Ethiopian Education Policy Analysis: Using Foucault’s Genealogy

Ethiopian Education Policy Analysis: Using Foucault’s Genealogy

By

Demeke Yeneayhu

April, 2011

Introduction

The 1994 Education Policy in Ethiopia was produced as a part of the new political,

economic and social order the Country has entered to as a result of regime change in which the

previous socialist-oriented ideology was replaced by what they call ‘Revolutionary Democracy’.

This change in political milieu in the Country wasn’t at all the result of smooth democratic

transition through election but military victory of the new over the old. As the former rebel

fighters came to power in 1991, they destabilize every political, economic, social and education

structure of the previous regime as this is almost a kind of political tradition in most African

Countries to respond to which ever ideological camp they adhere to. The previous pro-socialist

regime had been supported by the Ex-United Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) and every policy

the regime put in place was pro-socialist ideals that were totally foreign to the tradition and

culture of the Country.

The new leaders formulated a new constitution in the country in the canon of

Revolutionary Democracy with market-oriented economic structure of the West and eventually

change all the existing policies to align them to the new constitution. The 1994 Education policy

was therefore one of such overhaul changes.

Actually, the direct and indirect intervention of the West in Ethiopia through the proxy of

World Bank, IMF and various forms of International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs)

in the name of humanitarian aid to influence various policy formulations including education

policies dated back to the beginning of the 20th

century. Thus, providing a brief background to

the socio-cultural foundation of Ethiopian education would provide an opportunity for readers of

my analysis of the Education Policy of 1994 a lens to understand its historicity. A section in this

Ethiopian Education Policy Analysis

document is, therefore, read about how the introduction of so called Modern Education, which

some Ethiopian scholars call ‘Western Education’ in Ethiopia deracinates itself from the

traditional Ethiopic education system in the Country that has been instrumental to the production,

formation and transmission of the tradition, culture and values of the Ethiopian state.

The use of Foucault’s Genealogy as a critical method of analysis will help me to expose

how such traditional and historical contents have been buried and disguised and what forms of

knowledge and values are espoused in a functionalist coherence or formal systemization of the

Education Policy document of 1994. Foucault’s concept of power-relation also helps to uncover

the power dynamics that the actors (the local elites and the external forces) play in the field-the

education policy. The external forces are different international organizations such as the World

Bank and IMF as donor agencies imposing their conceptions of desirable educational policy on

local elites ( local governments) dependent on aid, or as ‘recipients asking for what they know

the donor wants to give’, thereby hindering the design and realization of self-defined national

reform agendas.

To understand how the vested interests have played out in the Policy Document, it is

useful to refer to Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of field in his theory of social practice as my

theoretical framework. Bourdieu’s continuous (1986, 1991, 1998, 2004) sociological works-

especially his sociological notions of field, capital, and Habitus-offer a sociological vocabulary

for analyzing and a useful framework for interpreting this whole process and mission of the

actors in play in the 1994 Ethiopian Education Policy document.

In light of Bourdieu’s theory, it is not difficult to see that the 1994 Education Policy in

Ethiopia was indeed a field of struggles in which different stakeholders and players compete to

maximize their various forms of capital. It can be argued that the local governments have been

driven by a desire for maximal profit of distinction and to maintain their positions as centers of

power in Ethiopian politics. Just like the experience of most other African countries, the

political, social, economic, and education policies in Ethiopia have been a field, in Bourdieu

terms, a space-an arena of constant struggle in which different stakeholders and players compete

to maximize their various forms of capital and redefine their relative positions in the economic,

educational, and socio-cultural markets of the Country. Such struggle had been between the East

(Ex-USSR Socialism) and the West (Capitalism) during the period of the Cold War on one hand;


and later between the West and local governments respectively, I would imagine, driven by a

desire for cultural and economic imperialism, and a maximal profit of distinction and to maintain

their positions as centers of power.

This paper, therefore, will first provide a socio-cultural foundation of the Ethiopian

traditional Education system and how the so called modern-education in Ethiopia which started

in 1940s have totally abandoned the classical philosophies, system of knowledge and values in

the name of entering to a new era-modernization. Then, a brief account of historical synopsis of

education policy reforms in Ethiopia is presented to give background to the 1994 education

policy, a document of my genealogical analysis. This followed by a presentation of my analysis

of the 1994 education policy using Foucault’s genealogical methodology as my lens of analysis

and Bourdieu’s sociological theory of capital mainly his concept of field as my theoretical

framework.

