The Legacies of the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans and Human Development Challenges: The Role of Education

by Sandra Gift

This paper discusses some of the legacies of the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Afri ca ns (TTEA) as they relate to human development and freedom and the role of quality education in addressing them. It gives a general overview of the pedagogical challenges selected secondary school teachers in the Americas/Caribbean, Africa and Europe confront in teaching the TTEA, and highlights their students' emotional responses to the race related content of the subject. These include feelings of anger, shame guilt, and denial. These emotional responses, if not confronted, can severely compromise the role that teaching the TTEA ought to play in contributing to the human development and true freedom of the descendants of the formerly enslaved. The paper thus speaks to the potential that effective pedagogy offers for enhancing the quality of education on the subject of the TTEA and for contributing to sustainable human development as facilitated by the cognitive and affective domains of education.