How do I express and communicate embodied values of Ubuntu in an explanation of their educational influence in my own learning and in the learning of others?

Jack Whitehead, Department of Education, University of Bath.

On a visit to the South African Universities of the Western Cape, Stellensbosch and the Free State and to the Novalis Ubuntu Institute in Cape Town, during February/March 2006, I had the opportunity to extend and deepen my understanding of Ubuntu. In Stellenbosch University I met Lesley Le Grange and was most impressed by the way he introduces his ideas on African philosophy of education and writes about Ubuntu (Le Grange, 2005):

"I go along with Usher (1996: 38) that the self that researches has an autobiography marked by the significations of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class, and so on. I perform my work from a particular standpoint(s) or perhaps vantage point(s). Much of my work is written from the standpoint of a Black South African who has experienced first-hand the brutality of apartheid. Out of this experience I have developed sensitivities to the effects of all forms of oppression, including Africa's suffering in Guattari's (2001) three ecologies (mental, social and environmental), as a consequence of colonialism. I refer here to suffering evidenced by the wounded psyches of many Africans, the breaking down of kinship networks and the erosion of a large part of Africa's (bio)physical base." (Le Grange, p.126).

I agree with Le Grange that the self that researches/writes does not do so from nowhere, but performs his or her work from a particular (dis)position or perhaps (dis)positions. I agree that the authenticity of research work depends crucially on the use of reflexivity: both personal and epistemic/disciplinary reflexivity. Hence, I too will begin by demonstrating an awareness of my autobiography as well as with the discourses taken up through interaction with (Western) disciplinary knowledges that are influencing what I do and the ways I understand what I do. (p. 139)

Much of my work is written from the highly materially privileged context of a white English man who benefited from a free system of education through primary, grammar and university between 1959-1965. I have also had the opportunity between 1973-2006 to develop a vocational commitment to education and educational theory in a productive life with material well-being at the University of Bath in my work as a Lecturer in Education. This work includes tutoring masters students in their educational enquiries and supervising masters dissertations and doctoral research progammes. In the course of this life I have encountered power relations that have evoked emotional distress, anxiety and tensions together with responses that have served to develop and strengthen my commitment to live my values as fully as I can. I am thinking of my values of freedom, justice, love, educational enquiry, knowledge-creation, living educational theory and a productive life. Thankfully I have not experienced at first hand the physical brutality of a racist regime of apartheid. I will return to the embodied meanings of these values and their educational influences in my learning as I share my understandings of the significance of Ubuntu for educational research and theory.

My interaction with (Western) disciplinary knowledges includes a first degree in chemistry and physics, an academic diploma in the philosophy and psychology of education, a masters degree in the psychology of education and a doctoral degree in educational theory. In 1971, after studying the dominant disciplines approach to educational theory, I rejected its fundamental assumption that educational theory was constituted by the disciplines of the philosophy, psychology, sociology and history of education. My rejection was based on the understandings I had developed in my classroom practice as a teacher that no one else's theory, either individually or in any combination could produce an adequate explanation for my educational influence in my own learning or in the learning of others. This recognition changed my sense of vocation from being an educator to becoming an educational researcher and contributing to the generation of educational theories that could provide adequate explanations for the educational influences of individuals in their own learning, in the learning of others and in the learning of social formations. The present phase of my research programme includes the enquiry, How do I express and communicate embodied values of Ubuntu in an explanation of their educational influence in my own learning and in the learning of others? I am exploring the possibility that meanings of Ubuntu could provide a vitalising and humanising influence in the generation and testing of living educational theories. As part of this exploration I am including below a video narrative of my educational practice in a workshop and conversation in South Africa.

For Le Grange, Ubuntu, like all other African cultural values, has circulated primarily through orality and tradition. He says that its meaning is interwoven in the cultural practices and lived experiences of African peoples. He is concerned that Ubuntu has been abstracted from its geographical and cultural situatedness and been placed in written discourses that form sites of contestation around Ubuntu. Le Grange also suggests that it is important to understand that Western knowledge systems/philosophies only have the appearance of universal truth because of colonialism and imperialism.(p.135)

"I am also concerned about more subtle forms of colonization as knowledge is produced and rapidly disseminated across the globe in contemporary society. I am particularly concerned with a danger that indigenous ways of knowledge/African philosophies might become assimilated into an imperialist archive in the light of complex globalization processes currently prevalent. My usage of the term 'archive is borrowed from Foucault (1972). Smith (1999:44) points out that western knowledges, philosophies and definitions of human nature form what Foucault 91972) has referred to as a 'cultural archive'." (p.136)

