I was put in the awkward position of having to develop a seminar on philosophy for fourth year students at our small college in Mozambique. I am by no means a philosopher although I enjoy the topic and thought I would just be able to follow the curriculum that was used in the previous year. Unfortunately, there was quite a lot of confusion about what text I should be using.

All the texts for the courses at this school are photocopied translations of books originating in South Africa and the US. The copyright infringement is universal and I can’t help thinking that this represents a growth industry for publishers. The number of colleges and universities in Mozambique for example is exploding and the subsequent demand for textbooks is resulting in a lot of toner and reams of paper being sold but not many textbooks.

An open source option might be welcomed in this instance. For example, I looked at the Wikipedia articles in English and Portuguese and they were pretty thin but at least gave a basic outline of the topic. In fact, for the sake of the terminology I found that using Alta Vista Babel Fish to translate the English article into Portuguese gave me a good handle on the terminology.

As a teacher I am being asked to mediate between where the students are and the curriculum goals for each class. At this stage, students at the school expect to receive a text that will give them all the information necessary to pass their exams. Unfortunately, I find that many of the books are scarcely more than outlines and the educational and worldview framework is definitely not African so I am left to bridge the gap between the students’ knowledge accumulated mostly aurally and the rationalistic texts coming from the West.

I’m thinking of using folk tales and proverbs as a way for students to talk about local philosophy and ethics. Then perhaps we can make the jump to something like the Wikipedia articles for a first attempt at juggling worldviews. The teacher’s job then becomes showing where Wikipedia falls short or is in error and expanding on topics that are only mentioned in passing.

Interestingly, many folk tales in our part of Africa can be traced directly back to Aesop. So it is not unlikely that there is more connection between ancient African philosophy and Greek philosophy.

Could African students use Wikipedia as a starting point for exploration of a topic and then illustrate it with analysis of their own experiences and received culture? This might be an alternative to the pirating of textbooks and a first step in the development of indigenous scholarly work on academic subjects.