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TimeSessionSpeakerhaystack: Establishing ‘standards’ at the end of GET(grade 9)Mr Sandile Ndaba, Umalusi: ‘A tail of many dogs’:Assessment and the scramble for standards10:30Tea11:00Determining standards/Assessinglearners against standardsMr Mark Potterton, Umalusi: Standards—a couple ofsteps backChair: NamibiaDr Duncan Nyirenda, Mzuzu University: Determiningstandards in MalawiMs Rosalynd Janisch, IEB: Getting it right; keeping itright: Portfolios for Home Languages12:30Lunch14:00Outing: Apartheid museum. Buses depart from the University of Johannesburg, School ofHospitality and Tourism.18:00Business meeting19:00Gala dinner at the University of Johannesburg, School of Hospitality and Tourism.DAY FIVE: JUNE 30TH (FRIDAY)TimeSessionSpeaker9:30Assessing learners againststandardsDr Edith Dempster, University of KwaZulu-Natal:Strategies for answering multiple choice questions amongSouth African learners: What can we learn from TIMSS2003?Chair: South AfricaMs Anitha Ramsuran, University of KwaZulu-Natal: Howare teachers’ practices positioned in discourses ofassessment?Mr Chris Nyangintsimbi, Umalusi: Lessons learnt from theevaluation of examination systems for the Senior Certificate11:00Tea11:30Closing sessionChair: South AfricaDr Peliwe Lolwana, Umalusi: Does quality assuranceimprove the quality of education? Lessons from SouthAfricaChoirClosing address: Deputy Director General of Education, MsPenny Vinjevold14:008Lunch and departure

Keynote address:Making our own modernity: standards, values,and benchmarks in the African school in the ageof globalizationCrain Soudien, University of Cape TownIntroductionThere are many risks in talking about Africa, not least, as recent critiques at the Klein KarooNasionale Fees in Oudtshoorn showed in April, the persistent tendency to treat it as a singleand homogenised space (see Cape Times, Friday May 26, 2006:11). Africa, in this vein, isnotoriously susceptible to hyperbole and caricature. On the one side, one has racistideologues insistently projecting it in the alarmist language of irredeemable disease and/orsavagery, while, on the other, there are starry-eyed dreamers who see it only in the innocenceof the original birthplace, the alpha and omega of human existence. Neither of these is, ofcourse, all there is to the continent. It is complex, multifaceted and distinctly not able to ableto be described in single terms.And yet, no-one will deny, Africa faces major challenges. These challenges manifestthemselves across a range of areas of social life. Many of them are self-inflicted, but theblight of colonialism, and only the most blind will deny this, is deep and now whollyinstitutionalised as a structural and even psychological reality. In education, the burden is asgreat, if not more so, as may be the case in many other areas of social welfare. The generalpicture in African educational systems is bleak. In terms of this picture:1. Schools are not functioning2. Children are not performing adequately3. Teachers appear to be failing.It is this that we are having to confront. Using this backdrop, the purpose of this talk is toconsider how we might begin to think of education in Africa, not on its own terms, becauseisolation from the rest of the world is virtually impossible, as the argument I will make laterwill hopefully show, but critically seizing hold of its own destiny.A place to startInterestingly, and I acknowledge that the conditions are not identical, we find ourselves in asimilar position to where India was at independence in 1947. For India then, and for us now,the question was how we might build the nation. The echoes across these last sixty years arestrong. In the lead up to its independence a debate was taking place between Nehru andGandhi about modernity, modernisation and the West. At the heart of the discussion, drivenby an “urge to establish a modernity of [their] own, one that differed from Western9

