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Mulimbi, Bethany Lynn

Multiethnic states globally face the dilemma of how to negotiate ethnic diversity while promoting a unified national identity. In Botswana, a remarkable example of peace and stability in Sub-Saharan Africa, two highly visible discourses around national identity – one constructing national identity around the majority ethnic group’s culture and language, and the other of a tolerant, multicultural nation – currently compete across public spheres.

Formal schools are key institutions through which to observe the nature and effects of these competing discourses. State leaders use mass education as a vehicle to transmit an authorized version of national identity, through centralized education policies and curriculum. Yet schools are also sites in which ordinary teachers and students actively participate in constructing the nation.

This dissertation reports on comparative case studies of four junior secondary schools that vary in the ethnic composition of their student bodies and surrounding communities. The work analyzes one overarching question: How does national identity, as currently constructed and experienced in Botswana’s public junior secondary schools, account for the reality of ethnic diversity in the nation-state and its schools? The three papers that together comprise this dissertation approach the inquiry through different lenses. The first paper analyzes social studies curriculum, as written in the syllabus and textbooks and as taught by teachers, to consider how national identity is officially constructed. The second examines how Botswana’s schools respond to the multiculturalism of their student bodies, within the context of assimilationist and nationally centralized education policies and curriculum. The final paper considers how junior secondary schools shape the social identity development of adolescents as they negotiate how and why to enact ethnic versus national identities.

Overall, I find continuing dominance of majority Tswana language and culture in the content of public schools’ policies and curriculum in Botswana, which are then implemented with fidelity by teachers and administrators, regardless of the cultural composition and perceived needs of their student bodies. In each paper, I offer recommendations for how practitioners and policy makers might move forward in transforming multicultural discourse into multicultural school practices promoting the equality of all of Botswana’s students.

This study examines how education can disrupt threats of conflict, specifically in the presence of ethnic diversity. We present a historical analysis of Botswana, using methods of process tracing drawing on documents, in-depth interviews, and Afrobarometer survey data. Post-independence Botswana engaged in redistribution of educational access across ethnic groups and promotion of common civic principles of social harmony. At the same time, it constructed through schools ethnically-based national identity, which excluded many minorities. Lack of recognition for ethnic minorities remains a persistent challenge, yet it exists in a context of high commitment to unity and the nation-state, even among minority groups, which may have allowed recent dissent to happen peacefully. The paper defines mechanisms by which educational redistribution and recognition can disrupt resource-based and identity-based inequalities that often lead to conflict. This model holds promise for conflict avoidance and mitigation in multiethnic states globally.

This article examines nation-state policies that have prioritized toleration of diversity over recognition through comparative case studies of three junior secondary schools in Botswana. Through data collected in observations, focus groups, interviews, and Participatory Action Research, we demonstrate how the schools, which varied in the ethnic composition of their students, teachers, and surrounding communities, responded differently to the reality of their multicultural student bodies. Two followed national policies closely, while the third crafted school level policies adapted to its student population, yet tightly constricted by national policies and curriculum. In all three schools, students of ethnic minority backgrounds experienced varying degrees of shame, discrimination, and a sense of exclusion from the nation and found little recourse to discuss and address these experiences within the structures of their schools. We argue that schools could better develop students’ capacity for equal citizenship were they supported by national education policies and curriculum to recognize the cultural, historical, and linguistic diversity of Botswana’s ethnic minorities explicitly in schools.