UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA
College of Education
⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄⋄
HED4805: South African History of Education
Assignment 2 — Semester 1, 2026
⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄⋄
HED4805
Module Code:
South African History of Education
Module Name:
Assignment 2
Assignment:
26 June 2026
Due Date:
100
Total Marks:
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for HED4805 — UNISA 2026
,UNISA | HED4805 History of Education — Assignment 2
Question 1: Global North, Global South, and the Decolonisation of Education
1.1 The Meaning of “Global North” and “Global South”
The expressions “Global North” and “Global South” do more than divide the planet into
wealthy and poor halves. They describe deep structural asymmetries in political power, eco-
nomic resources, and, critically for this module, the production and legitimation of knowledge
(Seroto, Davids and Wolhuter, 2020). Understanding these terms is a prerequisite for making
sense of why the History of Education looks the way it does and whose stories it tends to tell.
Origins and Geographical Meaning
The term “Global North” refers broadly to the industrialised, economically dominant countries
of North America, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. The “Global South”
refers to the nations of Africa, Latin America, most of Asia, and the Pacific, which share a
common history of colonial subjugation, economic marginalisation, and enforced dependency
on Northern-defined development frameworks (Wolhuter, 2008). The terms are not purely
geographical: Australia sits in the southern hemisphere yet belongs to the Global North,
while countries like Brazil and South Africa occupy a complex middle position as emerging
economies within a Global South framework (Santos, 2014).
The distinction gained wide academic currency in the 1990s as a replacement for the Cold
War vocabulary of “First” and “Third” worlds, which carried even more stigmatising connota-
tions. Today, the terms carry a critical edge: they are used not just to describe geographic or
economic location, but to draw attention to the ongoing power imbalances between these blocs
in trade, governance, science, and education (Graduate Institute, 2023).
Epistemological Meaning: Knowledge Power and Its Consequences
Critically, the Global North and Global South distinction goes beyond economics into the
domain of epistemology, meaning the question of whose knowledge counts as legitimate knowl-
edge. Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2014) coined the phrase “Epistemologies of the South” to
describe knowledge systems forged out of the experience of oppression, resistance, and sur-
vival that the peoples of the Global South developed across centuries of colonialism. These
knowledge systems, including African oral traditions, indigenous ecological knowledge, and
Page 2 of 24
, UNISA | HED4805 History of Education — Assignment 2
precolonial pedagogical practices, were systematically suppressed or dismissed as superstition
by colonial and post-colonial academic establishments that modelled themselves on European
universities (Santos, 2014).
The extract from Seroto, Davids and Wolhuter (2020) quantifies this imbalance with uncom-
fortable precision. Of the 18,523 articles published in Thomson-Reuters indexed education
journals in 2012, only 2.13% were authored by scholars in Africa (Seroto et al., 2020:21). In
the journal Paedagogica Historica between 1961 and 1989, South Africa accounted for only
0.3% of authorship. Germany alone contributed 22.7% during the same period. What this
means in practice is that the History of Education as a field has been written predominantly
by Northern scholars, focused on Northern contexts, and validated by Northern peer-review
gatekeepers. Stories from the Global South, including South Africa’s extraordinarily rich and
contested educational history, reach global audiences largely through Northern intermediaries
who may lack the cultural and historical context to represent them accurately (Depaepe and
Simon, 1996).
Eurocentrism and the Marginalisation of African Knowledge
The Eurocentric character of mainstream historical scholarship becomes especially clear when
one examines what gets excluded. The extract from Seroto et al. (2020) lists a series of “hid-
den truths”: the origins of the human species in Africa, the earliest known arithmetic (the
Ishango bone, 25,000 years ago), the first large-scale mining operations (43,000 years ago), and
the sophistication of Khoi fish-trapping technology on the West Coast of South Africa. None
of these facts are obscure; they are well-documented. Yet they appear in very few standard
school history curricula, because those curricula were designed from a Eurocentric epistemolog-
ical position that placed European civilisation at the centre of human progress and relegated
African history to the margins or omitted it altogether (Asante, 1998, as cited in Seroto et al.,
2020:22).
Molefi Kete Asante’s concept of Afrocentricity is useful here. Asante (1998) argues that to be
centred is to be recognised as an agent with one’s own perspective, history, and contribution,
rather than being permanently framed as “the Other” in someone else’s story. Taiwo (1993),
also quoted in the extract, observed that colonialism in Africa was distinguished more by what
it excluded than what it included. The Global South distinction matters in education precisely
because it names this process of exclusion and calls for its reversal.
