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African Educational Challenges
Hadiza Wada, DBA ...June 5, 2010
About a year now (at about the inception of this publication), we ran some series on the educational challenges in Nigeria, which concentrated on improving the educational system through participation of parents and community in local schools. The series were written by Dr. Isah Abbas of the Department of Political Science at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.
Another facet we have not mentioned which has been discussed extensively in the past as a possible cause of ineffectiveness or non performance by graduating students of modern education worldwide is the effect of contemporary educational curricula and teaching processes on non white people of the world in general and black people in particular. Writing in the 1930s for example, Carter G Woodson, a well known African American who had served as an educator for about forty years in different regions of the United States came to the conclusion that contemporary curricula that berates and despises African contribution to the world goes out of its way to shortchange the colored person.
Such an education when attained by Africans tends to mis-educate them, opines Woodson. The most educated of them leave colleges with knowledge that could hardly be applied to help their people, because they read and were made to adore Shakespeare, Aristotle and Plato, Latin and Greek Philosophy a completely different way than theirs. And to make matters worse, they were taught to hate and despise themselves, crushing any motivation they may have to even try.
Though the opinion was based on the educational problems encountered by the African Americans in the United States, if you look at the premise used and the general ideas, they apply worldwide. In fact the writer mentioned also African states which were at that time still under colonial governments, as undergoing similar experiences. And not many countries to date have completely revolutionized their educational systems, revising and rewriting their textbooks to teach their children what they need to understand and from what perspective. It is therefore not much different even today.
The idea that the best philosophy, literature, analysis on life, all systems of life like how houses are built, how hospitals are run, how schools should teach and what should they teach; if you let someone with no interest in your welfare design it for you, you may never live to your full potential. The best you can be is yourself, for you can never be who you are not, you can only try your best. As the vendetta to keep slavery alive waned, and the civil war fought to maintain it failed to give victory to those who advocate continued slavery, the colored minorities began to push for changes including in areas of education. They still are doing that for the playing field is still not equal.
Others with a differing view however argue that the intent, especially these days, may not completely be to keep others down. It may be that those in educational administration never designed and write school books with the intent to help other races, but their own. With that in mind, others have argued hard and blamed other races across the world, saying that they are responsible for their destinies. In other words no one compels them to read those books.
They could take the same ideas, including the scientific ones that tend to be free of opinion and bias write their own textbooks and teach them in ways that will take into account their individual values, cultures, resources and geographical locations. By doing that they could maximize the usefulness of the knowledge. That will help their students find ways to make such knowledge applicable to their special circumstances.
But the argument of Woodson and others is not saying that you should not learn from someone of a different race and geographical location other than yours. What it is saying is, you should not be confined to just that as your curricula. For people in Africa and elsewhere, some useful parts of someone’s ideas and methods could be taught, while the major concentration is what works for you as a people, and a nation. And that you should be taught about yourself too, and encouraged to generate your own thoughts.
They argue that you should be put on a track to make your own inventions and unique contributions to your unique generation. Woodson for example detested the general mindset education fetches people, no matter how high their educational level is. With the nature of today’s curricula, students graduate with a mindset fully designed towards imitating what others have done in the past. “What they have done could be done by others, they contend; and they are right. They are wrong however in failing to realize that what others have done we may not need to do.”
And truly if we are to keep imitating what others have done from generations and centuries past, how fast then can we develop solutions for problems of our own times and set our own pace for the upcoming generation. It is akin to impeding progress. We are all human and fully capable of human progress. Every generation has its own geniuses, if they can be equipped with the best educational tools that stimulate their genius and then encourage them to develop their own thoughts, ideas and inventions. Knowledge should be built upon, not stagnant. And so long as the basis of that knowledge is not rooted in your ways and values, it becomes harder for one to adapt to it, or yet still improve on it.