Historical Context to the Policy Document

A brief background to the history of Ethiopian education in general will provide context

to the genealogy of the 1994 education policy. As one of the oldest independent countries in the

World with about 3000-years of history as a nation state (Jackson, J., 1983, Ullendorff, 1968),

Ethiopia had been running its own system of education which was by its nature organic to the

Country before the introduction of what is locally known as Western-like education in the 1940s.

Before the introduction of Western-like education since the 1940s, one of the major

forms of traditional education in Ethiopia was Church education (Pankhurst, 1955). As the

traditional custodian of the nation’s culture, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church provided education

to Ethiopian children and adults an equivalent to modern elementary to university level

education since its establishment as a national Church in 330 A.D (Ethiopian Orthodox Church,

2007). The higher level education system (monastic university) was devoted to teaching subjects

such as theology, philosophy, computation, history, poetry and music. Many such schools

function to this day, thus forming one of the oldest continuous systems of education in the world

(Wagaw, 1979). This traditional church education system made Ethiopia to have the only ancient

written culture in sub-Saharan Africa and well-developed numerals of its own.


The traditional system of church education in Ethiopia was actually a system of education

with four distinct and successive stages. The first level called ‘Fidel Bet’ where children learn

the Ethiopic alphabet, reading and writing, simple arithmetic, and discipline (respecting the

elders) followed by the second level called the ‘Zema bet’-school of hymn, where students of this

school learn the hymnody of St. Yared, a well-known Ethiopian scholar of music. The third

level is the ‘Qene bet’-school of poetry which focuses on church music, composition of poetry,

theology, history, painting, metallurgy (mainly to make Cross of different versions from Gold,

Silver and other ores, for inscription and other purposes) and manuscript writing. It also adds the

teaching of philosophy, the main text being ‘Metsafe-Falasfa-Book of Wise Philosophers, which

is a translated version of Ethiopian philosophy. The next higher level is the ‘Metsahaf bet’–

(school of text/books), where students learn an in-depth study and analysis of the sacred and

philosophy books. In this stage, other subjects like world history and Ethiopian history are also

given. A student who has gone through all the four stages of education successfully will be

called a ‘Liq’ like being a professor. Graduates of this system of education are characterized by

their dedication to give services to their country and to their church. They are disciplined, well-

behaved, with high moral ground, sympathy and thought. It was these people who were even

serving their country in different Ministerial and other offices during the period of Menelik-II,

and Haliselasie-I (His Imperial Majesty) and as a chronicle writer in the former kings during

Medieval Ethiopia (Ethiopian Orthodox Church, 2007, Pankhurst, 1955, Wagaw, 1979).

This traditional system of education has contributed in many ways to the social

transformation and cultural advancement of the Country. It has made tremendous contributions

towards enabling the country to be the master of its own destiny in the possession of a written

language. The expansion of literature as a result of the invention of Ethiopic scripts is one of the

most effective ways by which the traditional Church education institution has been fighting

illiteracy for centuries. It has been doing this by making churches and monasteries the centers of

learning where spiritual enlightenment was going hand-in-hand with secular education in the

form of acquiring the knowledge of reading and writing.

The education policies since 1940s, however, as we will read more below were

deracinated from the historical and traditional values that the nation’s culture has built on for

millennia. It is Ironical that the education policies that successive Ethiopian governments have


implemented since the 1940s were very similar to those that prevailed in other African states that

were colonized for longer periods unlike Ethiopia. But, I am not in any way arguing here that

Ethiopia could have been in better path had it been continued its traditional system of education

to-date. Rather, it would have been a different story if modern-education was able to integrate

important components of the traditional education system rather than a complete abandonment,

which is the case in successive education polices since the 1940s.

Since the 1940s, Ethiopia has experienced three systems of political governance, each

distinguished by its education policy. The first system of governance was the Imperial system

that started soon after WWII and lasted until 1974; the second was the military/socialist system

that lasted until 1991. The third and current federal system of governance became fully

operational after 1994 (Negash, 2006).

As Negash (2006) has described these polices, the Imperial System of education was put

in place through the support of UNESCO, IMF and USAID in the development of the policy.

This education policy believed strongly with the idea of education as a vehicle of progress and

economic development. Both these funding agencies and the Emperor strongly believed that

education could bring economic development. Hence, the policy advocated for universal primary

education and expansion of schools. The initial period of this policy implementation was

relatively productive as gradates were able to mange getting jobs. However, as the number of

secondary school population increases, the public sector could no longer absorb secondary

school graduates produced by a continuously growing number of schools. Hence, as early as

1973, up to 25 per cent of the secondary school graduates were unemployed (MOE, 1986). As a

result huge level of unemployment among the young and educated was one of the major

problems of this education policy. This problem has been well articulated, however, as early as

1958 by one of the pioneers in Ethiopian education, Wodajo (1963) who pointed out that the

curriculum in place was incapable of producing citizens who had the capability to interpret,

enrich and adapt the heritage of the country to new needs and to changing conditions as cited in

Negash(2006).

