Teaching and Learning About Africa

“The Intercultural Education Strategy (IES) was developed in recognition of the recent significant demographic changes in Irish society, which are reflected in the education system.”

Department of Education and Skills and the Office of the Minister for Integration (2010)

The Twenty-first Century Ireland 

One aspect of this demographic change is in the population profile of Irish society over the past two and a half decades, and including the noticeable increased presence of Africans.

Of course, there had been previous generations of Africans living here, but these were in the main transitional and would also have been higher education students; indeed, there was an active West African Students’ Union (WASU) of Great Britain and Ireland, which was founded in London in 1925.

One significant event organised by the WASU’s Ireland Section was a celebration to mark Ghana’s independence in March, 1957.

History of Earlier African Presence in Ireland 

There has been a historical presence of Africans (or people of African origin) in Ireland going back to the 16th century. The first named person of African origin was ‘Lampo’ (from the Caribbean), who was christened David Ben-Annah on the 8th of April, 1666 as recorded in the Parish Register of St Mary’s in Youghal, Co. Cork.

Before ’Lampo’, however, the poor unfortunate unnamed ‘blackamoor’ executed in Kilkenny in November, 1578, together with thirty-five other people which included ‘two witches’ (pages 59-60), was the first recorded evidence of a person of African origin living in Ireland.

Ireland and Africa

Prior to the demographic changes in Irish society referred to earlier from the IES quote, links between Ireland and Africa has existed for quite a while, and longer than most people might have thought.

One less highlighted chapter in the history of migration from Ireland is that of South Africa being one of the  final destinations. Irish emigrants from Armagh, Cork, Longford, Mayo, Tipperary, Westmeath and Wicklow were part of the British Government’s Settler Scheme in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, in the 1820s.

Until quite recently, most Irish people's contacts with Africans would have been of an indirect nature [and from a considerable distance]: through family members, neighbours or friends who would have been engaged in the religious missions, on working assignment or travelling in an African country.

New Neighbours

These days, many Irish people live next door to Africans, work and socialise with them, while their children would also sit in the same classrooms and share lessons with children of Africans and / or adopted African children.

A ‘United Nations General Assembly’ Classroom In Ireland

The classrooms in Irish schools have therefore, since the 1990s especially, been looking more like the United Nations General Assembly. This is the result of the significantly high number of pupils and students whose parents would have been born outside Ireland and of non-Irish nationality.

As the classrooms in Ireland look more like the United Nations General Assembly, this new situation also raises challenges for teachers; challenges which include having to teach pupils and students from backgrounds different to what previous generations of teachers would have expected or been used to.

New Neighbours: New Ways?

This new Multi-Nationality Classroom is the background to the Intercultural Education Strategy (IES), 2010 - 2015 published in 2010.

New Ways, New Challenges? Teaching in the Multi-Nationality Classroom.

The IES was devised to address the issue of the presence of children of the new nationalities in the classrooms.

What Do We Know About Our New Neighbours?

Our new neighbours may have arrived from other countries, but long before their arrival in Ireland, knowledge about their countries of origin and similar places would have been a requirement for an understanding of the world we live in, and which would also be achieved through the study of selected subjects.

The Curriculum 

The teaching and learning about any subject begins with the curriculum; so this must be the first point of reference.

The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) is the statutory body in Ireland responsible for the specification and design of the curriculum for both First and Second Levels, hence the place to find out how the teaching and learning about Africa has been addressed.

The result is a curriculum well-designed to address the teaching about other continents, countries, the physical and natural environments of those places, as well as the people who live there, in a very positive and respectful manner.

For this, the NCCA must be justifiably proud.

Curriculum Review 

It might be worth stating here that in terms of the requirements for the study of Africa, there shouldn’t be much need to radically change the existing curriculum content, other than adding a few additional topics and providing the guidelines on how to implement the contents effectively.

Evidence of the importance the NCCA places on the study of the wider world (in a non-Europe context) can be seen from the fact that it has been designed to start from third class at the Primary Level (from the age of eight years); this is also confirmed by the extracts from the Human Environments Strand of the SESE Geograhy Curriculum and Teacher Guidelines below:

Learning About Africa: The NCCA’s Contribution

The objective of these series is to promote the teaching and learning about Africa through the specified units and topics in the curriculum, and to highlight the NCCA’s commendable role and valuable contribution in this effort.

Subjects 

Geography and History are the two main subjects which would be directly related to the study of places and the story of the inhabitants of those places.
Geography will locate the place in a particular part of the world; the heritage of its inhabitants will be collected in their History. Their stories will be told through language subjects such as English, French, Portuguese and Spanish, the European languages which are the adopted official languages of the relevant African countries.
For the North African countries, Arabic would be an additional official language and through which their literature will be accessible.

The following are the other subjects considered relevant to learning about any place and the wider world:
Arts Education (Drama, Music, Visual Arts)
Science (including Agricultural Science)
Civic, Social & Political Education (CSPE)
Environmental & Social Studies (until June 2020)

The subject units related to the study of Africa are illustrated below in a diagrammatic format:

Subject Units & Topics

Individual subject units which have been identified above as related to the study of Africa will be the focus of subsequent articles.

Until the next instalment, here is a little quiz to test ourselves how many of the countries in Africa we can identify.