Ubuntu: An African Moral Ethic to Advance a Critical Democratic Global Citizenship Education

• In Event: Conceptions of citizenship and participation

Proposal

Global citizenship education (GCE) has gained increasing attention over the past decade with the intent of developing students’ knowledge, values, and skills to build a more inclusive and just world (Bosio et al., 2024). Unlike citizenship that is concerned with rights, privileges and responsibilities associated with belonging to a particular nation-state, the concept of global citizenship is based on the idea that people everywhere are connected not only to a country but to a broader global community (UNESCO, 2024). The notion of connectivity, however, is not a given, as the digital divide in South Africa is a glaring challenge that impedes global learning and belonging, as well as educational equality and societal advancement within the country. Learning disparities extend to internet connectivity, digital literacy, and the quality of digital content (Regent Business School, 2024). The majority of schools in South Africa do not have internet connection to aid teaching and learning.

This paper, based upon conceptual/theoretical research, applies critical analyses in an examination of comparative scholarship to conjoin GCE and the African moral ethic of Ubuntu to consider Ubuntu as a possible model for digital GCE in South African primary and secondary schools. To date, conceptions of global theory and GCE have been dominated by Western thought traditions and heavily influenced by German philosophers (e.g., Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel) and German sociologists and political economists (e.g., Karl Marx and Max Weber). Kant’s teleological view of history, for example, envisions a universalization of respect, a cosmopolitan perspective in which “all human agents receive and bestow respect from and to one another” (Browning, 2011, p. 8). For Hegel, recognition (both individual and group) is viewed as central to human identity and extends to social life, state formation, international relations and world development, while Marx asserted that “conceptions of the individual and notions of distributive justice depend upon how the processes of production and the relations of production are organised in particular forms of society” (Browning, 2011, p. 8).

Conceptions of global citizenship and education for global citizenship, therefore, are deeply contested (Gaudelli, 2014; Hill, 2007; Jorgenson & Shultz, 2012; Shultz, 2007). These contestations are apparent in theoretical perspectives promoting neoliberal (Kopish, 2017), intercultural (Sharma, 2020), ethical (Bosio & Schattle, 2023), critical (Papastephanou, 2023; Torres & Bosio, 2020; Veugelers & Bosio, 2023), and transformative (Bamber et al., 2018) approaches to GCE. Narrow or singular approaches to GCE tend to essentialize global theory. Citizenship in a world composed of diverse societies, however, must be understood as a global, multifaceted identity (Tarozzi & Torres, 2023).

While neoliberal and conflict discourses offer competing conceptions of GCE, there is growing interest in a decolonial approach from the critical theoretical camp to disrupt the GCE status quo and to implement more empowering ways of being and for which digital connectivity offers civic possibilities. To explicate, the decolonization of GCE is an epistemological effort to undo ways of thinking and doing that have alienated, marginalized, and excluded African knowledge systems and the lived experiences of oppressed groups in schooling and society (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013; Waghid & Hungwe, 2023). In this paper, Ubuntu, understood as humanity or humanness from a non-Western epistemological tradition, is brought into conversation with Freire’s process of conscientization to pose a GCE praxis for formal schooling focused on critical consciousness and power, recognition and respect, and agency and empowerment. These conceptual pairings applied to a critical democratic global citizenship education constitute the key findings of this conceptual/theoretical endeavor.

In taking a reflective account of the research that has been done in GCE and on Ubuntu applied to education, this paper builds upon the work of Abdi (2015), Assié-Lumumba and Waghid (2023), and Connell (2020) by calling for ontologies and epistemologies from non-Western philosophical traditions. However, this effort goes further to consider the potential for a digitally-connected GCE informed by African Indigenous knowledge systems in the Global South to challenge global asymmetries and power imbalances in present GCE discourses. Drawing its origins from Southern and Eastern Africa, Ubuntu is an African philosophy and social ethic to guide personal interaction. Conceptualizing human nature from an Ubuntu thought tradition requires formal schooling in GCE that centers both self-regarding values and other-regarding values (Manthalu, 2023). An Ubuntu-inspired critical democratic global citizenship education, therefore, would seek to cultivate students’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes for collective life as well as for their individual well-being and self-actualization (Manthalu, 2023).

To guard against Western ethnocentrism and selfism demands a questioning of who’s ‘global’ is being promoted and recognized. Toward that end, a set of conceptual pairings— critical consciousness and power; recognition and respect; and agency and empowerment—are investigated to argue for an Ubuntu-inspired critical democratic global citizenship education and pedagogical praxis in South African schools. The overall goal of this work is to advance a theory of marginalized voice that contributes to comparative discourse on GCE in an increasingly digital world.

Author

• Patricia Kubow, Indiana University - Bloomington