An Indigenous Discourse to Cradle Our Cognitive Heritage and Script Our Aspirations: Reflections from India and Africa

In a meeting of the Rural Schools Project (Nelson Mandela Foundation, 2005) in South Africa in 2004, I inadvertently stirred a hornet's nest. I had wondered why plastic tables and chairs were considered such a priority in primary schools, even at the cost of other pressing needs to ensure better learning. In South Africa and India most children do not sit on such furniture as part of their home culture. There was an expression of loud fist-thumping indignation by many black educators, declaring that things they had earlier been deprived of in schools should now be ‘rightfully’ theirs. How can children write otherwise? It was demeaning and inhuman ‘to sit on the floor and write’, they proclaimed. Well-meaning emotion, perhaps, but somewhat misplaced. It refused to acknowledge the coherence of culture and cognition. An interesting debate ensued, and at one point I went on to demonstrate how most people in India still chose to sit on the floor cross-legged, even in prestigious political meetings or musical gatherings. This is the basic posture many Westerners might pay substantial sums to emulate as part of their yoga classes! However, the question remained. Why was Africa, the Cradle of Writing, held in deference by the world for its ingenious initiation and imaginative use of papyrus and quill, now finding it demeaning to write without tables and chairs?