The Influence of Education on Worldview Formation

In life, everyone has his/her perspectives towards things around the person. This is because everyone is unique. One might say the living cycle is being born have a family who will look after you, go pass all educational cycles (primary, secondary, tertiary), after you go look for a job. The other person might say, you are born then at the age of 5-7 you go to primary then after grade 7 you now have start being independent of your parents go look for a job so that you can take care of yourself. This is what a worldview is all about, viewing things from different angles. In this essay, I will be discussing how the education system is succeeding in applying indigenous knowledge and furthermore state and explain philosophical concepts regarding world views.

Worldviews

World is defined as the earth, together with all of its countries and people, so a worldview will then be an individual’s ability to see and perceive the world and how he/she fits into it. People tend to ask themselves question about the, but they do not get solid evidence or the answers they get are always debatable e.g. what do we live for, what is the purpose of being in this planet, is there any life after death, did we truly evolved from baboons. As humans we have different views, opinions, believes and judgments towards an approach to worldviews.

Ideologies

What exactly is ideology? Ideology is a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy. Although everyone has different views, ideas believe and judgments, there are certain ideas that we follow which were said by someone long ago which we still follow even today e.g. respecting everyone older than you. These ideas as time goes when they are often practiced they become a part of norms believes, culture furthermore escalates to tradition a cultural activity e.g. Zulus/Sotho’s/Xhosa’s believe that in other for a boy to be recognized as a man he has to go to initiation schools for circumcision. In western circumcision is only to prevent men from risks of transmitted viruses such as STD, HIV, AIDS and many more.

Indigenous Knowledge

Our parents taught us to respect our elders, you do not raise your voice when talking to your elders. We were also taught to socialize with others by way of playing traditional games together. This is what indigenous knowledge is local untaught knowledge at schools. Indigenous knowledge is the skill acquired naturally through practical experience, this is what we are not taught at school (learning through experience e.g. cleaning at home, showing respect to others(Ubuntu), speaking to your ancestors, cultural rituals, food production, etc.

Indigenous Knowledge in Curriculum

Indigenous knowledge should be added in the school curriculum to decolonized education. This can be made in a way of providing cultural games in schools, especially in the foundation phase. Teachers must teach learners knowledge that relates to real-life context and also knowledge about their cultural values. Indigenous games must be infused in the curriculum this will enable learners to be able to learn skills such as sharing, understanding how they view things and compare to them to his/her opinions

Teaching children cultural activities (games) in class will improve children’s vocabulary as they will be exposed to talking during those activities. Infusing this to the curriculum will also sharpen children’s intellect so that they can be able to face real-life problems, develop learners to be creative thinkers because when playing this games, you have to think in order to come up with solutions, so in class they will be able to think out of the box when asked questions or given tasks to do. Indigenous knowledge also helps during the presentation phase, the learner will be able to treat their teacher with dignity and respect as the representation of humanism (Ubuntu). In-class during cooperative learning learners will be able to work together in diverse without racism or stereotyping towards each other.

Conclusion

The form of education, what students learn in schools and what kind of teachers they have directly affects the formation of the beginnings of worldview. In today's world, it is extremely important to tell children about the existence of different cultures, to familiarize them with their peculiarities. It is important to provide not only theoretical knowledge, but also practical knowledge: to hold classes with representatives of different cultures, during which children will deepen their knowledge about the variety of world cultures and thus enrich their worldview.