The Philosophy Of African Philosophy

1. Introduction

As a teacher we all know our learners are different to each other (i.e. culture, wealth, religion etc.) and want all our learners to be bright, confident and well-rounded young children. Which is why when we notice a young learner withdrawn from their fellow peers and not playing with others and lacking confidence in themselves, we as their educator want to help them in any way possible to help build their confidence and get them playing with their fellow peers. Most of these young children who are withdrawn and lack confidence often come from an unstable/impoverished and different background in terms of their culture and beliefs to their fellow peers in class, so they tend to feel different to their peers, some even inadequate as they are scared their peers might not accept them for who they are and where they come from. As an educator we can adopt African Philosophy as a theoretical framework into our methods of teaching as a way assisting and helping this young learner. African philosophy would be the best theoretical framework to adopt as it is a response to the troubles and problems of Africa and to the domination of Western thought. African philosophy is an anti-materialistic philosophy; it claims that happiness at least somewhat consists of living for others, in supporting others. Unlike Western Philosophies which regards the individual as the centre of life African Philosophy stresses the importance of human community and the community’s place in the universe. African philosophy highlights the sense of communalism that we as human beings should have.

2. Body

2.1 Methods of enquiry

African Philosophy consists of four demarcated methods of enquiries; namely Ethnic philosophy, sage philosophy, political phi...

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...courages us to be humble yet it doesn’t challenge power structures, meet or acknowledge our individual needs or encourage critical thinking. Personally I wouldn’t solely use this philosophy in the classroom. Being a very independent person myself, and learning from experience that you can’t always count on your ‘community’, I feel that learners need to learn sometimes they have to do things by themselves to satisfy their happiness and needs. By using this philosophy though as a basis to help a young learner who has no confidence to begin with and is a very withdrawn learner, then I would use the concept of African to assist the learner as with this philosophy and Ubuntu, you can show the learner the importance of their place in the class and them being in the class and school community, building their confidence and getting them to participate in school activities.