The problem of widespread unemployment of the graduates from secondary school called

for a series of education sector reviews. The economic sector was too small to accommodate the

growing pool of secondary school graduates. As Negash (2006) clearly shows, there was a


widespread dissatisfaction with the education sector from secondary school students who

depicted the future in bleak terms. On top of that, the conservative elements of the Ethiopian

church and nobility argued that there was very little Ethiopian in the curriculum and that those

young Ethiopians who passed through the school system were disrespectful of their society and

its institutions. The envisioned ideals of UNESCO, IMF and USIAD for Ethiopia to expand

education to bring economic development resulted in such miserable anomaly (MOE, 1986).

As remedy to this failure, the first Ethiopian education sector review took place in 1971/2

and was made up of an international group of experts. Its main mandate was to devise strategies

for spreading universal primary education while at the same time resolving the acute problem of

unemployment among secondary school graduates. But it was such an unfortunate scenario to

rely on foreign expert groups to examine the problems and craft revised policy in a condition

where these so called experts have no background knowledge about the Country (Negash, 2006).

The first task of the Ethiopian education sector review of 1971–2 was to control the entry

to secondary education followed by the second task to make the rural population the main target

of its educational policy. The slow pace in spreading education into the rural areas was deplored

both by the Ethiopian government and its partners. The year 2000 was set as the year when

Ethiopia would extend universal primary education to all its citizens. The experts who framed

the sector review opined that it was the right of all citizens to get basic primary education of a

minimum of four years. As I will come back with this later, it is interesting to note here that

there are great similarities between the 1971–2 sector review and the education policy of 1994

that is currently in use. However, the Imperial system was abolished in 1974 and with it also

went the new education policy that had been worked out by the education sector review (Negash,

2006).

The Ethiopian political system that replaced the Imperial regime in 1974 was ruled by a

socialist/communist workers party. The path of scientific socialism was deemed the most

appropriate strategy to bring the country out of its backward stage of development. The Cold

War was indeed a decisive context which made possible the transition from the pro-West alliance

of the Imperial system to that supported and protected by the Soviet Union. Buttressed by the

ideological position of the Soviet Union and its East European allies, the Ethiopian government

began to put more emphasis on the role of education for development, the same political mantra


just like that of the Imperial regime. Socialist education stressed the inculcation of ideology as a

prime objective with Marxism and the value of production as the main pillars. The United States

of America, one of the main partners in the development of the Ethiopian education sector, was

replaced by educational experts from Eastern Germany (Negash, 2006).

The fundamental aim of education, as expressed by the Ethiopian government in the

early 1980s, was to cultivate Marxist-Leninist ideology in the young generation, to develop

knowledge in science and technology, and to integrate and coordinate research with production

so as to enable the revolution to move forward and secure productive citizens (Negash, 1990).

A new curriculum was duly produced where five new subjects namely, agriculture,

production technology, political education, home economics and introduction to business were

added. This meant that Ethiopian secondary students had to follow 12 subjects. This was in sharp

contrast to the format of the curriculum of the Imperial period where students followed not more

than seven subjects.

The inclusion of additional subjects without prior planning and adequate infrastructure

led to the further deterioration of pedagogical conditions. The socialist regime inherited a sector

with structural distortions where a considerable portion of secondary school graduates faced

unemployment. During the first few years of power, the socialist regime gathered together all

new and old secondary school students and sent them to the countryside in a national literacy

campaign which I think have done a significant contribution in the expansion of adult literacy in

the rural areas of the country.

While enrolment continued to grow at the rate of 12 per cent per annum (Negash, 2006),

the government intensified the recruitment of Ethiopian teachers to fill the gap left by

expatriates, especially at the secondary schools. By the mid-1980s, the socialist government

could no longer ignore the widespread public dissatisfaction with the quality of education. The

educational system of the Imperial period might have lacked relevance, but as Christopher

Clapham noted “a fairly good education for a relatively small number of children had under the

socialist regime been transformed into quite a poor education for a much larger number of

children” (Clapham, 1990 quoted in Poluha, 2004:18 2).


