Charmaine Benita Villet - Böcker

Education is intertwined with social justice in multivarious ways, and it takes place in historically defined contexts. The proposed collective volume brings together a range of perspectives from an interdisciplinary array of social sciences with a clear focus on education. The authors include academics and some activists from Namibia and Germany. The contributions are centred on current issues and challenges, but in particular on account of the binational composition of the authors, the historical context of German colonial rule and the 1903-1908 genocide also form a focus of attention. However, the contributions do not rehearse history only or exclusively. Authors address an array of current issues, ranging from social justice to the issues of recognition, apology, and reparation connected with the genocide. The latter issue is connected in many ways with the questions of justice and equity as well as with the persistent high social inequality that besets Namibia. It affects the psycho-social well-being of learners and their family relations, but relates also to class room practice and the syllabus. One main concern here, motivated especially by educational considerations, is transgenerational trauma in the wake of the genocide. As has been shown in other, more intensely researched cases, most notably the Holocaust, trauma sustained from experiences of large-scale violence including mass killings, genocide or concentration camps may be transmitted to survivors’ posterity through several generations. In Namibia, various discourses among victim communities speak to this circumstance. The proposed volume addresses these issues from the various perspectives of educational science, history, philosophy, sociology, and public health. It addresses communal memory practices, which keep oral traditions alive. It also looks at curricular issues and various aspects of teaching practice, in particular approaches centred on social change.