Education in the Sudan: the privileging of an Islamic discourse

This article examines the educational discourse in the part of the Sudan administered by the Government of the Sudan. It first analyses the value system upon which the Sudanese education is based by focusing on the nature of Islamism. Such a discussion is necessary because the dominant discourse is a discourse where power and Islamic theocracy legitimise each other and spill over into the educational discourse. Given the ethnic and religious complexity in the Sudan the imposition of a fundamentalist Islamic discourse is fiercely contested. The second part of the article, therefore, discusses the educational discourse of the government and relates it to the oppositional discourses in the country. It pays particular attention to the homogenising efforts of the dominant discourse to eradicate difference as a constituting factor in the Sudanese education system. The attempts to recognise difference have not led to a fundamental negotiation of the consequences of Islamism in the official school system.