The Educational cognizance of Postcolonial Literature: A case of Ngugi wa Thiong'o's The River Between (1965)

Thiong’o, is a great mind, a leading novelist in the African literary landscape and literary luminary from Kenya and East Africa. From this perspective, The River Between became the first salvo in what would evolve into a lifetime preoccupation by Thiong’o in challenging Western injustices. The paper not only highlights the complexities and nuances of African ways of life before the advent of colonial adventure, but also critics Western education and western culture as disruptive and a vehicle of perpetuating injustices. The paper interrogates the educational cognizance of postcolonial literary writers in English in Thiong’o’s The River Between. The paper validates that, Western and African forms of education had values as well as shortcomings. The article defines a value as a principle of behavior whose central element is equity and inclusivity and possess the degree of usefulness to a person’s immediate environment. For that reason, any authentic schooling must uphold to values of critical thinking, creative thinking and problem solving. The article employed qualitative research paradigm. The method guided the researcher to seek interest in the way people create significance and logic of their lives, involvements and their structures in the world in which The River Between is of great interest to the researcher. The qualitative method empowered the researcher to make known paradoxes viewed as contrary ways Western and African forms of education operate in the context of The River Between. This was done artistically in analysis of Thiong’o’s prose as the main source of data of the research. Consequently, the research revealed that educational awareness in Thiong’o The River Between exposes an existing crisis of the supposition of Western education as the cradle for educational values the world over. The paper therefore, concludes that, education is a carrier of moral values. And consequential value acquaintance should be germane to people and their environment. The study attempts to fill the Lacuna existing in educational appreciation of postcolonial prose by validating that the text can be interpreted outside the contradiction of blame game.