By Ganiu Bamgbose, PhD
SIR: Nigerian schooling may be described as a typical reflection of how to not be educated. Name this declare a sweeping assertion or generalisation, and I’ll show to you too that no matter you suppose is simply an exception from the norm that I posit.
From the “holy standing” of English because the language of instruction, to the depiction of the indigenous languages as vernacular, Nigeria is definitely not prepared for the schooling that may result in liberation. With soon-to-be-adult youngsters who make no sense of proverbs and adages and for whom English has develop into a mom tongue, our schooling is nearly as good as being an prolonged colonisation.
We could discuss curricular that aren’t in tandem with the road round? Those with which we produce graduates who have no idea how precisely they match into the nationwide equation? Have you ever heard Nigerian graduates say they wish to proceed for postgraduate levels to raised their probabilities of employment? That claims one thing. It says to us that we’ve got not recovered from the schooling of the commercial revolution the place persons are uncovered and their intelligence constructed simply to the extent to which they are often helpful to develop industries.
The Nigerian schooling experiments no matter Europeans and People are completed or virtually completed utilizing. After they wished us to consider faculty was crucial factor, they succeeded at it and that was the age dad and mom would possibly curse their youngsters who determined to do anything apart going to highschool.
You possibly can’t be a musician. You possibly can’t be a footballer. You possibly can’t be an actor. Simply go to highschool. Training is the most effective legacy. Solely deviants would do in any other case then. That was the age younger Yoruba singers had been known as “alagbe” (the noisemakers). With a saturated inhabitants of the “schooled” who are actually too many for the industries, the deviants are actually the brand new normal. Even when we nonetheless reside with the archaic mind-set of schooling as the most effective legacy, individuals are actually extra comfy with wanting to supply the following Osimhen, the following WizKid, the following Funke Akindele and perhaps the following Mr Macaroni.
And oh okay, we’re additionally pushed in the direction of expertise now. Tech is the brand new realm of the billionaires. If you happen to want to be among the many rising Invoice Gates, Elon Musks and Mark Zuckerbergs of this world who had left faculty on the time we had been nonetheless speaking about schooling as the most effective legacy, sure, strive tech.
This satellite tv for pc schooling that tries to seek out the place the world community is will at finest produce profitable individuals however can’t engender nationwide growth. An academic system that may result in nationwide growth and transformation will take the peculiarities and realities of the nation into cognizance. Such schooling is not going to push its values into extinction. A purposeful schooling will enlighten and accustom its citizenry with the indigenous values and sources that may be leveraged for nationwide growth.
Till it was publicised this 12 months that King Charles was going to be consuming herbs versus having chemotherapy, many supposedly educated Nigerians suppose lowly of herbs; a pure present that might have been factored into our schooling. It bothers nobody that we are able to make a video name to somebody on our cell phones. That’s clearly expertise. However we don’t want to have a dialog round how somebody may be summoned from a pot in Nigeria. It isn’t unusual to journey from Lagos to any a part of Europe in airplane in six hours. That’s the facility of invention. However we can’t make something out of the pure disappearing energy that’s accessible within the pure science of the Yoruba and different Nigerian tribes. The story of Onesimus, an African man who was instrumental within the mitigation of the affect of a smallpox outbreak in Boston, Massachusetts ensuing within the variolation methodology of inoculation, must be an inspiration into how what we possess as Nigerians can type the idea of our true schooling and liberate us.
Just like the Yoruba proverb which says what’s being regarded for in Sokoto (State) is true within the ṣòkòtò (pocket), Nigerian educationists and coverage makers should look inward to design curricular that may replicate us, go well with us and develop us as a rustic.