Education and Educational Media in the Process of National Integration

This project analyzes the political and institutional context in which the negotiation processes over the definition of patterns of interpretation and memory narratives in Eritrean educational media take place. The decision to concentrate on Eritrea follows two systematic considerations:

First, it is assumed that the analysis of the co-operation of global, national and local influences in an African country will lead to important insight into the effects of globalization on the periphery of the global community.

Second, Eritrea, within the African context, is above all an interesting case study as with it we are dealing with one of the few successful examples of developing African national education. In addition, the creation of societal coherence under conditions of ethnic, religious and linguistic fragmentation seems here to be the outcome of effective educational policy.

The political and institutional context in which the negotiation processes over the definition of patterns of perception and memory narratives within Eritrean educational media take place will be examined. This will be achieved through the analysis of central documents, curricula and the survey of qualitative interviews with players relevant to educational policy.

In the Eritrean case study the project analyzes if and how textbooks and other educational media act as a catalyst of integration in the national integration processes of multi-ethnic societies.

Questions

• First, the project analyzes the depiction of the multi-ethnic Eritrean society in various educational media. In doing so, it concentrates on the representation of sensitive events and periods of Eritrean history, which have the potential to be controversial in how they are remembered by members of various ethnicities. This refers first and foremost to the question of how the experience of the Ethiopian foreign rule is encoded. A religious, ethnic, social or political interpretation of the oppression experience is conceivable.

• Second, the project examines the institutional and political context in which educationally relevant concepts of multi-ethnic cohabitation and patterns of interpretation of individual histories and current situations as a multi-ethnic society are negotiated, produced and received as well as how they take effect.

Integration in Existing Research

The role of education in the Eritrean national education process has only scarcely been academically examined.

Objectives

Academic discourse over the causes of national collapse in Africa has until now referred one-sidedly to ethnic fragmentation. The project hopes to relativize this perspective. The decision to place the focus on Eritrea follows a systematic consideration. Eritrea presents one of the few occurrences of successful African national education, in which the establishment of societal coherence under the conditions of ethnic fragmentation is apparently also a result of effective educational policy.

The concrete objectives of the project reside at three levels: firstly, it will clarify whether the construction of the multi-ethnic Eritrean society in and for educational media provides an effective contribution to the establishment of coherence in the still young nation state Eritrea. Secondly, it hopes to ascertain whether the ideas and concepts debated in global discourse on the association with multi-ethnicity and memory have left traces in Eritrean educational media. Thirdly, it hopes to ask the opposite to normative tendency, if Eritrean formulas and resolution strategies can be applied to global discourse.

Methodology

Examination of political documents, textbooks and other educational media; participatory observation; qualitative interviews;

2008 literature analysis; completion, evaluation and analysis of interviews; writing of Chapters 2, 3 and 4

Cooperation: Political Science, University of the Bundeswehr Hamburg (V. Matthies)

Time Period: January 2007 – December 2009

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