Redesigning an ecosolidarity and indigenously informed education
Abstract
This dissertation studies Ecosolidarity and Indigenously-Informed Education. It is concerned with the experience of environmental suffering and non-recognition of cultural rights of indigenous/ethnic peoples in Nigeria. The struggle for cultural rights is known as Resource Control in Nigeria. This experience has not been addressed adequately by public and religious education in Nigeria. Environmental suffering (caused by mining companies) has often precipitated and led to human and ethnic conflicts. Ethnic conflicts in turn cause damage to the environment. The environment and the need to have a comprehensive environmental ethics necessitate the need to rethink environmental anthropology and global developmentalism. Ecosolidarity rooted in African eco-religious values is the new ethics needed to revision the struggle for rights in Nigeria. This study employs historical, cultural and educational methodologies. The historical methodology is used to interpret the rise and movement for cultural rights in Nigeria. The lens of cultural studies is used to examine the meaning ethnic people attach to their struggle and their perceptions of their environment. The educational methodology used in this research combines the two methodologies above and applies the findings of the research to the field of education. The educational methodology seeks out the implications of ecology and indigenism to curriculum design. Education as proposed in this research is in need of a new design. This new design is the greening and indigenizing of educational curriculum, so that it will resist global capitalistic values that are hostile to the environment and indigenous cultures. The need for a new design in education impels this study to propose and call for an ecosolidarity and indigenous educational paradigm. This paradigm will incorporate the issues of ecological and indigenous literacies into the educational curriculum both in Christian religious education and public education. When this is done, education will be prepared to meet the challenges of the ecological crisis.
Subject Area
Religious education|Minority & ethnic groups|Sociology|Religion|Environmental science
Recommended Citation
Ikeke, Mark Omorovie, "Redesigning an ecosolidarity and indigenously informed education" (2005). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI3158544.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI3158544
