On the first day of the new school year, all teachers in one school received the following message through a memorandum from the principal: Dear Teacher, I am a survivor of Cassinga. My eyes saw what no man should witness: Machine guns built by learned engineers. 

Children killed by learned and trained racist soldiers. Infants killed by trained racist nurses. 

Women and babies were fired on with tanks driven by educated racist soldiers. 

So, I am suspicious about education. My request is: Help your learners become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, and educated dictators and killers. 

Reading, writing and mathematics are important only if they serve to make our children more humane. 

Adapted from Ginott (1972). 

Contrary to the Cassinga massacre carried out by educated soldiers, Akinpelu (1981) states that in the African culture, the concept of the ‘educated man’ is not very clear since there is no such distinction between the ‘educated man’ and the ‘ideal citizen’ as we have in the Western European culture. 

The reason is that there is no system of education separate and distinct from the system of socialisation and of living in indigenous African society as an educated man is one who is ideal in the culture.

In the African context, to talk of an educated man is to describe a man who combines expertise with the soundness of character and wisdom and judgment. He is the one who is equipped to handle successfully the problems of living in his immediate and extended family, one who is well-versed in the folklores and genealogies of his ancestors… one who expresses himself in proverbs leaving his learners to unravel his thoughts. Conversely to the illusion that Westerners are more civilised than Africans, whites formulated baseless and discordant theories about Africans, who they did not know very well.

This equally implied that Africans were not regarded as human beings, who were capable of reasoning and consequently distant enough to formulate even the basics of African philosophy. This is what Mungazi (1996) implies when he refers to Walter Wren’s surprise when he visited the coast of Guinea in 1566 and discovered that, “Although the people were black and naked, they were civil,” because any civilised person should be capable of thinking to attain such status. In terms of African intelligence was Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (1857-1939) a French philosopher, sociologist and ethnographer whose primary field of study focused on the concept of primitive mentality. In his work, How Natives Think, Bruhl (1910) speculated about what he posited as the two basic mindsets of mankind, "primitive" and "Western." 

The primitive mind does not differentiate the supernatural from reality but rather uses "mystical participation" to manipulate the world.

According to Lévy-Bruhl, the primitive mind doesn't address contradictions while the Western mind, by contrast, uses speculation and logic. 

Levy-Bruhl believed in a historical and evolutionary teleology leading from the primitive mind to the Western mind In other words Levy-Bruhl believed that Africans were not capable of learning let alone being critical in their education. 

Mungazi (1996) maintains that the delusion that the African mind was inferior to that of the Europeans became the basis of the colonisation of Africa following the conclusion of the Berlin Conference in February 1885.

Because of this fantasy, European colonial governments ignored Africans’ objections to the intrusion of their society and culture. 

The Europeans believed that Africans were incapable of forming opinions and defining positions consistent with human logic on critical issues. Nevertheless, contrary to this illusion Mungazi (1996) observes during King Lobengula’s negotiations with the colonisers in today’s Zimbabwe around 1880 that the king was a shrewd politician, a highly intelligent man who fully comprehended the deliberations. 

King Lobengula demonstrated great intellectual prowess as a negotiator, because for hour after hour, week after week, month after month, the king argued with remarkable success with the Cambridge men.

He was as sharp as a needle and remembered everything, which had previously been discussed. It is at this point that the observations by Hountondji (2000) deserve attention in any area of research. According to him, it was the fate of some cultures in the world to have been systematically said to be inferior during centuries of Western domination, the slave trade and colonialism.  This sense of inferiority was unfortunately internalised to various degrees in African cultures themselves. 

Auspiciously this intransigent notion and retrogressive thinking are being rejected and challenged today by many progressive African philosophers like Kwasi Wiredu (Ghana), Paulin Jidenu Hountondji (Benin), Olu Sodipo (Nigeria), Elungu Pene Elungu (Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Odera Oruka (Kenya).