Nurturance for Reading the World: Critical Consciousness in Societies Guided by Unhu/Ubuntu

The nurturance of critical consciousness in societies guided by Unhu/Ubuntu philosophy was considered to be of cardinal importance in the Unhu/Ubuntu education curriculum.The elders who were both the curriculators and educators stressed on critical consciousness to dislodge the ethnocentric, tendencies of Europeans that were aimed at reducing people guided by the Unhu/Ubuntu philosophy to the status of things which were vulnerable to exploitation.There is a derogatory conception by the Eurocentric academics about the indigenous African traditional modes of education practised by the people guided by the Unhu/Ubuntu philosophy.Oral tradition and internship were the main modes of education.The modus operandi of education was not hinged on the contemporary literacy and numeracy of printed text.The contemporary conceptions of literacy and numeracy are desirable for critical consciousness but are not prerequisites.According to Freire (2005) people can be literate and numerate that is being able to read the word but being simultaneously illiterate, that is when they are unable to read the world.Before introduction of formal education by the colonialists, the people guided by Unhu/Ubuntu philosophy, though illiterate in terms of reading the word, they were literate in reading the world.Thus they were critically conscious of their being-ness.The sages of the Unhu/Ubuntu philosophy, the elderly people, had an awareness which had developed through critical thought.They were able to see beyond the superficial, hegemonic and ethnocentric beliefs and practices that estranged the indigenes on their own land. EXPLICATION OF CRITICAL CONSCIOUSNESSCritical consciousness is about the raising of consciousness.It is akin to the term conscientization which was coined by Paulo Freire the Brazilian educator.The term was derived from the Portuguese term conscientização (Champeau & Shaw, 2002).Freire was concerned about making the people of Brazil become aware of the then oppressive situation.According to Freire (2005; 2000) a person who Abstract: Critical consciousness is one of the hallmarks for the sustenance of the identity of a people.It is indispensable in developing epistemic rationality which is instrumental in fighting against ethnocentric tendencies of the people of the dominant culture who employ technical rationality to justify their supremacy.During the colonial era the societies guided by Unhu/Ubuntu philosophy engaged in critical consciousness about cultural transformations in order to maintain their cultural identity.The societies had an informal, insidious curriculum that was aimed at making their youngsters enrolled in the formal education institutions become conscious of the fact that the creators of texts and interpreters of the texts used in colonial institutions had ulterior motives that needed to be exposed by one who had been developed to become a critical thinker who could be engaged in critical literacy.A study was carried out about how critical consciousness was fostered in societies guided by Unhu/Ubuntu.A sample of ten elderly people of ages between sixty-five and ninety-five was purposively selected from Masvingo District in Zimbabwe and the informants were interviewed.The research findings are that critical consciousness in these societies was emphasized in their informal education system through philosophical sagacity and introspection on interactions with others in the socio-cultural, political and political spheres.Contemporary hybridized societies can have some insights from Unhu/Ubuntu nurturance of critical consciousness in learners.