The necessity of traditional values to the modern educational system, the case of the Kôngo people of the democratic republic of Congo

Abstract

No society has been developed without ensconcing the values imbedded in its tradition. One of the failures of the educational system of the Kôngo people of the Democratic republic of Congo is in not capitalizing on traditional educational values as an indispensable basis for a better development of Africans. At the core of this botch lies a seeming impossibility to seize the superior epistemological and religious scientific paradigm on which these values are anchored. Based on the demonstrated scientific nature of African traditional religion, on a posteriori nature of the epistemological bases of African traditional knowledge, and on the fact that a scientific religion shaped traditional Kôngo society including its values, this paper contends that the new educational system of the Kôngo people of the DRC, like for all south-Saharan ethnics, must integrate the values cherished in the traditional system. These values include the development of intuitive or revelatory faculties and an anthropological perception that seizes the human being in a double nature identifying him to his environment and society. This new approach will lead to a more efficient academic output due to the superior ability of intuition to break epistemological obstacles, and to the development of citizens anchored in the necessity of caring for their society and environment.