modernity”, and which was, therefore, also a critique of modernity, was the question of whatthe character of the new Indian nation-state should be (Gyan Prakash, 1999:201). It was herethat Nehru bent one way and Gandhi another. Different as their postures were, both foundthemselves asking hard questions of the relationship of India’s past to its present: “What wasthe India that was brought into view by the people in the villages and by their cries of‘Victory to the Motherland’?”Nehru’s answer to what the modern India should be was ‘science’ (Prakash, 1999:207). Hehad no wish to live in a timeless Indian past, but he thought he saw in the people “an urgedriving the people in a direction not wholly realized” (Prakash, 1999:204). To fulfil thisrealization, what the Indian people had to do, he felt, was modernize Indian society—thedisavowal of religiosity and the embrace of science. Such a science, however, had to growout of India’s national roots, which were different to that of the West which had a long wayto go in developing science as “a method, an approach, a critical temper in the search fortruth” (ibid:209). At the same time, in his vision of building an India that was both nationaland international, he was quick to rule out imitation of the West (ibid:208). The West hadcome to science without being able to say anything about the purpose of life. In India lay thepossibility for another road to modernity—its past was not dead but alive, and ready to givedirection to science and so modernity.For Gandhi it was quite a different matter. For him it was fundamentally about discardingthe Western idea of modernity. This modernity represented conflict and competition whichwere alien to India’s tradition of village life which stood for warmth and the intimacy offamily. This intimacy was built on-face-to-face relationships which bound people together inan ethical order in which mutual dependence forced self-discipline. As Prakash says,“Indians were to attain their freedom and become national subjects by discarding Westerndisciplines and returning to indigenous sources of self-subjectification” (ibid:219).The eloquence of this debate is powerful and evocative as we ponder our own modernityand ask hard questions about our own choices as nations in the making or as nationsattempting to locate themselves in the global order. Its echoes ring loud in the debate that istaking place in the papers that are being presented in this conference. Many of them, in arange of provocative ways, are rightly posing the question of what our standards ought to bein relation to the world. I say rightly so because if we are to become more than imitators ofthe divisive and hierarchalising values and approaches of the West, we are obliged to makethis debate one that reaches right down to the streets and homes of our countries. Theconsequences of failing to do so are dire. Most of us, out of sheer convenience, will simplyfloat along with whatever the unconscious settlement is that our societies will make. Theproblem with unconsciousness settlements is that they facilitate practices that becomesocially sedimented and once these seize hold, fascinating as objects of sociological analysisas they might be, they are extremely difficult to undo. They critically, also, signal a givingaway of our right to intervene in our own histories.In confronting our choices what the Indian precedent provides us with is an opportunity tostructure our own debate. Important about its broad parameters is that it recognises thecomplex relationship it holds to the idea of the West. Intrinsic to this complexity is the10

recognition of the Western idea of the centralised state and the acknowledgement that statebuilding, state-craft and the idea of the nation around the state are unavoidableresponsibilities. What kind of state, however, India should build signalled the question marksposed of the state form that had emerged in the West. The discussion was, therefore,inherently a critical one.What the options before us emphasize is how much we need to understand the fullimplications of the decisions we make. The rest of my discussion attempts to show whatthese are and the implications within each.I suggest in the discussion that follows that we essentially have three visions with which towork in deciding what orientation we wish to take, in deciding what our own modernity willbe.The recovery of past glories: the utopiansThere is an intense desire amongst many oppressed people in the world to ‘escape’ from theembrace of the globalised mainstream. We see this in particular versions of Afrocentric,indigenous-knowledge and other religiously-centred philosophies. An example of the first iswhat Adams (1997) describes as the self-determination school of thought in the UnitedStates. This view emerged out of frustration with the mainstream establishment and soughtto separate black people physically and socially from the majority society and to create anindependent “environment such as a state in which blacks can implement their survivalstrategies” (Adams, 1997:441). This frustration is also seen in the work of indigenousknowledge proponents. An example is that of Brady (1997:421), arguing for restoringAboriginal knowledge in Australia. She says that her ancestors had in place systems ofeducation and social cohesion “which sustained them for 40,000 years I believe that it istime we empowered ourselves to take back our education so that we can move with prideinto the next 40,000 years.” Another example is found on the African continent itself and ispromoted by Banteyerga (1994) who argues that “‘modern education’ is not satisfactorilyaddressing the problems of Africa to meet the needs and aspirations of the African people.”Supporting Banteyerga, Nekhwevha (1999) makes the point that Africans need to moveaway from “their long academic sojourn” in the Western imagination and should struggle “tomake African culture and experience the primary constituent of our world view.” ForNekhwevha (2000) this approach would be integrative, empowering and liberatory.Central to all these critiques is a very specific description of the forms of globalisisnghegemony against which they are fighting. These hegemonies are predatory and have norespect for local culture and local knowledges. In globalising the local, their instinct is toinstantly displace or relegate non-Western forms of understanding and knowledge to themargin. Evident in the analysis of people in this group - the utopians - is a serious andsustained critique of the hierarchalising and ranking, the dividing, and indeed the ‘othering’proclivities of the West and its economic, cultural and social forms. The problems pointed toare real and deep.Unfortunately, however, the critiques fail to engage the complexity of dominance. On theone hand, when the critique is expressed in cultural terms, whether it comes from black11

