This is the second part of a two-part essay on education and the search for truth. In the first part, the author examined education and the formation of virtue. Now he turns his attention to African folklore pedagogy and the sacramental imagination.
African traditions of pedagogy formed generations long before colonial systems of schooling were imposed. Folklore, proverbs, song, and storytelling are not marginal curiosities but rich resources for teaching. They form a philosophy of education in their own right.
African folklore pedagogics rest on the conviction that knowledge is never detached from life. Stories are not merely entertainment; they are moral and spiritual formation. The tale of the hare’s cunning or the lion’s pride carries lessons about virtue, vice, and survival. Proverbs distill generations of insight into a single phrase, such as the Tswana saying “Motho ke motho ka batho” (a person is a person because of others). In these expressions, truth takes on flesh in community practice.
The philosopher Mogobe Ramose, in his work African Philosophy Through Ubuntu (1999), insists that ubuntu is not only an ethical principle but is also epistemological. To know is to know with others. Knowledge is communal, relational, and deeply moral. Contrast this with the Western Enlightenment’s solitary knower, the cogito of Descartes, and the depth of the African contribution becomes clear.
In a classroom context, African folklore pedagogics challenges teachers to move beyond abstract information delivery toward the integration of wisdom, story, and communal reflection. A parable, whether biblical or indigenous, can often reach the heart more effectively than a lecture. Consider the Akan concept of sankofa, usually symbolized by a bird looking backward with an egg in its beak. It teaches that progress requires retrieval of wisdom from the past. In schools, this symbol reminds us that excellence is not only future achievement but also the capacity to draw from tradition.
This resonates with John Milbank’s insistence that theology, and indeed knowledge, cannot progress by severing itself from tradition. Knowledge grows through remembering rightly. Similarly, St. Augustine argued that memory is the great storehouse of the soul, where God’s light illumines past experience to form future action (Confessions, Book X). African pedagogy and Christian theology converge here: excellence requires both retrieval and renewal.
Practically, schools can embody this by incorporating storytelling, proverb, and ritual into pedagogy. Imagine a science lesson beginning with an indigenous story about the stars before moving to astronomy. This not only honors culture but shows students that their traditions are legitimate bearers of truth. Excellence, in this sense, is integrative—it refuses to fragment knowledge into secular and sacred, African and Western, but holds them together in a larger whole.
It may also be noted that African pedagogy embraces the arts—dance, music, and drama—as essential forms of knowing. In this, it resonates with Aquinas’s recognition that beauty is a transcendent to being, a pathway to God. To teach excellently, then, is to allow students to encounter truth through beauty and creativity, not merely through abstraction.
And if I may add with a little Fulton Sheen flair: in Africa, we do not just talk about education—we sing it, dance it, and eat it! And perhaps if our classrooms had a little more song, dance, and bread, we might find our test scores miraculously rising too.
Sacramental Imagination and Education
The Eucharist is the school of divine pedagogy. In it, God teaches us not by abstract lecture but by embodied gift. Bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ, teaching us that matter is not disposable but sacramental. As Pope Benedict XVI declared in Sacramentum Caritatis (2007), the Eucharist is the “source and summit of the Church’s life” (§1) and, by extension, the source and summit of Christian education.
To approach knowledge sacramentally is to see the world as charged with the grandeur of God, as Gerard Manley Hopkins once put it. It is to recognise that every subject taught in school—mathematics, literature, physics, art—can be a pathway to wonder and worship. Aquinas saw no conflict between reason and revelation; rather, he insisted that all truth, wherever found, is from the Holy Spirit (Summa Theologiae I-II, q.109, a.1). Thus, every classroom is in a sense an extension of the altar, every blackboard a kind of lectern of the Word, every experiment in the laboratory a contemplation of God’s handiwork.
But the Eucharist also teaches us about justice. In the Eucharist, all are fed from the one Bread, without discrimination. St. Paul chastised the Corinthians for their divisions at the table (1 Cor. 11:17–34), reminding us that Eucharistic worship is inseparable from social justice. Benedict XVI captured this when he spoke of the “Eucharistic imperative” to love and serve the poor (Sacramentum Caritatis, §88). To educate Eucharistically is to form students who see knowledge not as a private possession but as a gift to be shared for the common good.
Here the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) provides a perfect educational icon. Those who passed by the wounded man were not evil; they were obeying ritual law, avoiding defilement. But the Samaritan saw differently: he saw sacramentally. He recognized in the broken body of the stranger the presence of God. Education that is Eucharistic teaches us to see the world with Samaritan eyes—to discern Christ in the margins, to act with mercy even when law might excuse indifference.
In South African schools, this means that educational excellence must include a commitment to reconciliation, justice, and transformation. To teach Eucharistically is to teach students to ask: How does this knowledge serve the neighbor? How does this science heal the land? How does this history reconcile the divided? If our schools do not form such questions, they may produce clever graduates but not excellent disciples.
The Eucharist also models the rhythm of receptivity and mission. We receive Christ’s Body and are sent forth: Ite, missa est. Similarly, students must be taught not only to receive knowledge but to be sent with it—to live it out in service. The classroom without mission is like Mass without dismissal: incomplete.
Perhaps one more Sheen-style pun will lighten the weight: A teacher once asked, “Why do we say the Mass never ends?” A student replied, “Because the priest’s homily was too long!” But in truth, the Mass never ends because its dismissal sends us into the world. Likewise, education never ends—it flows outward into life, work, and witness.
Challenges and Opportunities in An Age of Relativism
How then might we pursue excellence in an age of relativism? Relativism whispers into the ears of our students: “Your truth is yours, my truth is mine.” It teaches that all claims to truth are equally valid, that moral convictions are matters of taste rather than reality. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, before becoming Pope Benedict XVI, described this as the dictatorship of relativism—a tyranny that recognizes no authority outside the self.