In 1983, the socialist government commissioned an evaluation of the education system

with a view to devising strategies for the “implementation without delay of the objectives of

education”. The evaluating commission, financed heavily by UNICEF, World Bank and the

Swedish International Development Authority summed up its work by the end of 1985. But, the

Ethiopian government hardly benefited from it. It is most probable that the evaluation committee

failed to attempt to answer the shortcomings of the sector as perceived by the government. This

policy like its predecessor was in a crisis created by a misconceived policy on the role of

education in the development of a society (Negash, 1990)

The new ruling political party (Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front

(EPRDF) came to power in 1991 and reconfigured Ethiopia as a federal state. According to the

constitution that came into effect in 1994, Ethiopia is composed of nations and nationalities that

freely and voluntarily adhere to it. All member nations have the right to opt out of the federation.

At present Ethiopia is made up of nine federal states and two chartered cities. A new era dawned

on Ethiopia – that of the federal system of governance equipped with an appropriate educational

policy that became operational in 1994. The educational policy of the new government is thus

the third policy in the history of the country since 1945.

It would be a partial attempt if I depend on the 1994 Education Policy document alone as

this policy document is simply a strategic direction and objective document in my analysis

without a back and forth investigation of its auxiliary document called-The Education and

Training Policy and Its Implementation produced in 2002 by the Ministry of Education which

explains the details of the policy.

Foucauldian Genealogy as Methodology

According to Foucault, in contrast to the totalitarian sciences genealogy is called “an

insurrection of subjugated knowledges” (Foucault, 1980, p. 81). It is an instrument that helps to

expose the dominant discourses which prevail in a historical text at the expense of subjugated

discourses. Foucault argued that two kinds of knowledge are resurrected:

…on the one hand, I am referring to the historical contents that have been buried

and disguised in a functionalist coherence or formal systemization. Concretely, it is

not a semiology of the life of the asylum, it is not even a sociology of delinquency,

that has made it possible to produce an effective criticism of the asylum and likewise


of the prison, but rather the immediate emergence of historical contents. And this is

simply because only the historical contents allow us to rediscover the ruptural

effects of conflict and struggle that the order imposed by functionalist or systematizing

thought is designed to mask. Subjugated knowledges are thus those blocs of

historical knowledge which were present but disguised within the body of functionalist

and systematizing theory… (Foucault, 1980, pp. 81-82).

What has been silenced in the 1994 Education policy as well as the previous policies is

that the illusive concepts that the proponents in the policy documents purport such as

“modernizing the country”, “civilization”, “economic development”, “education for

advancement”, ”education for all”, etc. are all artificial constructions that has been taken for

granted and on the other hand traditions, customs, values of the common people are all

uncivilized, hence anti-modernist, anti-civilization and hence didn’t get the chance to compete in

the discourse. In Foucaultian terms these are called

“local knowledges” and what genealogy really does is to entertain the claims to attention

of local, discontinuous, disqualified, illegitimate knowledges against the claims of a

unitary body of theory which would filter, hierarchise and order them in the name of

some true knowledge and arbitrary idea of what constitutes a science and its objects”

(Foucault, 1980, p. 83).

Genealogy is, therefore, about questioning the things we take for granted and is thus a

precondition for understanding the dynamics of power involved in the process.

Genealogy also helps us to understand the history of the present (Foucault, 1978).

Analyzing the voices of the international organizations such as the IMF, UNESCO and USAID

in the current education policy and investigate its historicity, one can clearly map to what extent

the fundamental ideals these organization sell out and actually enforce through their money are

the same old ideas they had been selling in the previous policies as well. Their current discourse

may seem different or may not exactly look alike the previous but its fundamental nature is all

the same.

Finally, Foucault’s (1980, 1983b) conception of power offers a useful way of

conceptualizing power relations, agency and subjectivity. Power, according to Foucault, is

dispersed, manifest in discursive practices, and exercised; it is not a possession, but it is unstable


and localized (Foucault, 1977, 1983a). As we will see in the main body of my analysis of the text

below, the overarching discourse that canonized the text is this grand narrative “education for

economic development”, a kind of discursive practice where the text purports as a rational and

best alternative but not otherwise. Foucault (1990a) maintained that ‘‘where there is power there

is resistance’’ (p. 95), suggesting that power and resistance together define agency. The practice

of the 1994 education policy and how it turned out in the process citing some research works

shows how power really produces resistance and actually it was productive too. As Foucault

argued, this type of peripheral investigation in and around of the text, i.e.-the archaeology of the

text would enrich our analysis-understanding the history of dispersed elements and how they

came into a unity, or in Foucault's words, “rethink the dispersion of history in the form of the

same” (Foucault, 1995, p. 21).

