“Why teach ubuntu? They should learn to make money, not give it away!” Incorporating Social Responsibility into Rwanda’s National Entrepreneurship Curriculum

• In Event: Thinking outside the test: Humanistic perspectives in curriculum reform and educational assessment

Abstract

Sustainable development depends in part upon the cultivation of moral capabilities in the young. Social responsibility, one such capability, involves acting consciously and consistently on a personal investment in the well-being of others and society as a whole (Berman, 1997; Honeyman, 2010). Social responsibility can be developed in the home and community environment. Yet given the amount of time that young people spend in school, they are unlikely to become socially responsible unless their school experiences—shaped by the formal curriculum—also help them to cultivate this orientation of personal investment in the well-being of others.

To date, there has been little research into the question of how to incorporate moral capabilities such as social responsibility into national curriculum design. Perhaps even more crucially, there has been little investigation of how to convince education policy-makers that this is a priority on par with more conventional academic objectives. This paper presents the case study of an attempt to introduce an orientation of social responsibility into Rwanda’s national entrepreneurship curriculum for secondary schools. Using ethnographic data collected over the course of two years of participation in curriculum development workshops, the study illustrates the complex social dynamics involved in moving from a purely technical and amoral approach to knowledge, to one that takes an integrated approach to addressing the ethical issues raised by any area of human endeavor. During this curriculum development process, Rwandan curriculum developers entered into extended exchanges questioning whether business activities could in fact be anything but self-interested; whether social responsibility should simply be framed in terms of abiding by the law (paying taxes and following development policies) or should include a wider range of personal and business decisions; and whether or how these issues could be addressed in the curriculum.

Introducing a model of policy-making as negotiated social learning (Honeyman, forthcoming), this paper employs concepts of social practice (Bourdieu, 1972, 1986, 1990), situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991), and the multiplicity of structures (Sewell, 2005) to analyze what happened during Rwanda’s entrepreneurship curriculum development process. This analysis suggests certain principles for future efforts to influence curriculum development processes towards the incorporation of moral capabilities. First, curriculum development should be treated as a social learning process, in which new ideas about the curriculum must enter into dialogue with participants’ existing doxa and dispositions. It is not enough to expose curriculum developers to isolated “texts” such as recommendations regarding the importance of teaching the moral capabilities required for sustainable development. For such new ideas to be intelligible—much less persuasive—the curriculum development process must also involve actors who demonstrate an embodied mastery of this ethically integrated approach to education. Furthermore, curriculum developers must also be given opportunities to observe and experience this approach in action, in order to subsequently be able to re-codify the experience within the formal curriculum.

Ultimately, of course, simply influencing the formal curriculum is not enough to ensure that the moral capabilities essential for sustainable development are actually cultivated within schools. Teachers must themselves be involved in a similar social learning process in order for the ethical orientation of the curriculum to be translated into action within classroom walls.


References

Berman, Sheldon. (1997). Children’s Social Consciousness and the Development of Social Responsibility. State University of New York Press: Albany, New York.

Bourdieu, P. (1972). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1986). The Forms of Capital. In J. E. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of Theory of Research for the Sociology of Education (pp. 241-258): Greenwood Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1990). The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Honeyman, Catherine. (2010). Social Responsibility and Community Development: Lessons from the Sistema de Aprendizaje Tutorial in Honduras. International Journal of Educational Development, 30. 599-613.

Honeyman, Catherine. (Forthcoming). Educating the Orderly Entrepreneur: Creativity, Credentials, and Controls in Rwanda’s Post-Developmental State. Stanford University Press, under review.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sewell, W. (2005). Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Author

• Catherine Honeyman, Ishya Consulting