When it came to matters like hunting, some important knowledge could be transmitted using words—like where one might find some diamphidia larvae to poison an arrowhead, or which animal sinews made the best bowstrings. But the most important forms of knowledge could not. This kind of knowledge, they insisted, could not be taught because it resided not just in their minds but also in their bodies, and because it found expression in skills that could never be reduced to mere words.

To put its wisdom simply, one could say the fundamental human challenge is this:

It’s hard to learn if you already know.

Unfortunately, we are hardwired to feel as if we know—as if we see reality itself rather than a version of reality filtered through our biases, backgrounds, or expertise. But we can unlearn the habit of knowing and reinvigorate our curiosity.

Balanced and inclusive education calls for a new slogan: Network, not hierarchy. We have to understand that all languages, big and small, have a common language: it is called translation.

Education systems should never lead to linguistic and cultural self-isolation. I want to connect to the world, but I don’t have to negate my starting base first. I want to connect to the world from wherever I am. I believe that the goal of education is knowledge that empowers, that shows our real connections to the world, but from our base. From our base we explore the world: from the world we bring back that which enriches our base.

The process of knowing is quite simple. No matter where you want to journey, you start from where you are. If you are in Nairobi and you want to go to Nakuru, you don’t first go to Mombasa to start your journey to Nakuru. The same with knowledge our knowledge of the world and the universe begins with our bodies.

The language of a region holds the most effective and wide-ranging knowledge of the environment of that particular region. Destroy a people’s language, and you destroy the vocabulary by which they understood their environment, and consequently all the knowledge and information developed in the course of their interactions with that environment.

The language of the outsider becomes the language of power and normality. The vocabulary by which the conquering outsider looks at the conquered, their history, their productive capabilities, is that of the outsider. The colonial education system, enforced by the colonial language, was imbued through and through with the worldview of the outsider looking in. Those who went to the colonial school can remember lessons in geography and history that started with those of Europe.

The educated African may have consciously or unconsciously come to adopt the view of the outsider looking in. And in postcolonial Africa, the European language-educated elite has normalized the viewing of Africa from outside itself.