The following questions are, therefore, asked to question the text that would help

analyzing the policy document through Foucauldian Genealogy lens:

1. What is/are the dominant education discourses in the policy document?

2. Who are the sources of these dominant discourses?

3. Whose interests and values are espoused in the discourses?

4. What/whose voices are silenced/disguised/buried in the discourses?

5. What is the historical context of the text?

6. What are being produced in the text or potentially productive of the text?

Theoretical Framework

Bourdieu’s concept of field in his theory of logic of social practice helped me to

investigate how various agents have been playing the game in the 1994 Ethiopian Education

Policy field and how to interpret the voices included in the policy document and for what motive

a given participating agent has been playing in the field and how it plays the game and which

agent has power and how the resistance within the structure understood. His argument on the

dialectical relationship between structure and agency also helps to analyze the existing resistance

or agency in the whole process of producing this policy text.

Pierre Bourdieu uses three central concepts to explain his theory of the logic of social

practice; these include, Capital, Field and Habitus. According to Bourdieu social reality is both


objective and subjective. Bourdieu admits that it is inescapable to think of the existence of

objective social structures placing limitations on the individual but also structure and agency are

dialectical hence subjective too. But, he clearly remarked that the objective structures are

historical social constructions rather than nature (Bourdieu, 1984).

Historically, Bourdieu argues, different agents in the social structure have accumulated

different types and amount of economic capital, social capital, cultural capital and symbolic

capital. Overtime, he argued the amount and type of capital one has can condition one’s way of

thinking and led to a certain Habitus and therefore result in an unconscious beliefs in the

legitimacy of class inequalities. By instilling certain dispositions into individuals, dispositions

which are similar to members with similar amount of capital, the Habitus allows certain patterns

of behavior to these individuals. The domination within any type of field, political field,

education policy field, etc, is therefore, perpetuated by if not total exclusion but by limiting the

role of the dominated from the act of governing or playing a part in policy formulation; firstly

because participation requires time and money and secondly because of the capital needed-social

capital in the form of symbolic and ‘right’ social contacts and cultural capital as a feel for the

game of politics (Bourdieu, 1993). That is what exactly is happening in the developing country

like Ethiopia. The international organizations like the World Bank and IMF mainly use their

dominance in economic capital to instill their cultural and ideological capitals in any field that

they take part in these countries; the case in point is the education policy field.

But, Bourdieu argues the relationship between structure and agency is dialectical. The

reproduction of the social order occurs most efficiently when people accept the meanings that are

used to account for its essentially arbitrary nature, such that it may appears to be a natural order.

It is this adjustment between disposition and objective circumstances that produces what

Bourdieu calls “habitus”—“systems of durable, transposable dispositions, that are structured,

inculcated and generative” (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 53). It is, however, the generative feature of

habitus that contains the potential for the transformation (within limits) of the social order.

Because in contemporary societies for example, the fields that people occupy are so diverse and

overlapping, the habitus that we develop will, at some point or other, be enacted in a situation in

which it is effectively out of place (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). In such situations, those

occupying dominated positions may feel compelled to either defend their positions, amplifying


and asserting the worth of whatever symbolic capital typifies their habitus, or, alternatively,

attempt to move up the social order (Bourdieu, 1984). For Bourdieu, therefore, resistance is an

automatic process that is manifested in this continual struggle: It consists of the claims and the

political and material contentions of the dominated as they attempt to barter over, or even

transform, the meaning of the dominant species of capital in the field (Bourdieu, 1998).

In the later part of his life, Bourdieu was actually engaged in understanding about

emancipation strategies for the dominated in his reflexivity critical inquiry. The neoliberal

ideology, as an ultra-right utopia as defined by Pierre Bourdieu in his book Acts of Resistance:

Against the New Myths of Our Time (1998) does all in its power to legitimize the gap between

the social and the economic factor in the historical development of the human society, to reduce

again the human nature to homo economicus, and to subdue the social to the forces of structural

violence of the so-called free market, that is, the interests of the mega capital forces and their

uncontrolled hegemony in the contemporary world. Bourdieu, with his analysis and criticism,

points to the connection between the neoliberal philosophy of development with mega capital

interests, that is, those of transnational corporation at present as well as the attempts to justify, by

the neoconservative revolution with its appeals to progress, reason and science.

Pierre Bourdieu has paid special attention to the analysis and criticism of new forms of

dependence and exploitation in the contemporary world. In his criticism of sociology he has

subjected to fundamental demystification of the role of the symbolic power system in the

contemporary world society linking it with the increasing structural inequalities in the world.

Concerning the relationship between the social and the symbolic power Bourdieu, among other

things, writes that the symbolic power which assumes the imposition of one view of the world

and social divisions depends on the social authority achieved in the previous struggles (Bourdieu,

1999).