At first glance, relativism may seem liberating: it releases us from the burdens of judgment and from uncomfortable absolutes. But in practice, it leaves young people adrift, without compass or horizon. A society without truth becomes a society without justice, for without shared standards, might becomes right. As the prophet Isaiah warns, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness” (5:20, NRSV).
Educational excellence cannot mean the production of clever relativists. It must mean the formation of young men and women who are anchored in truth, capable of discerning the good, and courageous enough to live it out.
Yet here lies the tension. In our pluralistic South African classrooms, we cannot simply impose one tradition’s truth as if all others were irrelevant. The challenge, then, is to teach in a way that honors diversity while still affirming objective values. This requires what Rowan Williams calls “hospitality of the mind”: a willingness to listen deeply to other traditions, yet without surrendering our convictions.
John Milbank helps us here. He argues that relativism is a disguised absolutism, for it absolutizes the claim that no truth is absolute. Instead, he calls for a renewed vision of participation in truth: truth is not a possession but a relationship, rooted in the eternal Logos, Jesus Christ. This allows us to affirm objective values while avoiding arrogance. For to know truth is not to master it, but to be mastered by it.
African wisdom traditions also provide a corrective to relativism. Ubuntu, in its moral sense, insists that truth is tested in community. A proverb cannot be self-invented; it must stand the test of the elders. Relativism isolates the self; ubuntu grounds knowledge in community. In a classroom, this means truth emerges not in individual assertion alone but in communal discernment. Excellence, then, is relational, not solipsistic.
The opportunity of our relativistic age is this: students are already primed to ask questions, to resist dogma, to seek authenticity. They are suspicious of rigid authority but open to dialogical truth. This is where the teacher’s role as witness is crucial. As Parker Palmer insists, the teacher must not merely deliver information but embody truth. In a relativistic culture, authenticity speaks louder than authority. When students see a teacher who loves learning, who embodies virtue, who treats them with dignity, they glimpse the possibility that truth is not oppressive but liberating.
Pope Benedict XVI, in his Regensburg Lecture (2006), stressed that faith and reason must walk together. Reason without faith becomes cold positivism; faith without reason collapses into fanaticism. In education, this balance is vital. To combat relativism, we must train reason to discern, but also faith to trust, love to anchor, and virtue to guide. Only then do we arrive at true excellence.
Practical Pathways
Theory without practice is like a classroom without students: empty. Having explored the theological and philosophical dimensions of excellence, let us sketch practical pathways.
- Integrating Virtue Ethics into Curriculum
Schools should not only ask, “What knowledge must we impart?” but also, “What kind of people are we forming?” Inspired by Aquinas, we can embed virtues such as prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance into all disciplines. In a mathematics lesson, patience and precision are virtues; in literature, empathy and imagination; in sports, courage and teamwork. African ethicists such as Augustine Shutte remind us that ubuntu is itself a virtue ethic: to be human is to act with compassion, justice, and hospitality. - Storytelling as Pedagogical Practice
Teachers can reclaim storytelling—biblical, historical, and in my context African—as central to pedagogy. Stories shape moral imagination far more deeply than rules. As Plato warned, “Those who tell the stories rule society.” We might add: those who teach the stories form its soul. - Eucharistic School Culture
Schools with Christian ethos, particularly Christian schools, can embody Eucharistic pedagogy by ensuring that liturgy and learning flow together. School Eucharists should not be isolated events but interpreted as the heart of the school’s learning community. In the Eucharist, students learn justice, gratitude, and wonder. - Dialogical Classrooms
In a relativistic context, classrooms must be spaces of dialogue rather than monologue. This does not mean abandoning truth claims, but rather testing them in conversation. The teacher is both authority and fellow seeker. This models the humility and confidence needed in public life. - Justice-Oriented Education
South Africa, where I serve, has a history of inequality, one that demands that educational excellence includes a preferential option for the poor. Schools must form students who understand education as responsibility, not privilege. Service learning, community engagement, and critical pedagogy are vital. As Pope Benedict XVI insisted, love of neighbor is inseparable from love of God (Deus Caritas Est, §16). - Formation of Teachers
Teachers must be formed not only in technical skills but in spiritual and moral resilience. Retreats, theological reflection groups, and professional development in virtue ethics and African pedagogics could be implemented. For as Palmer reminds us, “We teach who we are.” The health of the teacher’s soul is the seedbed of educational excellence. - Humor and Humanity in Teaching
Finally, excellence requires joy. Fulton Sheen was right to pepper his sermons with wit, for truth without joy is unappealing. As Proverbs says, “A cheerful heart is a good medicine” (17:22, NRSV). Teachers who laugh with their students, who bring humanity into the classroom, embody a kind of excellence that no exam can measure.
Educational excellence, then, is not merely about producing employable graduates or outperforming global league tables. It is about the formation of souls who seek truth, embody virtue, and live in communion. It is about creating schools where Christian theology and contemporary pedagogy meet in fruitful dialogue. And in my context, African wisdom plays a part too.
St. Thomas Aquinas taught that the goal of human life is the vision of God. John Milbank reminds us that all truth participates in the eternal Logos. Parker Palmer insists that good teaching flows from the integrity of the teacher’s being. African folklore tells us that wisdom comes through community, memory, and story. Together, these voices call us to an education that is sacramental, communal, virtuous, and joyful.
Teachers and educational leaders are called to be not only transmitters of knowledge but witnesses to truth, not only instructors but midwives of wisdom, not only employees but disciples. Excellence is costly, but as the Cross shows us, it is also glorious.
The Rev. Thapelo Masemola is Chaplain at St John's College, Johannesburg, South Africa.
