Changing politics and political culture in Tanzania : the impact on political education and civics curricula 1967-1994.

This thesis examines the limits of the curriculum in Tanzania's socio-political reforms as the country moves from a single- party socialist to a multi-party liberal and market oriented system. It focuses on the dominant influence of political culture on the curriculum process. The study was suggested by syllabus changes at all levels from primary through to university, and drew from one of the observations made by the Presidential Commission's Report of 1991 that Tanzanian political culture was authoritarian/quiescent, and that the curriculum could contribute to the realization of a society which would allow political choice. In view of the fundamental pedagogical implications, the study contrasted the West European liberal concept of choice with the collectivist Tanzanian political culture, its manifestation in the educational philosophy, and examined how it was internalized by educators. Specifically, it investigated teachers' perception of the curriculum changes, and of their role in a changed political environment. Through a conceptual model derived from the literature, the data (obtained from documentary sources, interviews, and from a questionnaire administered to 100 school teachers and 35 teacher trainees) were analyzed and interpreted. The findings suggested that teachers had internalized the authoritarian values concerning the outcomes of teaching and learning of Civics (e.g. unconditional obedience/loyalty to authority). It was argued that changing national political ideologies required not only surface changes in national politics but also in deeper values of the society as a whole, and that the facile association of Political Education with authoritarianism or Civics with democracy was unsustainable. As this study was limited by the size of the sample and type of respondents, broad based research on the residual political cultures in Tanzania and on African concepts of political choice or pluralism might yield more convincing evidence of the political values identified in this study