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Education
in Africa; whose Education, anyway
By Chika Ezeanya
“Why
do some of our people sometimes talk and behave as if they are not educated,”
queried the man from the podium, as he addressed his largely West African
audience; “Illiteracy, the Bane of Africa’s Underdevelopment,”
the international magazine headline recently declared; and according
to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, as at 2007, only 3 out of 10
adults in sub-Saharan Africa are literate. The above, represent the
widespread belief held within and outside Africa that the leadership
crisis and the development dilemma, which plague the continent is a
direct correlation of low literacy levels. In effect, the fact that
few Africans have been opportune to sit under structured tutelage, to
imbibe the basics of arithmetic, geography, history or the sciences,
account for the decadence that prevail in the continent’s social,
political and economic clime. A fact that goes unnoticed by Africans
is that pointing to low literacy levels as the root of Africa’s predicament,
shuns the innate abilities and shrewdness of the African. According
to the same UNESCO statistics, much more than sub-Saharan Africa, East-Asia
accounts for the highest level of illiteracy globally, but the Asians
are able to manage their economies despite being so academically challenged.
In the case of Africa, their ability to manage or structure their
society and develop their environment is hinged on the extent to which
they are able to assimilate western education.
Education
ought to empower an individual to master the peculiarities of his surroundings
and afford him the tools to improve on it qualitatively. In essence,
what might be considered knowledge in a certain part of the world could
amount to useless information in another. Take for instance a teacher
in faraway northern Nigerian teaching his elementary school pupil under
the perpetual year round heat that the four seasons of the year are;
fall, winter, spring and summer. The confusion the pupil will encounter
is such that will take him a very long time, if at all, to decipher
what the word ‘season’ implies, owing to the lack of correlation
with his environmental reality. While the example given may seem implausible,
such, form the bulk of what is widely disseminated as knowledge in the
continent of Africa today.
Western
incursion into Africa brought with it a repudiation of everything original
to the continent. The African way of doing things were classified as
backward, unscientific and barbaric. To the point of death from malaria,
the westerners that first set foot on Africa refused to drink the herbal
remedies offered by the kind natives to alleviate their suffering. Indigenous
knowledge was regarded as baseless and summarily dismissed as superstition.
Intuition, metaphysics, sixth sense and other sources of knowledge generation
long depended on, tried and tested by Africans were de-emphasized and
western “scientific” method was upheld as the ultimate. The outdoor
learning culture of Africans was scoffed at and African children were
made to seat in classrooms just like in Europe, to learn the history
of the Europeans, the Geography of Europe and the language of the colonialists.
Education became an enigma for the young and impressionable African
child, who looked on with confused eyes as his blue eyed teacher explained
that Mungo Park discovered the source of the Niger River in 1796. Unable
to comprehend, the young child ponders over the fact that the source
of the Niger River is just a stone throw away from his home, and yet
his forefathers, who lived, fished and farmed on the edge of the river,
could not “discover” it. Ashamed of his lineage, the African boy
considers the Europeans heroic to have traveled thousands of miles to
‘discover’ a river just by the nose of his own people. He dreams
of being like the Europeans, the great discoverers, and understandably
looses any regard for his 'ignorant’ people. The deep rotted inferiority
complex leads him to dismiss whatever is African; cloth, food, culture,
values, speech, technology and medicine as inadequate and in that same
mind-set, he rears his children.
Many
generations later, inferiority complex and a passionate disregard for
everything African reigns in the subconscious of the average African.
Acquisition of western education is equated with the acquisition of
common sense and values. People who were unfortunate not to have tarried
within the four walls of a school are seen to be of no value to society.
African herbal remedies are viewed with suspicion in several quarters,
and the younger generations speak only the colonial language and cannot
be caught speaking their mother tongue. An African, no matter how brilliant
and of good character, who lacks a good command of either English or
French as the case maybe or whose fairly acceptable grammar is accented
with his local dialect has a much higher chance of finding a decent
job in Europe and America than in his own country. But for the wise
step taken by Mzee Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya and to some extent Mwalimu
Julius Nyerere of Tanzania in elevating Swahili to the level of a national
language, Africa would not have had any language with global appeal
in the 21st century.