There are contemporary subjects however that tend to be universal in nature. These subjects are not that affected by contemporary curricula in a way that it may become problematic for people of other races and backgrounds that are not Europeans. They include science, math, and technology. But others such as history, literature, philosophy and other art subjects responsible for creativity, social order, analysis and the like are all tainted and at odds with true education for the African.
The results of all the problems enumerated above are many, one being that those who did not really learn what could motivate and help them achieve and live up to their God given potential fail to learn how to earn a living. They come out of schools with the wrong ideology on life. Instead of choosing to enhance their ancestor’s local professions or yet innovate to enhance other facets that are needed to develop their communities, they go looking for work from someone else who has done exactly that.
Feeling inferior with a lower self worth, a consequence of many years of educational race bashing and psychological manipulations that their ancestors have contributed nothing, the educated people of African race feel too ashamed to go back to the farm with new ideas and work their ways to riches. The son of the blacksmith fails to innovate new farm implements, professional and home tools. They cling to imitation of those that they were taught as being great. Since the great times of African contribution to the world many centuries ago, for example, Africans have gone to school like anyone else, came out with the degrees, but fail to help themselves or their communities.
Because of the failure of our educational systems continent wise, and the failure to genuinely nail or nip such mis-educational problems that still plague our communities, Africans “transfer” technology (from others), not invent any. Though they have resources for all such gadgets like iron and steel, the energy to mould it, the intelligence and various Doctors of Philosophy to research and invent, and the human resources to manufacture. The identified problem of imitation therefore still exists, eighty years after the opinion was first tabled and extensively discussed.
African intellectuals do not study local resources; materials etc and see how they could cheaply provide the same service if not better than those presently adopted for years from Europe as acceptable non changeable culture. For example, as important to every family as housing is, who says we have to build houses out of cement. Even those who taught us that have moved on to other materials that are simple and more economical, and they continue to enhance it every single year. If we had adopted and continue to modify and enhance our local resources that we have in abundance, as used by our ancestors for centuries to build cooler houses in hot climatic areas, and warmer in colder areas, we may have built cheaper more efficient houses. Those houses could cut down on the immense use of electricity for example to cool down houses with corrugated iron roofs that we inherited from colonial days and still use.
All the above are consequences of mis-education, and there are yet still others
Solutions
From the above, the reader must have figured out that we have to start writing our own textbooks for school use, and be sincere in choosing the right curricula. To date most schools use books that were written with the mindset to teach others that have different values, and therefore are shooting for different stars, lifestyles, and goals. Most of the time, you have a battle on different levels, first with yourself, then your conscience, then your culture, your elders and your people in general in order to even imitate. It becomes a gradual process as more avenue and inventions come before they are incorporated in your own lifestyles. To date for example, desktop computers have not caught on even in richer countries of Africa, decades after its introduction and adoption as a household item in Europe.
Most nations are aware of the problem at some level, but those in leadership fail to work diligently in putting together appropriate textbooks. Such books should choose what part of each subject as being taught today, is of particular importance and relevance to our specific situation, and sift out ones that are not. Then they need to tailor the information and teaching method with specific examples from local events, history, and experience. Other gaps from sifted out sections should be filled with relevant and practical local event that allows for them to know who they are, what their people have done in the past. That will help them build on that foundation with full motivation.
Colleges have to be encouraged to conduct local useful researches looking for information no matter how hard it is to find and record them. They need to concentrate on local issues, local resources and local text and data bases. They have to also knit together such part of historical data, history and literature that have been neglected, lost and disorganized, in order to rewrite from their own perspectives.
And though not excusing local governmental failures, sometimes foreign nations with vested interests in making the world population slaves to their own tastes and ways, for economic and commercial expediency (so they could export to them), send in free donated books convincing them that they do not have to write their own. Nations should resist such temptations. They have to write textbooks at least for the children. Today they are busy filling kids' heads with what hardly helps them. They have to realize the gravity of what they are subjecting their people and the generations to come, slaving for foreign tastes and detesting their own home made goods and tastes. They are mortgaging their lives and the lives of their people, including their children yet unborn.