Innovating for the Anthropocene in rural Lesotho schools

Since Western-style education was introduced to Africa in the 19th century, it has played a central role in producing the Anthropocene, shaping the attributes and aspirations of young people, and facilitating their incorporation into the global bioeconomy. In rural areas of the contemporary Global South, however, many young people find themselves surplus to the needs of today’s global economy, but also alienated from rural life – both by schooling and by an increasingly hostile climate. In this paper, we describe the outcomes of an intervention in which 34 student teachers conducted action research in rural Lesotho schools, seeking to make education more meaningful to rural learners. While the student teachers found ways to engage learners in the curriculum, their interventions tended to reinforce the conventional role of schooling, rather than offering a more transformative pathway.