Given that my intention is to produce an educational text I want to avoid any unconscious or conscious complicity of assimilating Ubuntu within an imperialist archive. Like Le Grange I believe that it is the deconstructive/reconstructive potential of ubuntu that needs to be explored and become part of our conversations and discourses. Le Grange's work is focused within/on a (South) African philosophy of education. I think his ideas have global significance. I agree with him that in (South) Africa, where indigenous knowledge systems reside among the majority of its people and Western philosophies remain dominant through new forms of colonization latent in processes such as globalization, an African philosophy of education is vital (p.138). I think we share the belief that it is not only in (South) Africa that an African philosophy of education is vital. I believe that its global significance will spread as its humanizing implications are more widely understood. I think this is consistent with Le Grange's interest in decentring Western philosophy by showing that it is a situated philosophy that has moved from its site(s) of production to other places not necessarily because of its superiority of universalism, but rather because it was aided and abetted by military power, imperialism and colonization (p.137).

In his use of the arguments of Giddens (1990) about globalization as an effect of disembedding knowledge Adams refers to his notion of reflexivity as the process of adapting knowledge for use in a new or distant context (Adams, 2005, p. 140). I am using these meanings of disembedding knowledge and reflexivity in exploring the possibility and desirability of developing living educational theories with Ubuntu in new and distant contexts from the sites of their original genesis.

In a visit to the Novalis-Ubuntu Institute, directed by Ralph Shepherd, in Cape Town I met Joan Conolly of Durban University of Technology. She gave me a copy of her paper on Memory, Media and Research: Mnemonic Oral-style, Rhythmo-stylistics and the Computer (Conolly, 2002).

Conolly (2002) makes the point that "academic research is historically a scribal/literate exercise of a specific and high order, for a number of reason". She says that "scribal literacy fixes large amounts of information outside of the human author(s) for dissemination across time and space" and that "it also allows the revision of a text before transmission, thus providing for refinement and concision of complex thinking, as well as allowing the modification and further refinement, revision and concision of the text even after its original transmission." For Conolly, "scribal literacy allows the identification and prescription of appropriate genres or structures by group consensus, where the decision-making group is that body of people closely associated with the production of writings in the relevant genre". She says that "it also allows the writing to exist on paper independently of its author, and for this reason becomes a defined and identifiable entity in its own right, which can be analysed and critiqued independently of its author(s) and in and on its own terms; (...) scribal literacy frees human memory from the task of extensive record keeping, the benefits of which are ambiguous and debatable". While for Conolly "the scribal record captures and records aspects of the linguistic elements of the performance, i.e. the actual words are recorded, it does not", she believes, "record the dynamic vitality of the performance as an indivisible whole manifest in: the kinaesthetic features, i.e. movement and gesture; the spatial features, i.e. line, form, shape; the paralinguistic and non-verbal aural features, i.e. non-verbal sounds, pitch, inflection, timbre, emphasis, vocal modulation; the temporal features, i.e. pace, pause; the interactive features, i.e. the responses of the audience":

The gestual-visual/oral-aural mode is more immediate and spontaneous than the literate mode. Its immediacy arises in the first instance from the performer's relationship with him/herself and the performance, the space and time in which the performer performs and from the face-to-face interaction between performer and audience during the performance. This influences the spontaneity of the performance: the performer can adjust his/her performance immediately according to his/her own responses with him/herself simultaneously with the responses from the audience. In effect, it can be argued that each performance is the unique product of the interactions within the performer and between performer and audience, and is therefore the product of simultaneous personal introspection and group authorship. In this wise, multiple authorships and occasions of authorship are intrinsic features of the oral tradition. A record of such a group-authored performance is only complete, faithful and authentic if it accounts for the performed text within its performance context and taking the audience engagement into account.......

In the video-narrative below, that includes a video-tape of me engaging with values of Ubuntu with participants in an action research workshop, I am seeking to use gestual-visual/oral-aural and scribal text to communicate my understandings of what I am doing in this educational practice with Ubuntu.