feminists or religious and political fundamentalists, it fails to provide the basis for a realalternative knowledge system. While the literary outsiders and some of the African-centredphilosophies, such as Audre Lorde’s, assert a combativeness, the effect of their work is toproduce a set of dispositions and behaviours which, in the end, turns them into critical‘insiders’. When the critique takes the form of socio-economic analysis, such as that ofpolitical-economist Samir Amin, who seeks to break from the West, it fails to engage withthe politics of the conjuncture and to deal with the already existing conditions of theconnectedness of Africa to the rest of the world. Absent in their approach is a recognition ofthe already-connected world and the ways in which institutions and individuals are,everywhere, articulated into processes and protocols which cannot, it is suggested, beconducted on the basis of a national or regional independence.What these challenges lose sight of, therefore, without wishing to diminish the importanceof their critique of mainstream education, is how Africanisation or indigenous knowledgesystems are already engaged in articulation with the global world. It is true, as Seepe (1998)and others imply, that intense processes of cultural alienation have taken place withinAfrican communities. What, however, an appeal for reviving a displaced Africa underestimatesis the extent to which African people continue to hold on to their own cultural practices, aretaking these practices into modernity—the dominance of institutions and practices definedby ideas of rationality such as humanism, individualism, democracy, parliament, systems ofjustice, education and so on that emerged in Europe in the 18th century—and, are, in theprocess, redefining modernity, and, indeed, their own traditions. Globalisation in thissituation is not a one-way process. Let us hold on to that last thought as we move to lookingat the second vision embodied in new modernism.Nehru, Mbeki and the knowledge vision: the new modernistsPart of the difficulty of the utopian ideal is that we have already conceded that we cannotlive outside of the global order, and realise, much more so I think than Nehru did more thansixty years ago, that this order does indeed have the ability, as Mbeki recognised during hisAfrican Renaissance address in 2001, to influence where we go. Our very point of departurein thinking about our place in the world, our standards and our modernity, therefore, is apoint of weakness. We have lost the power to declare our independence from the globalorder. It is impossible, as a consequence, to even contemplate Gandhi’s utopia as a responseto modernity. We are, for better or worse, deep inside the global system.In this regard, the contributions made by African leaders are important. Amongst these,President Mbeki’s contributions are critical because he is, arguably, paying the most attentionto these questions, having repeatedly expressed himself with respect to the question ofAfrica’s relationship to the West. What he has to say is important to engage with critically.Addressing the Third African Renaissance Festival in Durban in 2001, he opened hisremarks with the following comment: “As Africans we are faced with the urgent challenge ofending poverty and underdevelopment on our Continent . The first objective weconfront is that we must ourselves take on the responsibility to answer the question –what are the ways and means that we must adopt to ensure that we achieve these objectives”(Mbeki: 2001:1). In framing his answer he begins with the comment that12

it is necessary that the peoples of Africa gain the conviction that they are not, andmust not be wards of benevolent guardians, but instruments of their ownupliftment. Critical to this is the knowledge by these peoples that they have a uniqueand valuable contribution to make to the advancement of human civilisation, thatdespite everything we have said, Africa has a strategic place in the global community.In so doing he, presents himself, interestingly, as Nehru’s heir. Here, India and Africa standin a like relationship to the West—each with its own moral authority as it attempts toposition itself to take on the task of modernization. Critically, however, Mbeki falters, muchas Nehru did, as he seeks to explain how this moral authority might be translated into amanifesto for socialising the nat

Reception for delegates at 6pm, at Milpark Garden Court. Registration for SADC delegates and out-of-town South African delegates from 6-7 at the Milpark Garden Court Hotel. DAY ONE: JUNE 26TH (MONDAY) Time Session Speakers 07:30 Registration and tea 09:00 Opening session Chair: South Africa Opening: Dr Peliwe Lolwana, Umalusi