120 kids) split up into different groups and spent a few weeks putting together a project about a specific african country. then at the end each group set up a classroom to resemble the country in some way and gave virtual tours.

i think i was in the ghana group... i remember regretting not choosing senegal because they made peanut butter ice cream

in fact, now that i think about it the only thing i took away from that experience was that senegal was a major producer of peanuts

I just bought some peanut butter ice cream at the store, and you have reminded me to eat it.

vive senegal!

Read "Heart of Darkness" in 11th grade English, but I think that's the only time in grade school that Africa even came up, and even then itspurred a *lot* more discussion about Apocalypse Now than about the Dark Continent.

i remember regretting not choosing senegal because they made peanut butter ice cream

I think Ghana's a major cocoa exporter, you could've gorged yourselves on chocolate

little late now

Just saying, you guys dropped the ball on that one

I am ashamed to admit that my schooling prior to college included no world history courses at all.

there was some generic multicultural "now you know how to say 'hello' in Swahili!" type stuff in the first couple years of elementary school, and I'm pretty sure we had to do the "pick an african country and give a report on it" thing at some point in middle school. then in 10th grade (this was about 6 years ago) we read Things Fall Apart and Heart of Darkness (this sorta counts right?) in our world lit class, and at the same time we read King Leopold's Ghost as part of a big unit on colonialism in our world history class. never really retained much of an impression of what Africans were doing when they weren't being brutalized by Europeans.

we read King Leopold's Ghost as part of a big unit on colonialism

That is great!

yeah, that was actually really cool. thanks, preppy private school! sorry I was ashamed to admit that I attended you when I hung out with public school kids :(

I don't remember being taught a fucking thing about Africa in grade school. I had one World History course in high school, but that didn't even touch on it.

never really retained much of an impression of what Africans were doing when they weren't being brutalized by Europeans

They could really condense the whole curriculum to this sentence, yes.

Why is/was an African info blackout so prevalent? Is it improving?

(Tipsy, did you grow up in Knoxville?)

I'm not so sure I learned that much about 5 other continents in grade school either.

I mean, granted that African history is still hard to teach from an Africa-out perspective. What we should probably be even more shocked by is the idea that you can get out of an American high school without learning a general framework for knowing about south and east Asia.

Yes, but don't you think it's distinctly important that kids learn about the most uniquely screwed-over place on the planet and what their own countries' role in it's screwing may have been/could be?

xpost - apart from the "nobody cares" element of the blackout there really is some structural stuff, mostly that apart from slavery/colonization (i.e., "being brutalized by Europeans") there's no overarching "Africa" history/culture to teach, and you've talking about really disparate histories in different places.

But you could talk, roughly, about the old northwest-African trading kingdoms, general stuff about sub-Saharan culture, Arab relationship with the north, post-slavery African diaspora in the western hemisphere, colonization, and independence movements...

xpost again -- I'm not saying it's not important, I'm just saying there are a thousand kinds of unique in that "uniquely," and even in higher academia no one's yet boiled that down to the kind of quick-framework approach that gets taught in high schools. (This surely has a lot to do with the "pick a country!" approach so many people got.)

http://www.blackpeopleloveus.com/images/pictionary.jpg

xpost again -- I'm not saying it's not important, I'm just saying there are a thousand kinds of unique in that "uniquely," and even in higher academia no one's yet boiled that down to the kind of quick-framework approach that gets taught in high schools. (This surely has a lot to do with the "pick a country!" approach so many people got.)

-- nabisco, Friday, July 11, 2008 4:55 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

You're right, and "Africa is in a bad way" describes a vastly broad topic, but couldn't some kind of middle ground between a complete education in the subject (impossible) and nothing be aimed for and easily achieved?

Yeah, hence that attempted list of general topics above! (Making up curricula on the fly is hard, though.) I'd be curious to see what kinds of short general-framework curricula have been developed for things like "African history," though.

If you asked me offhand, I'm not sure I'd say students here should spend more than 50% of their history time studying America/Europe. I'd also say the emphasis on this kind of world-tour "social studies" should be shifted way more toward things like political history. But those are dream-world changes nobody's going to make any time soon, not constructive ideas about how to move in that direction.

^^ Another dream-world answer would be to embrace specialization, and once you've given students a world framework, let lots of them sort into kinda continental or regional specialties. No one in the world is ever asked to have complete knowledge of world history, but it'd be great and useful to go into college having taken a year of, say, detailed AP-style courses about South America, or East Asia, or something. (Good luck finding non-dream schools that can support that, but still.)

This is a good question -- from middle school on is when I learned anything substantive, I'm pretty sure at the time I recall studying Jomo Kenyatta at least. Otherwise mostly it was lumped into colonialism in general, obviously part of the story but hardly the most amenable context.

A semester spent studying Egypt in ninth grade excepted, my private high school didn't touch Africa. I wouldn't have known a thing about it had it not been for our enthusiastic, marvelous fourth grade teacher who insisted on making us memorize every world capital, and encouraged me to learn about Africa. Whatever else, the maps of colonial Africa are fascinating (German Southwest Africa!).

Nabisco OTM -- we must start with discontinuing the teaching of "social studies" in elementary schools which, at the time, meant learning about grain elevators, garnished with the occasional bit of American history (the Romans, William Penn).

As far as I can remember, nothing really until I took a global issues courses in grade 12.

I would go so far as to say students should take a world history course every year that they are in school.

We had quite a bit of African culture worked into our arts and social studies programs in grammar school. We had music and culture and some art and folklore, a bit of history.

It was a Catholic parish that now has a significant African membership and which offers a Mass in Igbo.

Wow. Where did you live?

The nine years of public school? Not much. A gigantic unit in sixth grade, I think on Egypt. Then in ninth grade, at my Quaker private school, we did a gigantic unit on West Africa. It was quite something, but I did my research project on the Zapatistas because I was a little smartass anarchist kid at the time.

(We also did a huge unit on Mexico, to clarify)

Roxymuzak - this was in Illinois.

You know, I don't think we learned much about anywhere in school, apart from Ireland (where we were in school), England (our nearest neighbour), and Europe (the continent we live in).

This thread has me disturbed to realise I can remember bugger all about school in general, especially primary (elementary) school! God, my brain.

We did do a thing in 5th grade called "MACOS (Man, a course of study)" that involved a long stint studying behavioural societies in apes, including making masks, learning about group heirarchies and the like, and I think some study of savannah life and wildlife in areas of Africa would have been covered in that. Geo only though, no cultural stuff I can think of.

Outside of school there was things like the famine and Live Aid, so I had that exposure to Africa and perhaps assumed the whole continent was full of starving children and drought.

I was aware of South Africa though as a different entity, though right now the only thing I can think of was the Goodies episode where they did the jokes about "apart-height" which I recall at the time went over my head, and watching it now startles me as to how casually blackface lolz racist it was :/