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 20 th 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
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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;
Ethiopian Education Policy Analysis

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.
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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
Ethiopian Education Policy Analysis

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
Ethiopian Education Policy Analysis

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
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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).
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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
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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
Ethiopian Education Policy Analysis

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
Ethiopian Education Policy Analysis

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
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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
Ethiopian Education Policy Analysis

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
Ethiopian Education Policy Analysis

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
Ethiopian Education Policy Analysis

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,
Ethiopian Education Policy Analysis

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
Ethiopian Education Policy Analysis

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
Ethiopian Education Policy Analysis

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
Ethiopian Education Policy Analysis

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
Ethiopian Education Policy Analysis

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).
Ethiopian Education Policy Analysis

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