Patriotism Education in Primary and Secondary Schools in Uganda

Abstract

Promoting patriotism and its education has always been at the fore front for Uganda’s governance, from the time when the current ruling party had come into power in the late 1980’s, HE Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has always preached the issue of patriotism education. Uganda as a new democratic country is faced with many challenges among which include implementing the new ideas and policies that its leaders come up with. For instance, even though the government white paper clearly stipulates that patriotism has to be taught at either primary or secondary school level, the issue of whether this policy is implemented in schools begs a lot to question. In addition, despite the suggested funds for the issues of patriotism education a lot of it is redirected for other societal needs and thus undermining the importance of patriotism education. This research has analyzed the issue of patriotic education, its implementation or otherwise as a policy in Uganda’s education system. Various theories and conceptual frameworks such as moderate patriotism theory and social cultural concept respectively have been brought in to perspective in the study. The research is a literature review research and the dominant methodology has been archival and library research coupled with the researcher’s observations of the day to day happenings in the country. The research also gives an insight into the challenges that patriotism education is faced with, the lack of implementation of many government policies with regards to policies and the limited role that governments representatives have played in combating these challenges.