History 291 - Educ& Capacity in African Hist

What knowledge will allow us to realize the potential of education to facilitate progress for Africa, and how do we generate that knowledge? The historical component of this course explores the deliberate use of education to hold people in servitude as well as African experiences of empowering education, and asks why the immense efforts expended on education in recent decades are not yielding prosperity for the citizens of African nations. The methods component of the class develops the core skills of ethnographic fieldwork: participant observation, interviewing, making fieldnotes and writing ethnography. We collaborate with the Springfield Renaissance School ninth grade.