In his work on Ubuntu, Bhengu (1996) points out that a primary characteristic of African 'being' is its inclusiveness. Drawing on African Theology he points out that umuntu is a dynamic concept: it means all humans not only African humans (p.50). Hence in seeking to relate with Ubuntu I am seeing myself as existing within a dynamic form of inclusiveness. In saying this I will take care to avoid the dangers pointed out by Bhengu:

"... there is every danger of Ubuntu being hijacked and trivialised. The concept of Ubuntu can also be bastardised into an exclusively racial concept..... At present, the term Ubuntu is being bandied around carelessly. Some people ridicule the whole concept of Ubuntu so that it will eventually lose its meaning and essence, simply because, in their view, any thing that is African has no value. However, we Africans, because we are serious about building a sustainable democracy, still offer Ubuntu ideas as the answer to our problems." (Bhengu, 1996, pp. 54-55)

Shepherd (1996) in his Epilogue to Bhengu's book says that what is needed now is a new consciousness or revelation in which the Spirit of Ubuntu becomes the leading image of social development. He stresses the need for radical personal transformation so that Ubuntu shines through all that we think and feel and do in our interaction with our fellow human beings (p. 57):

"For centuries, Africa has been raped by an unconscious humanity in which millions of its people have been sold into slavery, its animals decimated and its minerals used to create the wealth of the Western world. Materialism has been furthered through what Africa has had to offer the world. The pain of a continent in despair could and hopefully will be the birth pains of a new consciousness. May the Spirit of Ubuntu be reborn consciously in all of us." (Shepherd, 1996, p.58)

In my experience I undergo personal transformation as my perceptions change in relation to the values and understandings I use to account to myself for the life I live in terms of my learning. I am thinking of such accounts as explanations for my learning that include assessing what I do and why I do it in terms of my values and understandings. In their work connecting education transformation with assessment and ubuntu, Beets and Louw (2005, p.187) emphasise that the nature and purposes of assessment should not be approached in a technicist way. They say that assessment, as the key to focused development and growth of the learner, demands an involved relationship: it is not only about making a judgement, but rather about being with the learner every step of the way and being prepared to recognize learning difficulties in a respectful and dignified way and through genuine sharing of acquired knowledge and skills guiding the learner with compassion to the achievement of the intended outcomes.

So, viewing myself as the learner I am seeking to express, understand and communicate my assessment of what I am doing, in the educational practices shown in the video-clip, in terms of Ubuntu.

The video-clip, taken by Joan Whitehead, is from a workshop on action research with Jean McNiff and Joan Whitehead at the University of The Free State on the 28^th February 2006. I am engaging with the meanings of Ubuntu in a text by Beets and van Louw (2005) on Education Transformation, Assessment and Ubuntu. I am suggesting and advocating that the participants explore different ways of representing the embodied meanings of the values they are living. I am identifying these values as values of Ubuntu. Here is an image from the clip with the text in hand, the url for accessing the video-clip and a transcript of what I am saying:

The video-clip is 17.8 Mb and 3mins 29 seconds. It plays in Quicktime from:

http://www.jackwhitehead.com/jwubuntucd.mov

Here is the transcript and I will focus below on expressing my meanings and understandings of the educational influence of a life-affirming energy with Ubuntu. I have edited the transcript slightly because of the need for punctuation in paper text.

The Chapter is by Peter Beets and Trevor van Louw that you have actually in front of you in the two pages. It is from a chapter on education transformation, assessment and ubuntu in SA. And I'm just curious about the values that are being outlined where both authors say that the first two values where we have got humanness and then they have got this in brackets about the warmth tolerance understanding peace humanity now just think what big ideas those are, what huge values those are and that we embody and that we try to live and that you might be able to bring more fully into the world the living meanings of those from within your practice. At the moment they are just words on a page. In brackets it says the first two values humanness in brackets, warmth tolerance understanding peace humanity and caring and under caring we have empathy, sympathy helpfulness, friendliness.

Now, those are hugely important embodied values which I find that as you talk... as you come to share ... your interest in the research these are qualities which I think you live. But the word here on the page doesn't get close to communicating the meaning and so this is what I'm suggesting that you might like to explore - different ways of representing the embodied meanings that you are living. So, I just want to go on ... it goes towards the bottom of the page to talk about again the core value of respect, meaning dignity obedience and order. It talks about over the page about the last two values of sharing about this idea of giving unconditionally of redistribution and crucially I put .. on the web Marian Naidoo's thesis ...... about compassion which has got in the brackets if you look just there love cohesion, informality, forgivingness, spontaneity.