Bourdieu has also contributed to the emancipation agenda through re-problematizing and

re-affirming the role of engaged intellectuals in the function of human emancipation and the

contemporary humanity (Bourdieu, 1998). Concerning this attitude, it should be added that in his

orientation he is not lonely today. Such a role of the intellectual in the contemporary social

struggles and new social movements (such as, for instance, the alter-globalist one) is insisted

upon by Noam Chomsky, Immanuel Wallerstein and Toni Negri. Regardless of their ideological


and theoretical orientations, these engaged intellectuals are looking for new strategies of anti-

system and alternative movements that would act on the translational level (that would promote a

sort of globalization assuming a from-the-base orientation, globalization with human face,

globalization of non-acceptance) with a flexible, elaborate and democratic organization

structure.

Critical Analysis of the Policy Document

In the auxiliary document (2002) that explains about the 1994 Education Policy in detail,

it starts its introduction by cursing the previous policies hiding the very fact that their policy is

nothing new but most of it a replica of one of the previous policies in the 1970s.

Modern education was introduced to Ethiopia nearly a century ago. However,

the education and training offered during these long years had limited positive

impact on the lives of the people and national development. The education

offered has not enabled to solve the problems of farmers, pastoralist, and change the lives

of the over whelming majority of the people (FDRGE, 2002, p. 1).

For Foucault, this is typically the kind of “a whole set of knowledges that have been

disqualified as inadequate to their task or insufficiently elaborated: naive knowledges, located

low down on the hierarchy, beneath the required level of cognition or scientificcity” (Foucault,

1980, pp. 82-83) but in fact what is being narrated in this policy is nothing different from what it

curses.

The text defines the value of education as follows-and it normalizes this discourse as if it

is the grand truth which in fact is that there is no such thing grand narrative as Foucault might

have argued and all this kind of claims are false claims.

Education enables man to identify harmful traditions and replace them by useful ones. It

helps man to improve, change, as well as develop and conserve his environment for the

purpose of an all-rounded development by diffusing science and technology into the

society (MOE, 1994, P.1).

What does it means “harmful tradition”? What is not harmful? And who decided that?

The potential answers for all these questions are implicit and the text doesn’t want to talk about it


as it has to normalize it in the name of scientific and technological reasoning anything the unsaid

aren’t normal and hence discredited.

The aims of education as specified in the policy document are in fact modern in the sense

that the needs and potential of the individual student are put in the centre. As the documents

states “education, as a very important factor to human development, is of a high priority in the

overall development endeavor of the government” (p.4). It appears, rather, that the inspirational

ideas on the role of education for the development of society (and hence for the reduction of

poverty) came from donors and this has been the selling idea for the other previous policies as

well, as I have indicated in the previous section. But it is unfortunate that the policy document

has mentioned nothing of the role played by the International Organizations. As Foucault said

the unsaid, the unspoken in a given text might have powerful meaning than the said (Foucault,

1977). One interpretation of this could be to mask the reality by the Government to minimize the

public uproar and make sure that any probable accusations that will come from the Ethiopian

intelligentsia will have no bold/naked evidence of their criticism as they would get nothing that

talks about IMF or any organization in the policy document.

But, the archaeology of peripheral documents as Foucault argued would help to discover

the true account or story of the unsaid. In our case, more specifically, the Poverty Reduction

Strategy Policy, that the Ethiopian government was obliged to submit to the World Bank as a

partial condition for continued loans and aid, lay behind the policy of rapid expansion of school

enrollment. Another document that has provided a strong framework for the logic of rapid

expansion is the United Nations Millennium Development Goals where the International

Community is committed to assisting poor nations to provide universal primary education to

their citizens and reduce by half the number of people who live below the poverty line of one

dollar per day (United Nation (2005). But as Bourdieu argues this has nothing to do with the

ground realities of the Country, but these international organizations are playing their own game

as they clearly know that the poor countries governments has no other options as they need the

money hence align their polices with donors prescriptions and ideals.

But, I am not sure how the Ethiopian Government as well as the donor organizations

conceives of education as a sole alternative to poverty reduction. How is the expansion of

primary education linked to the alleviation of poverty strategy of the government? What kind of


primary education can and does play a positive role against poverty? How is poverty alleviation

strategy linked to education? Does the Ministry of Education have the expertise to link education

to the alleviation or eradication of poverty? What are the roles of other departments, e.g. the

Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Capacity Building etc. in the education of Ethiopians?

How is education linked to the strategic and long-term interests of the country? Why the voices

of the general public ignored in the document? Is it because the general public is uneducated,

traditional, hence having no capital (both cultural and symbolic capital) to have their voices

about the education of their children heard!

