Yosa Wawa

Abstract

Throughout Sudan’s, and later South Sudan’s history, education has been used by successive governments to shape an official national identity and to promulgate an accepted concept of citizenship. One way education systems do this is through formal curricula, which aim to inculcate particular values and skills into the student body. This paper explores how the concept of “civicness” appears across the subject areas of History, Geography, and Citizenship in South Sudan’s national curriculum, launched in September 2015 by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. The paper first reviews a range of interpretations of the concept of “civicness,” grounding the argument in the work of Paul Dekker (2009) who sees civicness as values or behaviours such as tolerance, respect, and social concern. After a short historical overview of education in Sudan and South Sudan, the paper then goes on to analyse the curriculum and finds evidence that both civic values and skills inform the proposed learning outcomes and student competencies. In the subject area of Citizenship, course content such as Human Rights, Conflict Resolution, Community Work, and Environmental Conservation, clearly articulate commitment to civic values. In other subject areas, the commitment to civicness appears in the projected skills and values transmitted to the learner, such as ‘critical thinking,’ ‘teamwork,’ ‘appreciation,’ ‘cooperation,’ and ‘tolerance.

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