Introduction 1.The Politics of Teachers and Texts. Teachers 2. Controlling the Work of Teachers 3. Teaching and 'Women's Work'. Texts 4. The Culture and Commerce of the Textbook. 5. Old Humanists and New Curricula. 6. Educational Reports and Economic Realities. 7. Is the New Technology Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem in Education? Conclusion 8. Supporting Democracy in Education.

Teachers and Texts: A Political Economy of Class and Gender Relations in Education

Within economics, there has been a recent effort to better understand the notion of culture, typically defined as beliefs, values, and norms held by individuals. Empirical work has focused on identifying systematic cultural differences between individuals from different ethnic and national backgrounds. More recently, attention has turned to the historical origins of cultural differences (e.g., Luigi Guiso, Paolo Sapienza, and Luigi Zingales 2008; Nathan Nunn and Leonard Wantchekon 2009). Colonial Africa provides a natural laboratory to examine how an external intervention can have lasting impacts on people’s beliefs and values. This study examines the effect of European missionary activities in colonial Africa on the subsequent evolution of culture, as measured by religious beliefs. The empirical results show that descendants of ethnic groups that experienced greater missionary contact are today more likely to self-identify as Christian. This correlation provides evidence that foreign missionaries altered the religious beliefs of Africans, and that these beliefs persist as they are passed on from parents to children. Put differently, the results show that historic events can have a lasting impact on culture. The findings also provide rare empirical evidence of the historical determinants of longrun religious conversion. Studies of conversion typically focus on contemporary determinants (see Jason Hwang and Robert Barro 2007 and the references therein). Although a number of studies have examined the long-term impacts of missionary activities, they have not considered their long-run impacts on religious beliefs and values (e.g., Robert D. Woodberry 2004). One of the few papers that consider a historical determinant of long-run conversion is by Murat Religious Conversion in Colonial Africa

/pdf/religious-conversion-in-colonial-africa-2iijylctup.pdf

Religious Conversion in Colonial Africa

https://www.sv.uio.no/esop/english/research/news-and-events/events/guest-lectures-seminars/esop-seminar/dokumenter/fenske%20polygamy.pdf

African polygamy: past and present

During a time when the disciplines of education and communication have been waging lively and far‐reaching debates about models of instruction, theories of communication, and methods of inquiry, the sub‐discipline of instructional communication has remained insulated from these discussions. As a result, the research has not fully addressed many of the most compelling practical and theoretical questions about communication in education. Six questions are identified that have been insufficiently explored by instructional communication researchers. The analysis reveals that the limited approach to inquiry has had the effect of privileging existing social and political arrangements. Alternative perspectives, largely informed by critical approaches to pedagogy, suggest a rich research agenda for instructional communication scholars.

Expanding the research agenda for instructional communication: Raising some unasked questions

(1996). Looking for justice in all the wrong places: On a communication approach to social justice. Communication Studies: Vol. 47, No. 1-2, pp. 110-127.

Looking for justice in all the wrong places: On a communication approach to social justice

Missionary domination of African education is a dying phenomenon. Today's church-affiliated institutions in Africa, while still mindful of their proselytizing duties, subordinate their religious messages to the rigors of academic preparation. The realities of contemporary African nation-building preclude any other course. Just as increasing nationalistic impulses and socio-economic considerations during the 19th century forced European politicians to recognize that education of their youth was too important to be left to the various confessions, so increasingly are African leaders coming to a similar conclusion. The shift from denominational to state control of the educational system is well advanced in many nations. In 1942, 97% of Nigeria's student population was enrolled in missionary schools; today missionary education has been banned in the East Central State of Nigeria—the heartland of the highly Christianized Ibos—and is steadily declining with the strengthening of the Local Education Authorities in other areas of Nigeria (Coleman, 1958: 113). As recently as 1950, missionary schools accounted for 97% of the total enrollment in Ghanaian schools; twelve years later the government assumed the responsibility tor the payment of salaries of all teachers, irrespective of the type of school in which they taught (Anim, 1966: 189). In an attempt to remove the school issue from the arena of sectarian politics the government of Uganda abolished the posts of mission school supervisors in 1963, placing their functions in the hands of secular authorities (Hindmarsh, 1966: 145). In 1945 there were 5,360 mission-run schools for Africans in South Africa and only 230 state-sponsored schools;

African Responses to Christian Mission Education

This article argues that the recent national reports on educational reform must be understood as manifestations of the influence of capital and the state. The considerable pressure exerted on the schools by representatives of state capitalism does not guarantee that the proposed reforms will be enacted, however. The contradictory nature of the school's location in the democratic capitalist state, coupled with various forms of teacher and student resistance to the reports' recommendations, afford the opportunity for progressive educators to strip away the mystique of the school as a neutral site and to challenge the dominant ideology.

The state's stake in educational reform

(1988). Civic education in the corporatized classroom. Theory Into Practice: Vol. 27, Civic Learning, pp. 288-295.

Civic education in the corporatized classroom

Since the passage in 1969 of congressional legislation intended to regulate the activities of tax free philanthropic foundations, a spate of works dealing with the role of foundations in American life has been published (Cuninggim, 1972; Heimann, 1973; Nielsen, 1972; Peterson, 1972). Most of these works have dealt in a general way with the responsibilities of philanthropic organizations in a period of rapid change. Several were commissioned by the larger foundations themselves, perhaps to indicate to a potentially hostile legislative branch the foundations' willingness to evaluate their performances to date and to establish socially “responsible” goals for themselves. None of these studies has analyzed specific policy issues in which the foundations have been involved or themselves have helped to create. The central role played by foundations in the growth of American institutional life has been seriously neglected by scholars, more specifically by political scientists, whom, one would think, would have an especial interest in studying these institutional pillars of American society. If the role of American foundations in the evolution of institutions at home has been neglected, the significant role of American foundations as institution builders in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and as implementors of American foreign policy is hardly even known. It is with the role of American foundations overseas, particularly in Africa, that I am concerned at this juncture.

Edward H. Berman

Papers

African Responses to Christian Mission Education

The state's stake in educational reform

Civic education in the corporatized classroom

American Philanthropy and African Education: Toward an Analysis