Ethiopian Identity in the Post-1991 New Nation-Building Process: Curriculum Responses and Student Perspectives
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Date
2016-02
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The new nation-building thesis – ‗unity in diversity‘ – instituted since 1991 by the EPRDF marks a historical departure from its predecessors. As such, probably no topic creates a big gulf among Ethiopian and international scholarship on whether this new nation-building approach could lead to national unity with the apparent diversity. Therefore, this study was intended to understand the ongoing new-nation-building process through the lenses of the national and regional education system curriculum and students‘ attachment to the values, symbols and traditions represented in the curricula. For this purpose, exploratory sequential design was chosen as an appropriate strategy of inquiry to examine how Ethiopian identity is presented in the formal education curriculum and students‘ reactions and attachments to these representations. The study was conducted in two phases where the findings of the initial qualitative study served as a basis for the latter quantitative study. In order to understand curriculum responses to Ethiopian identity, qualitative content analysis – thematic and relational – was done on upper primary and secondary education level Social Studies, CEE and History textbooks. The major identity attributes presented in these textbooks were analyzed for the meaning they carried and for the way they were related to the multination state of Ethiopia. This study also attempted to understand how students – both individually and in groups – construct their being an Ethiopian through their prior exposure to different courses at school and to the social environment by using interviews and FGDs. Thus, the major values, symbols and traditions which represent Ethiopian identity were explored from the first phase qualitative study through content analysis of Social Studies, CEE and History textbooks and in-depth interviews and FGDs with students. In the subsequent quantitative design, 400 first year university students representing the various ethnic groups in Ethiopia were surveyed to understand their level of attachment to Ethiopian identity attributes presented in the curricula. The quantitative data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics such as frequency, mean and standard deviation. In the national and regional education system curriculum, Ethiopian identity was presented in the form of major political symbols (such as national flag, national anthem, national holidays and heroes/heroines) and historico-cultural symbols (like obelisks, palaces, churches, mosques, etc), citizenship identity (basic laws and institutions as well as citizenship rights and duties), and socio-cultural values (such as heroism, religious tolerance and hospitability). However, the quantitative results revealed that although students were exposed to similar curriculum, their identification with and attachment to those symbols, values and traditions presented in the curricula considerably differ. Moreover, students reported that compared to other factors, formal education has contributed marginally in their group identity development. Some of the challenges of the Ethiopian formal education in nation-building include: emphasis for diversity/differences rather than ‗unity in diversity‘, exclusion of some groups in textbooks narratives, ideological orientation of textbooks, obsessions with historical narratives on oppressions and dominations of groups, contradictions between school experiences and out of school experiences and between the planned curriculum and the experiential curriculum. It seems due to these challenges that, rather than formal education, religion and family play a key role in the students‘ ethnic identity and Ethiopian identity development. A major finding of this study is that although the national and regional education system curriculum has been contributing to the ongoing new nation-building process by portraying and communicating the above stated values, symbols and traditions, it also plays a parallel nation-destroying role through developing feelings of exclusion and ethnocentric attitudes, which could be detrimental to the vision of creating a sustainable multination state Ethiopia.
Keywords: Curriculum, Ethiopian identity, ethnic identity, unity in diversity, education and nation-building, attachment to multination state, citizenship identity, political and historico-cultural symbols, socio-cultural values
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Keywords
Curriculum, Ethiopian identity, ethnic identity, unity in diversity, education and nation-building, attachment to multination state, citizenship identity, political and historico-cultural symbols, socio-cultural values