Reimagining Community Engagement in Higher Education Institutions to Cultivate Humanity through Integral Education and Ubuntu
Résumé
This chapter explores the notion of cultivating humanity in higher education community engagement in South Africa through the application of an integral education and Ubuntu approach. In the newly formed democratic order, a higher education transformation plan included the injunction to, amongst others, align more appropriately to the new social order and impact the broader community, strengthen democracy, advance a common citizenship for a common good. Implementation has been problematic, though some improvements in more recent times have been noted. In the context of the country’s weak and weakening socio-economic conditions, made worse by the Covid-19 global pandemic and the perilous state of South Africa’s democracy, the imperative for higher education to respond appropriately is beyond doubt. Accordingly, the Council on Higher Education (2020) has sought renewed considerations on the conceptualisation, design, development and implementation of community engagement programmes in universities. In this context, the chapter will reimagine community engagement for the cultivation of humanity by demonstrating the appropriateness of an integral education and Ubuntu approach which is undergirded by holism and humanism. This conception is compatible with community engagement in its alignment with the philosophies of holism and humanism, while also incorporating rationalism and pragmatism through its relationship with teaching and learning and engaged research. The reimagined paradigm thus has the potential, alongside educational intellectual development, to cultivate an awareness that human beings are interconnected to all in the world and the cosmos and that all actions impact everything in the universe.
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