Description
9.5.1 Assignment 01
Assignment 01
Due date: 15 May 2026
Unique assignment number:
100 marks
Instructions
The textual piece below is taken from the prescribed textbook: Seroto et al. (2020),
“Decolonising education in the Global South: historical and comparative international
perspectives”, chapter 3, Indigenous history and education before colonial times. Read
the extract below and then answer the questions that follow.
Extract from the text: Education through practice
Indigenous people of Southern Africa developed their own methods of sharing knowledge
through teaching practical skills. In most instances, teaching was by showing, with
demonstrations of different skill sets for the younger generation to observe. In southern Africa,
the San people, who survived by hunting and food gathering for thousands of years, used
Stone Age tools to cut up animals they had hunted. Even though the San were using Stone
Age technology, they were very skilled in killing animals. They used, among others, bow and
arrow, snares, and slow-poison technologies to hunt. The bow and arrow method was used to
hunt large game such as antelope, buffalo, or eland. The hunter would stalk the game to within
about 20 metres, which is the approximate distance an arrow can fly. Instead of killing animals
instantly, which was not easy because the arrow had no fletching and often missed the target,
the San used poisoned arrows to kill the game. The animal would be poisoned to death slowly,
which took from a few hours to a few days, depending on the size of the animal. The sources
of the poison were caterpillars, larvae of a small beetle, poisonous plants, and snake venom,
which were put on the arrow. When the arrow struck an animal, the hunters would have to track
it until it died. Once the animal fell, the San would cut around the poisoned area and discard it.
The Khoi were also skilled at making such weapons.
Archaeologists discovered that the San also used snares to capture prey as early as 70 000
years ago (Wadley, 2010). Traps and snares have an economic dimension since they reduce
the costs of a long search by bringing the animal to the hunter, rather than requiring the hunter
to go after meat (Wadley, 2010). Since the prey was captured remotely, these devices created
time and space for hunters to engage in other activities, that included social activities such as
the Bleek and Lloyd records suggests that language played an important role in socialising
indigenous people. Older people enjoyed storytelling, proverbs, and tales that were interwoven
with a sense of social and individual identity.
Question 1
(25)
With reference to the text provided, answer the following questions:
1.1 Explain what is understood by the “indigenous” people of Southern Africa.
(15)
1.2 Critically expound your perspective on the commonly held view that indigenous people
were ignorant of technological skills and practices.
(10)
Question 2
(25)
Language socialisation views thinking as a social rather than individual psychological
phenomenon. Cognition begins at the start of social contact in the child’s life. Learning
is conceptualised when a more expert person is engaged with a novice individual
through social interaction (Vygotsky, 1978). Lave and Wenger (1991) explain that
language socialisation goes beyond just an individual interaction to participation of the
child in broader communities of practice.
Write an essay in which you analyse the implications of language socialisation during
precolonial times, with reference to the modern learning theories of Vygotsky (1978) and Lave
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