Schooling Oneself Into Modernity: Education and Fractures in South Sudan

• In Event: Cross-Continental Perspectives on the Lives of Teachers

Abstract

As South Sudan struggles to extract itself from persistent war and instability, teachers show up to packed classrooms, ready to produce a new generation of educated subjects. After all, education in (post)conflict zones purports to prevent conflict and rebuild displaced communities. Our research explores how the identities and conceptions of learning taken up by teachers participate in forming a modernist position regarding schooling and society. We examine the struggles to engage local pedagogies, the shortcomings of the non-modernist person, and a curriculum that turns tradition into fiction as evidence of the potential fractures produced through formal schooling. We suggest re-evaluating education to attend to the messiness of cultural production.

Authors

• Sandra Schmidt, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Charlotte Haynes, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Karishma Desai, Teachers College, Columbia University