I think this whole rush to use ill-conceived strategies such as the use of universal primary

education if not a sole but as the most crucial asset for poverty reduction as the policy document

purports is what Bourdieu (1999) accuses of such kind of move as a result of “locked in the

narrow, short-term economism of the IMF worldview which is also causing havoc, and will

continue to do so, in North-South relations” (p.5) and fail to understand the very fundamental

nature of problems in the developing nations. Bourdieu argues that this kind of simplistic

understanding of complex issues and a quick fix-approach which in fact is so bizarre is what he

argues the works of so called “ ‘doxosophers’-technicians of opinion who think themselves

wise… pose the problems of politics in the very same terms in which they are posed by

businessmen, politicians and political journalists” (p.7)

There is also such naïve understanding both by donor organizations as well as the

government with their grand narrative that “education is a means for development”, which in fact

is only one of the components in economic development as many economists I would think

would tend to agree. The policy document also give emphasis to another dominant discourse-

“the development of problem-solving capacity and culture in the content of education,

curriculum structure and approach, focusing on the acquisition of scientific knowledge and

practicum”(p4). But, traditional wisdoms, values, etc. in the Country which I have mentioned

earlier are silenced knowledge in this policy document and for that matter they are not

considered as knowledge -what Foucault has said ironically that this forms of knowledge are

considered as “…discontinuous, disqualified, illegitimate knowledges in contrast to the claims

of a unitary body of theory which would filter, hierarchise and order them in the name of some

true knowledge and arbitrary idea of what constitutes a science and its objects” (Foucault, 1980,


p. 83) and hence this policy document has argued to move out from these forms of knowledge as

I think the policy developers have thought that these forms of knowledge are archaic, traditional

and non-modernist, hence the policy strategies outlined in this document are the means to change

these forms of knowledge with “scientific knowledge”.

Another normalizing discourse outlined in the policy document is ‘international

standard’. The policy document states that “the curriculum developed and textbooks prepared at

central and regional levels, are based on sound pedagogical and psychological principles and

are up to inter-national standard” (MOE, 1994 p. 13). Lingard, Rawolle, & Taylor (2005) in

their education policy analysis using a Bourdieuian lens have indicated that

“the concept of an educational policy field should be recognized to have more than just a

national character. In effect, the concept of educational policy as a field has multiple

levels, one of which includes a global character under the increasing influence of

international agencies such as the World Bank, OECD and UNESCO” (p.3).

The policy neither defines nor provides examples of what “international standard” mean.

This could be the influence of the international agencies or at least to catch the attention of the

donors on the side of the government. For that matter, is there such thing international standard?

Where did it come from? For what purpose it is included in the document? Answers to these

questions could be many but we don’t get any of the answer from this document.

Finally, I would like to examine the policy document on its statements on language and

language use in the education system. The policy document says

“English will be the medium of instruction for secondary and higher education. Students

can choose and learn at least one nationality language and one foreign language for

cultural and international relations. English will be taught as a subject starting from

grade one” (MOE, 1994, p.24).

But, as I have indicated earlier in the historical review section, unlike other African

Countries, Ethiopia has its own well developed language with its own scripts with rich classical

and modern literatures written in the language. In spite of all these merits the Country’s history

holds, I share the concerns of the general public in the Country about the anomaly of using


English as medium of instruction by ignoring the local language is neither defendable nor

commendable.

Amharic, the official language of the Country is the only sub-Sahara African language

with an African original script with rich lexicon, grammatical and semantic tradition. This was

the language that our 3000 years written history has been recorded with. But, it is unfortunate

that the Ethiopian government chose to sell it. The process of implanting English as medium of

instruction has no ground what so ever to justify. In a country where English or any other foreign

language is neither a mother-tongue nor even spoken by the majority, it is a complete absurdity

and madness to use English as a medium of instruction. Not even the case English as a legacy of

colonization as it is true in most Anglophone African Countries which had been under British

colonial rules. But, ironically Ethiopia wasn’t.

Even the argument that the policy makes to use English as medium of instruction to

enable Ethiopian students proficient in English for the Country’s effort in international

communication and relationship is far from the truth. Research has revealed that neither teachers

nor their students are proficient in the English language in most of the Country’s school after

almost more than a decade of implementation of this policy in the Country (Heugh, et al., 2007).

This study reveals that “… classroom observation and assessment data demonstrate that English

MOI does not necessarily result in better English learning; in fact, those regions with stronger

mother tongue schooling have higher student achievement levels at Grade 8 in all subjects,

including English” (p.6).

