Final Project

For my final project, I decided to create a curriculum, as I am planning on becoming a teacher. My focus is secondary education, so my curriculum is designed for a 12th grade classroom. I actually put a lot of time and effort into this project, and I had a lot of fun. It was encouraging to realize how much I enjoyed coming up with a book list, paper topics, a syllabus, etc. I definitely know that I am going into the correct field.

I decided to save trees and post my curriculum on a website. It can be found here.

Everything about my course, including the goals and course description, can be found on this website. Everything I could possibly write in this blog would just be a repeat of what is on the site. So go ahead, take a look, and let me know what you think!

The Education of Africa

Education in pre-colonial Africa was restricted mainly within individual tribes and consisted of equipping the youth with the knowledge and skills they would need to survive and prosper within their societies. Colonialism, of course, caused a significant change in the educational system. Now education involves much broader aspects, preparing African youth to survive not only in Africa but in the rest of the world as well. Unfortunately, the educational system in Africa is extremely underdeveloped, and many parts of the continent lack participation. The would-be staff of these African schools are often bribed away to schools in other continents with better pay and working/living conditions.

USAID is th U.S. government's organization responsible for most non-military foreign aid. They support education programs in 21 African countries. Over the past decade, USAID support has focused on strengthening African education systems through the Education Sector Support approach which emphasizes support to host government-developed and led sector reforms and capacity building. Following respective national reform plans, USAID's education programs respond to country-specific needs including policy and curriculum reform, teacher and administrator professional development, community involvement supporting schools, increasing access to school for girls and other marginalized populations, and the development of learning materials.

Animals are not here for our entertainment...

There is a list a mile long of endangered African animals, including gazelles, lemurs, hyenas, leopards, owls, snakes, toads, and more. Just looking at Lemurs, there are 39 different species of Lemurs that are currently endangered. And that’s JUST lemurs. Some of the animals that are endangered in Africa are not endangered in other areas in which they live. So why are so many animals in Africa endangered?

People are the only thing to blame for the dwindling numbers of animals found in Africa, especially the European colonists. The colonists mercilessly killed animals for meat, skin, ivory (elephants), and sometime just for sport, not giving any thought to what that might mean for the future of these beautiful creatures. They also brought European livestock, which not only competed for food with natural herbivores but which also carried foreign diseases. So, much as we saw with Africans dying from foreign diseases brought by Europeans, the same thing happened with animals. The carnivores did not have any advantage over the herbivores, however. Many carnivorous animals, such as leopards and Ethiopian wolves, were often killed out of fear. People were also quickly wiping out the gazelle, red deer, and other natural sources of food for the carnivores, meaning there was less food for them. Sometimes, they would make up for this loss of food and attack European livestock, which would then bring them foreign diseases which ended up killing them anyway.

We often hear of the genocide of Africa during the period of colonization. But what many don’t realize is that the African wildlife suffered an even worse genocide. And unfortunately for animals, it is not as easy for them to re-populate, especially since more people means less natural habitat. But there are things that people can do to help, and hunting/poaching is NOT the answer. If people stopped hunting gazelle and other herbivores, then they would re-populate, taking themselves off the endangered list. This does not mean they would over-populate to an out-of-control state. This means that there would FINALLY be enough food for the carnivores, and then they would no longer be endangered. The natural order would return. Because this is the way things were before humans came and messed everything up. It’s not right, and quite frankly, it makes me sick.



And while it may be particularly bad in Africa, this problem exists worldwide. In fact, it’s even worse in the U.S. How to help:

World Wildlife Fund
Defenders of Wildlife

Problems in Africa

“Bleeding of the Stone” was certainly an interesting book, but I was unsure about it at first. It didn’t seem to have direct correlation with political events and Africa as a whole as did the other books we read. It seemed to focus only on this select group of people and their relationships with one another.


