Making Education Relevant for Learners in Sarh, Chad
Open Access DepositedIndigenous Education in Postcolonial Contexts
In Chad, a former French colony, local languages used to be forbidden in educational settings, nonetheless, French continues to remain the main language of instruction even after the independence of the country in 1960. Like in many other indigenous communities in postcolonial contexts, mainstream Euro-centered ways of learning inherited from colonial times are not responding to the current needs of their youths. Responsive education is a relatively novel approach to education, designed to center the needs and interests of learners in their contexts of life, based on their cultural values, experiences, and worldviews (Gay, 2018
Lee, 2015). In Sarh (Chad), the local community opted for instruction in local languages as a way to address educational issues related to poor academic performance, high dropout rates and grade repetitions common in regular mainstream postcolonial schools, while successfully revitalizing their native languages in the process. Responsive education is known as “adapted education” in Sarh, and is primarily focusing on the use of the local language Sar in primary classroom instruction, pushing back on the long-standing belief that schooling could only be accomplished using French (the main official language), or marginally Arabic (the second official language, though less common in education settings). The result of this approach is a community-owned form of education in which literacy is no longer validated by the knowledge of French and French ways only, but also by the ability to effectively navigate one’s own context of life, including experiences, linguistic and cultural identities. Thus, in keeping with the spirit of decentering hegemonic approaches to education, this dissertation project is unapologetically tapping into unconventional forms of writing and theoretical explorations of ethnography, anthropology, critical and creative thinking to coproduce this knowledge with the community of Sarh, exploring their understanding and organization of how education is being transformed to meet the needs of their learners, their community, and their educational system at large.
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Koumtingue_gwu_0075A_17897.pdf | 2026-06-24 | Open Access |
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