Only those elite schools in the urban center which have both the resources and long

history of teaching using English as medium of instruction such as American School, Sanford,

etc. might have [benefited] and hence the policy is playing a large role in social stratification that

English typically serves purposes of elite formation and elite closure, inclusion of those wielding

the language of power and exclusion of the rest as Bourdieu (1986, 1991) might have

conjectured, the education system serves as a principal institution for the accumulation,

production, and distribution of cultural capital and for the production of social inequality.

As the post-structuralist Pierre Bourdieu in his emancipations agenda might have argued

for, analyzing such kind of controversial social realities wouldn’t be enough for public


intellectuals rather is the need to be part of the struggle on the side of the general public.

Ethiopian intellectuals have to form an alliance to battle the neoliberal invasion, that is, the

activities of the forces of unshackled mega capital, its political faction and hawks that strongly

work to demystify the legacy behind the Country’s history.

Concluding Remarks

This short genealogical analysis of the 1994 Education Policy may lead me to have the

following concluding remarks. But, as Foucault advices not to fall into the same fallacy of

advocating for a new form of normalizing discourse, my conclusions are my own mere

conjectures and interpretations of the policy document.

Despite a strong criticism made against the traditional education system that lead to

abandon this system of education and replaced it with ‘modern education’, this later system of

education was not also free of such criticisms. The ‘modern education’ in Ethiopia since its

introduction in the 1940s has been constantly criticized for its poor quality characterized by

methods of instruction that emphasizes rote learning and recalls information (Amare A., 1998;

Amare & Temechegn, 2002). It has been criticized for failing to provide students with depth of

understanding, an ability to interpret and apply information, encouraging the habit of critical

thinking-reflection, the ability to form opinions and to value the expression of diverse opinions,

and the ability to apply school knowledge to realities of personal experiences and the problems

of everyday life (CYAO, 1995; Habtamu W., 2002; Seyoum T., 1996; Tekeste N, 1990, 1996;

Teshome W., 1979, 1988, 1990).

However, the current education policy continued the mistakes made by its predecessors.

Just like in the early phases of the introduction of modern education in Ethiopia, problems like

lack of relevant contents still persist. A study by Bridges & Ridley (2002, p. 1) for example

documented that in the teacher training institutes they observed that in Ethiopia “libraries consist

almost entirely of imported educational texts of mainly American origin and questionable

intellectual standing–and virtually nothing which reflects the realities of educational practices in

Sub-Saharan Africa-let alone the distinctive educational values and traditions of Ethiopia”.

As Negash (2006) have argued, no country has modernized its culture and society by

wholesale importation of Westernization. Hence countries like Ethiopia need to anchor


modernization on the traditional values and beliefs of the Ethiopian people. Westernization

understood as the complete replacement of tradition by westernization could only create the loss

of identity.

I agree with the comment made by Negash (2006) that it is through and by language that

collective life and the world can be interpreted in an integrative manner. So I believe that the

eventual replacement of English by Ethiopian languages is one of the factors that could

strengthen the survival potential of the Ethiopian community. Aamin Mazuri (2003) also

associates the use of African languages with intellectual self-determination. Alamin Mazrui is of

the opinion that the wider use of African languages could be the basis for an intellectual

revolution (Mazrui, A., 2003).

My, I would say, myopic analysis of the policy document, which I think Foucault has

gave me such freedom to do it, as there is no such thing ‘broad analysis’ or ‘short analysis’;

‘strong analysis’ or ‘weak analysis’, the Ethiopian education system is not paying a high

premium for relevance and quality. The role of education in the alleviation of poverty has not

been significant at all. And part of the reason, is that Ethiopian education has been based on false

premises.

Despite the fact that Ethiopia has a long and rich tradition of indigenous philosophy and

education that could have been a solid foundation for its development and modern education like

for example, the case in East Asia, however, it had simply assimilated the Western system of

education instead of integrating the important cultural and philosophical values with the new

education system. At least to me, therefore, there seem cultural metamorphoses caused by

Western-oriented modern education and a consequent emerging confusion of the Ethiopian youth

as far as identity formation is concerned.

Finally, I would like to argue that Ethiopia can learn a lot from the experience of, some of

the fastest growing areas of Asia which attribute their success in development in general and

their education practices to their traditional and in particular educational values rooted in their

Confucian heritage. These Asian countries such as China, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and

Singapore, “…share a common ‘chop-stick’ culture of Chinese origin, adapted to local

conditions. At the heart of this Sintic heritage lies the teaching and values of Confucius (551-479


BCE)…East Asia nations have used the best aspects of their Confucian heritage as a filter to

select portions of Western culture and technological development and combine with their own

traditions” (Vietnam Cultural Window, 2000, p.2-3).


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Ethiopian Education Policy Analysis: Using Foucault’s Genealogy

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