Fruitful learning is more than trying to retain academic knowledge. Fruitful learning is about gaining knowledge and applying that knowledge to everyday situations. During the lecture Dr.Carr introduced some basic key terms in Africana Teaching and Learning. One term that stuck with me, because of the description given, was the word Sedjem. Sedjem means “listen” but listening is not just sitting in a classroom and hearing what is being taught. Listening is “being present”. By being present we mean that we are not simply just hearing what is being said we are absorbing the information and comprehending it and therefore that is where learning truly takes place. When it comes to who developed the learning process we have been under the impression that Europeans brought learning to America. However, Africans were actually the ones to develop writing, counting, sciences, arts, spiritual systems and formal teaching. Dating back to the reign of Askia Muhammand from 1493 to 1529 Sudanese literature was emerging. Timbuktu, Gao, Walata, and Jeene were intellectual centers for learning where studies in grammar, geography, law, literature, and surgery were offered. Africans created a foundation for learning to begin and they set their axis of learning around excellence. E. Franklin Frazier compared intellectual Africans from the Continent and the Caribbean to those from the U.S. and stated that “the Negro intellectual is unconscious of the extent to which his thinking is restricted to sterile repetition of the safe conventional ideas current to American society…” Although Africans had great impacts on education American society has taken credit for the accomplishments of Africans and has cast out the genuine and unconventional ideas of African thought.
Katelynn Pruitt
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