Now it feels to me that by taking the meanings of these embodied values that you live, seriously, in the sense that you will research them not just as words on the page like that but as embodied values that even now as I am speaking to you I hope that I am communicating to you a kind of life affirming energy that I feel that just by being in the room with you. Having heard the wonderfully passionate commitment that you have to improving education you have enlivened me so that my feeling of life affirming energy which I am genuinely feeling is coming out of the relational commitment that I think you have for your passionate engagement to improve your practice. Now, it is only by getting the visual representation for example that Joan is now video-taping what I am saying, and that I am hoping when I review the video tape, that I'll see myself living out some of the values that I believe. But there is no way I could put that on a page of text and communicate some of the qualities that I've been experiencing with you.

On viewing the video-tape I experience and see myself expressing the life-affirming energy that I associate with the expression of loving what I do. What I am doing is communicating something I value to a group of educators in a way that is advocating enquiry into a process that I believe carries hope for the future of humanity. I am connecting the values of ubuntu to this hope. In the context of this workshop I am drawing insights from the ideas of Peter Beets and Trevor van Louw on the values of ubuntu, and advocating an action research process of enquiring into living these values more fully in our practice and of sharing our accounts of our learning. This is what I am doing myself in the production of this video-narrative. In sharing this video-narrative I am aware of Eisner's (1993) call to extend the range of representations in our educational research. I also recognize the problems of establishing the validity of an individual's interpretation that Eisner (1997) draws our attention to when he focuses on the problems and perils of alternative forms of data representation.

Returning to Conolly's points above, I have focused on bringing together a scribal record that captures and records aspects of the linguistic elements of a performance and the gestual-visual/oral-aural record of the video-clip that communicates more of the dynamic vitality of a performance. In presenting a video-narrative I am seeking to demonstrate that this can include both the scribal record of a traditional scholarly engagement with ideas together with the dynamic vitality of ubuntu. I believe that this dynamic vitality of ubuntu includes a relational flow of life-affirming energy with an educator who loves what he is doing.

While recognising the importance of community in ubuntu it may seem perverse to focus on the individual 'I' in the question How do I express and communicate embodied values of Ubuntu in an explanation of their educational influence in my own learning and in the learning of others? I justify this focus on the 'I' because of Shepherd's stress on the need for radical personal transformation so that Ubuntu shines through all that we think and feel and do in our interaction with our fellow human beings (Shepherd, 1996, p. 57). As I have shown in the video-clip, and in my public acknowledgement of the importance of the relational dynamic of ubuntu in the flow of life-affirming energy, the 'I' is not a discrete and autonomy individual, but a unique individual who exists in relationship with others.

References

Adams N. D. (2005) Reshaping some of the conceptual orientations of lifelong learning in south Africa through an African Philosophy of Education, in Waghid, Y., van Wyk, B., Adams, F. and November, I. (Eds) (2005) African(a) Philosophy of Education: Reconstructions and Deconstructions. Published by the Department of Education Policy Studies, Stellenbosch University.

Bhengu, M. F. (1996) Ubuntu: The Essence of Democracy. Cape Town; Novalis Press.

Conolly, J. (2002) Memory, Media and Research: Mnemonic Oral-style, Rhythmo-stylistics and the Computer Alternation. Ed. GDJ Stewart. Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 156-178.

Eisner, E. (1993) Forms of Understanding and the Future of Educational Research. Educational Researcher, Vol. 22, No. 7, 5-11.

Eisner, E. (1997) The Promise and Perils of Alternative Forms of Data Representation. Eduational Researcher, Vol. 26, No. 6, 4-10.

Giddens, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity. UK. Polity Press.

Le Grange, L. (2005) African Philosophy of Education: An emerging discourse in South Africa, in Waghid, Y., van Wyk, B., Adams, F. and November, I. (Eds) (2005) African(a) Philosophy of Education: Reconstructions and Deconstructions. Published by the Department of Education Policy Studies, Stellenbosch University.

Beets, P. and van Louw, T. (2005) Education Transformation, Assessment and Ubuntu in South Africa,

in Waghid, Y., van Wyk, B., Adams, F. and November, I. (Eds) (2005) African(a) Philosophy of Education: Reconstructions and Deconstructions. Published by the Department of Education Policy Studies, Stellenbosch University.