Page 3 of 24
College of Education
⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄⋄
HED4805: South African History of Education
Assignment 2 — Semester 1, 2026
⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄⋄
HED4805
Module Code:
South African History of Education
Module Name:
Assignment 2
Assignment:
26 June 2026
Due Date:
100
Total Marks:
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for HED4805 — UNISA 2026
,UNISA | HED4805 History of Education — Assignment 2
Question 1: Global North, Global South, and the Decolonisation of Education
1.1 The Meaning of “Global North” and “Global South”
The expressions “Global North” and “Global South” do more than divide the planet into
wealthy and poor halves. They describe deep structural asymmetries in political power, eco-
nomic resources, and, critically for this module, the production and legitimation of knowledge
(Seroto, Davids and Wolhuter, 2020). Understanding these terms is a prerequisite for making
sense of why the History of Education looks the way it does and whose stories it tends to tell.
Origins and Geographical Meaning
The term “Global North” refers broadly to the industrialised, economically dominant countries
of North America, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. The “Global South”
refers to the nations of Africa, Latin America, most of Asia, and the Pacific, which share a
common history of colonial subjugation, economic marginalisation, and enforced dependency
on Northern-defined development frameworks (Wolhuter, 2008). The terms are not purely
geographical: Australia sits in the southern hemisphere yet belongs to the Global North,
while countries like Brazil and South Africa occupy a complex middle position as emerging
economies within a Global South framework (Santos, 2014).
The distinction gained wide academic currency in the 1990s as a replacement for the Cold
War vocabulary of “First” and “Third” worlds, which carried even more stigmatising connota-
tions. Today, the terms carry a critical edge: they are used not just to describe geographic or
economic location, but to draw attention to the ongoing power imbalances between these blocs
in trade, governance, science, and education (Graduate Institute, 2023).
Epistemological Meaning: Knowledge Power and Its Consequences
Critically, the Global North and Global South distinction goes beyond economics into the
domain of epistemology, meaning the question of whose knowledge counts as legitimate knowl-
edge. Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2014) coined the phrase “Epistemologies of the South” to
describe knowledge systems forged out of the experience of oppression, resistance, and sur-
vival that the peoples of the Global South developed across centuries of colonialism. These
knowledge systems, including African oral traditions, indigenous ecological knowledge, and
Page 2 of 24
, UNISA | HED4805 History of Education — Assignment 2
precolonial pedagogical practices, were systematically suppressed or dismissed as superstition
by colonial and post-colonial academic establishments that modelled themselves on European
universities (Santos, 2014).
The extract from Seroto, Davids and Wolhuter (2020) quantifies this imbalance with uncom-
fortable precision. Of the 18,523 articles published in Thomson-Reuters indexed education
journals in 2012, only 2.13% were authored by scholars in Africa (Seroto et al., 2020:21). In
the journal Paedagogica Historica between 1961 and 1989, South Africa accounted for only
0.3% of authorship. Germany alone contributed 22.7% during the same period. What this
means in practice is that the History of Education as a field has been written predominantly
by Northern scholars, focused on Northern contexts, and validated by Northern peer-review
gatekeepers. Stories from the Global South, including South Africa’s extraordinarily rich and
contested educational history, reach global audiences largely through Northern intermediaries
who may lack the cultural and historical context to represent them accurately (Depaepe and
Simon, 1996).
Eurocentrism and the Marginalisation of African Knowledge
The Eurocentric character of mainstream historical scholarship becomes especially clear when
one examines what gets excluded. The extract from Seroto et al. (2020) lists a series of “hid-
den truths”: the origins of the human species in Africa, the earliest known arithmetic (the
Ishango bone, 25,000 years ago), the first large-scale mining operations (43,000 years ago), and
the sophistication of Khoi fish-trapping technology on the West Coast of South Africa. None
of these facts are obscure; they are well-documented. Yet they appear in very few standard
school history curricula, because those curricula were designed from a Eurocentric epistemolog-
ical position that placed European civilisation at the centre of human progress and relegated
African history to the margins or omitted it altogether (Asante, 1998, as cited in Seroto et al.,
2020:22).
Molefi Kete Asante’s concept of Afrocentricity is useful here. Asante (1998) argues that to be
centred is to be recognised as an agent with one’s own perspective, history, and contribution,
rather than being permanently framed as “the Other” in someone else’s story. Taiwo (1993),
also quoted in the extract, observed that colonialism in Africa was distinguished more by what
it excluded than what it included. The Global South distinction matters in education precisely
because it names this process of exclusion and calls for its reversal.
Page 3 of 24
