Burkina Faso is rewriting its schoolbooks. Not revising them. Rewriting them.
The Ministry of Secondary Education announced on September 7 that 54 new lessons in history, geography, and #citizenship will be introduced from CP1 to Terminale starting this school year . The minister, Moumouni Zoungrana, was blunt about why. "Those who came to conquer Africa, we call them explorers, conquerors. Were they conquerors? They were spies. They were #invaders" .
He said the old curricula used words that "infantilize" and "animalize" Africans in the teaching of their own #history . The new textbooks will not call them explorers. They will call them invaders.
The new lessons will center the Charter of Kurukan Fuga, African contributions to science, slavery, African resistance to colonization, and the history of major revolutions. In geography, the focus shifts to #Burkina Faso's strengths and the AES . Specialists are preparing the content, and teachers will get guidebooks.
This is not just a curriculum tweak. It is a decolonization of the classroom. For decades, Burkinabè children learned about the French Revolution before they learned about the Moose kingdoms. They learned that Europeans "discovered" Africa before they learned that Africans had universities and empires.
The Charter of Kurukan Fuga is the clearest example of what was missing. It is a 13th-century constitution from the #Mali Empire, adopted in 1236 after the Battle of Kirina. It established rules for #governance, women's rights, and the treatment of strangers . It is one of the oldest known texts of its kind in West Africa. Burkinabè students will now study it as a founding document of their own #political heritage.
Zoungrana said the goal is to "extirpate the words that infantilize us, that animalize us" . That is the point. A child who learns that his ancestors were "explorers" and "conquerors" grows up thinking he was the one who needed civilizing. A child who learns about Kurukan Fuga grows up knowing his ancestors wrote constitutions before #Europe had parliaments.
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The Ministry of Secondary Education announced on September 7 that 54 new lessons in history, geography, and #citizenship will be introduced from CP1 to Terminale starting this school year . The minister, Moumouni Zoungrana, was blunt about why. "Those who came to conquer Africa, we call them explorers, conquerors. Were they conquerors? They were spies. They were #invaders" .
He said the old curricula used words that "infantilize" and "animalize" Africans in the teaching of their own #history . The new textbooks will not call them explorers. They will call them invaders.
The new lessons will center the Charter of Kurukan Fuga, African contributions to science, slavery, African resistance to colonization, and the history of major revolutions. In geography, the focus shifts to #Burkina Faso's strengths and the AES . Specialists are preparing the content, and teachers will get guidebooks.
This is not just a curriculum tweak. It is a decolonization of the classroom. For decades, Burkinabè children learned about the French Revolution before they learned about the Moose kingdoms. They learned that Europeans "discovered" Africa before they learned that Africans had universities and empires.
The Charter of Kurukan Fuga is the clearest example of what was missing. It is a 13th-century constitution from the #Mali Empire, adopted in 1236 after the Battle of Kirina. It established rules for #governance, women's rights, and the treatment of strangers . It is one of the oldest known texts of its kind in West Africa. Burkinabè students will now study it as a founding document of their own #political heritage.
Zoungrana said the goal is to "extirpate the words that infantilize us, that animalize us" . That is the point. A child who learns that his ancestors were "explorers" and "conquerors" grows up thinking he was the one who needed civilizing. A child who learns about Kurukan Fuga grows up knowing his ancestors wrote constitutions before #Europe had parliaments.
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