However, this actually was related to the politics of Africa as a whole. It showed the relationship between followers of the different religions that were introduced to the Africans during the colonization period. It showed that these different religious groups did not necessarily get along. It was another example of the uncertainty and instability Africans felt after they successfully drove out the colonizers. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done. Africa had become dependent upon Europeans for everything, especially since they had been forced into adopting European currency, hence the idea of neocolonialism.

“Bleeding of the Stone” showed the fragile nature of the Africans in post-colonial Africa, as well as their fragile relationships with each other.

"Trying to maintain some semblance of hope in an increasingly hopeless world"

“Waiting for an Angel” was an interesting book. It was kind of confusing, the way it jumped around to different times in Lomba’s life. In some ways, I enjoyed that narrative style, but it was also disheartening because I knew that Lomba was ultimately going to end up in prison, despite all the good things he was trying to accomplish. The novel jumps from one awful story to the next. There is not really a time in the novel where nothing major is happening. This symbolizes the frantic and hopeless way life was for ordinary people and allows the reader to imagine living during this time.


While the characters in the novel were fictional, many of the events that took place actually happened. This made me wonder if perhaps author Helon Habila was present for any of these events, since he once held the very same job as Lomba. And when Lomba attends a party of poets and authors, a man introduces himself as ‘Helon Habila.’ At that moment, I wondered if this novel was more autobiographical than we were originally led to believe.



"Every oppressor knows that wherever one word is joined to another word to form a sentence, there'll be revolt. That is our work, the media: to refuse to be silenced, to encourage legitimate criticism wherever we find it." This touching passage from the novel made me realize how much we Americans take democracy for granted. The media can do and say almost anything they want to in America without endangering their lives. This was not the case in Nigeria. The courageous young people who hoped to bring democracy to Africa through their words were constantly at risk of being beaten, jailed, or even killed, simply for speaking their mind. It made me realize just how courageous people like Lomba were, and even non-fictional people, like Habila himself.

"There was nothing to believe in: the only mission the military rulers had was systematically to loot the national treasury; their only morality was a vicious survivalist agenda in which any hint of disloyalty was ruthlessly crushed."

Ancestor Stones 2

Thinking about Ancestor Stones and all of Africa after the colonizers left made me think of the film Diner de Cons. The film is a comedy that centers on a successful businessman and his idiotic companion. The idiot continually tries to help the businessman out of sticky situations, and although he has the best intentions and thinks he is doing what's best, he ends up making things worse. This makes me think of the "humanitarian" efforts in Africa, as well as other places around the world. European countries, along with the USA, always seem to think they know what's best for other "less civilized" countries. But how do they know what's best? They often end up causing unwanted affects and sometimes even wars. In trying to make the situation better, they end up making it worse. Everything we have read thus far, especially Ancestor Stones, since we get to take a look at post-colonial Africa, reminds me of this concept. The US and other European countries are, symbolically, the idiot portrayed in Diner de Cons, and Africa, or any other "lesser" country, is symbolically the businessman. The businessman can take care of himself and survives just fine doing things his way. All the idiot does is make things worse.

Ancestor Stones 1

Ancestor Stones begins with Abie traveling from England to her homeland of Africa to take over her family's coffee plantation. However, the main focus throughout the book is not on Abie. Instead, each of her four aunts takes us on a journey though her family's troubled history. The first five chapters introduce each of her aunts and tells mostly of their childhoods. I find the book to be very poetic, and surprisingly easy to read.



I find myself wondering why the book is titled Ancestor Stones, although I did find the part about Miriama and her mother very interesting, and of course, disturbing. I almost wanted to cry for her poor mother after her father threw away her stones. But I found Miriama's mother to be very courageous and noble. As Miriama herself points out, her mother was the only one unwilling to let go of her traditional religion and convert to either Christianity or Islam. Her stones connected her to her own parents as well as her other ancestors, and she refused to let go of their memory and what they stood for. So perhaps that is why Aminatta Forna picked the title that she did. It's about refusing to let go of your traditions in a world that seems so set on becoming "European."