Scientific Perspectives to African Cultural Expressions

Though several African intellectuals have the perception that formal science, including mathematics, is universal, objective, authoritarian, value free, infallible and unchangeable, there is a growing realisation among African scientist and science educators of the need for overhauling Africa’s educational systems to allow the integration of knowledge based on African cultural expressions into the formal school curriculum. This paper examines how African cultural expressions, can be used to improve the scientific literacy of children growing on the continent in the 21st century. The writer explains how the wholesome deployment of such African cultural expressions as folktales, cloth designs and rhyme games can be of immense value to the teaching of science and mathematics.