Indigenising the school curriculum: an alternative approach for ensuring relevance to the context

Abstract

A relevant and functional curriculum is the vehicle that ensures the relevance of an education system. The lack of relevance of borrowed curricula has caused the education systems of developing countries to be in a state of perpetual crisis. Today, a plethora of curricula reform projects has been implemented in Africa – with little success. These reform activities have all suffered from a major, inherent structural defect: they have only changed the contents of the curriculum. As a result, the western cultural influences embedded in the foundations are still being transmitted to students, making curricular materials irrelevant and unrelated to the culture and philosophy of these students. This failure has compelled concerned and genuine scholars to seek an alternative approach to curriculum development and study. This article suggests an alternative approach to curriculum development known as “indigenisation”; this approach calls for the preparation of a curriculum that is rooted in indigenous foundations and theories, and in principles and ideas derived from indigenous culture.