Journalism Education in Africa

Abstract

The construction of meaning-based educational theory creates a foundation for greater tolerance and mutual respect among and between divergent peoples. This provides possibilities for pedagogical praxis to assist journalism students in constructing the means for hope, possibility and personal transcendence throughout Africa. This article considers what the purpose of journalism is, how it has been defined, and for whose benefit it has been structured to function in the way that it has. It then considers what is meant by education, for whose benefit it has been structured in the way that it has, and how this type of pedagogy fits with the realities of the many peoples, cultures and historical experiences of this vast continent.

The article examines meaning-based education as it applies to journalism students, combining literature from participatory development, critical pedagogical and spiritual theory and praxis. Examples of the implementation of such approaches from Africa, Eastern Europe and the United States are given. It urges African journalists and journalism educators to engage in ongoing dialogues to build a foundation of faith that differing African men and women can develop their own styles of journalism, and of education. These dialogues must be based upon trust, respect and understanding, using both indigenous and newer forms of mediated communication, and grounded in, as Paulo Freire urged, “their power to make and remake, to create and recreate; faith that the vocation be fully human is the birthright of all people, not the privilege of the elite.” These are the great goals of the coming era.

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Notes on contributors

John L. Hochheimer

John L. Hochheimer 〈[email protected]〉 is Associate Professor and, from 1988–2000, was founding Coordinator of the Journalism Program at Ithaca College, New York State. He has been involved in all facets of community media in the United States since the 1960s and more recently in the newly democratising countries of Eastern and Central Europe.