Content area
Full Text
Northern Igbo secondary students describe conflicting gender-role perceptions based on influences from formal Western education and indigenous institutions.
This article analyzes gender perspectives at two secondary schools in Nsukka, Nigeria. It analyzes gender-role changes or perceptions of change based on students' reported interactions in formal education settings. It summarizes gender issues under students' perceptions of gender roles, norms, and practices in relation to themselves, their peer group, and their perceptions of generational change compared with those of their parents and grandparents. These perceptions demonstrate a pattern of gender roles shaped by Western Judeo-Christian doctrine within the formal education curriculum, minimal inclusion of local history or cultural content, and loss of indigenous knowledge and practices. Gender-role change is one aspect of a general Westernizing effect of formal models of Western education on indigenous cultures.
Introduction
Gender perspectives are constantly changing within any society, but neocolonialism in Africa is the site of a unique cultural conflict-between exogenous knowledge, transmitted through official postcolonial institutions (government, churches, schools), and endogenous knowledge, transmitted through indigenous ethnolinguistic societal institutions.1 This conflict is exemplified in field research recently conducted in Nsukka, Nigeria, where Northern Igbo secondary students reveal conflicting gender-role perceptions based on influences from formal Western education and indigenous institutions. 2 Their perceptions raise the question of which gender-role changes are due to interactions within formal education settings.
This article seeks to identify the impact of formal education on indigenous gender roles. Students' accounts of gender-role perceptions largely reflect a curriculum that includes a Christian Religious Knowledge (CRK) course which presents a historically based synthesis of Western Judeo- Christian norms and values through its representation in their textbook as well as informal reinforcement from educators.3 Formal education is only one influence, but it is a consequential one, as increasing numbers of Northern Igbo youth attend school. This article discusses their loss of indigenous knowledge, gendered changes in marriage and family roles, the marginalization of female political roles, and an increased status of formal education that places a premium on male education. These students' experiences in formal education highlight the neocolonial emphasis on modernization as Westernization-an emphasis that results in disparate and often inequitable ideologies regarding female and male gender roles.
Conceptual Framework
Analysis of the impact of the curriculum on...