Worse
still, are the courses offered within the African higher academic system;
Euro-centered disciplines that lack applicability to the compelling
needs of the continent and its people. Nothing prepares the African
student for the reality he would face upon graduating with a degree
in French, English, Business Management, Engineering, Food and Nutrition,
Agricultural Economics or Pharmacy, to discover that he is still ill
equipped to contribute meaningfully to his society. The fields mentioned
are not inherently of no value to Africa, but the approach and curriculum
they employ is bereft of originality and does not take cognizance of
the environment in which the students are situate. Education remains
an abstract and unfathomable concept, neither easily nor conveniently
appreciated nor applicable - a wasteful endeavor that should never have
been embarked upon in the first place. Take for instance, the Pharmacy
department of African universities, where students are forced to memorize
the chemical components of the drugs already discovered by Europe and
America. On the contrary, pharmaceutical companies of Europe and America
- with the co-operation of ignorant natives – are claiming to “discover”
and patent the many herbs in the rich forests of Africa long used to
cure ailments. The drugs so manufactured are sold back to Africa at
exorbitant prices, while the student of Pharmacy from Africa graduates,
clueless about what to do with his degree.
The
high drop out rate of pupils in Africa is a symptom of the underlying
problem of boredom. The curriculum is not tied to reality and is neither
adequately intellectually stimulating nor engaging for the very brilliant
children of Africa; African children on their own, assemble radios and
mini cars from scrap metals, carve beautiful artifacts and even repair
broken down cars and motorcycles. The unproductive nature of the African
educational system goes beyond paucity of funds to a deeply entrenched
apathy on the sides of teachers, researchers, students and educational
administrators, who deep down, do not feel connected to an alien knowledge
system that is elusive of their reality. The problem of food scarcity
in Africa is not just caused by drought, but the fact that long ago,
ever before famine became heard of in Africa, youths were discouraged
from farm work and forced to sit for long hours within brick walls to
learn, just like their European counterparts. Farm work became unfashionable
and as the African proverb says, only the hands dirty with farm work
get greased with cooking oil; hunger became the reward for self denial. In Europe, classroom learning is prioritized because of the harsh and
extreme weather conditions that constrain people to stay indoors for
most of the time. Ostensibly, African youth would have excelled
more with a greater combination of outdoors or practical learning with
the theoretical, as the culture and environment dictated. Unfortunately,
they were forced to sit indoors to learn only to go home to bed confused
and hungry. As Agriculture is not part of Europe’s curriculum at the
foundational level, a fundamental part of African culture – food production-
was discouraged.
The
vicious cycle of hunger and underdevelopment can only cease when Africans
realize that indigenous knowledge, native intelligence, and values are
what makes a society grow and not any super-imposed, parasitic and dependent
knowledge. Any knowledge that lacks foundation or is completely alien
to the culture of a people would hardly engender growth, but rather,
it would create some sort of bi-polar mentality, fostering confusion
rather than progress. Until the chemical engineering departments of
African universities start using local resources as the raw materials
for research, the Food and Nutrition department take pride in
researching the calorific, nutritional and therapeutic values of African
foods, and invest efforts in developing healthy, tasty and endurable
snacks that a foreigner can enjoy, and make enquiries as to how to import
such into his own country, development and growth would remain elusive
to the continent.
The
problem is not in the acquisition of western education; the problem
lies in the fact that Africans have lost their identity. Like a man
in a borrowed suit a size or more too big or too small, Africans continue
to struggle in the ill-fitting apparel, pointing accusing fingers, first
to the tailor for not being magnanimous enough to make the suit fit
a second person; or maybe to themselves for being be too fat and needing
to go on a diet, or too thin and needing to gain a pound or two; or
could it be the fault of the fabric, but how come it fits the original
owner so perfectly well, then? The answer, which Africans have never
come to accept, is that the suit does not fit because it does not belong
to them. Western education was made to measure for the individualistic
culture, the environmental dynamics and the extreme weather conditions
of the west. The educational system should be overhauled in a simple
and inexpensive re-evaluation of curriculum, process and system carried
out by Africans who understand the nature of the issues at stake. A
practical combination of African values should be merged with international
standards, in order that the continent would not loose out in the era
of globalization. Further,
Africans must realize that the acquisition of western education alone,
as it were, does not amount to common sense or the ability to be innovative
and positively impact society. The emphasis should cease to be on the
ability of an individual to express himself in English or French as
the case maybe, as that does not remotely attest to one’s brilliance.
The fact that an individual cannot handle fork and knife or sit properly
to eat at the dining table has no direct correlation to his IQ; enough
of the self-hatred and denial. Education is good when it is a product
of the immediate environment and ought not to be validated by western
culture and educational system. The solution does not lie in looking
up to the west but in searching inwards to emerge with something original
and authentic that can be explored, developed through R&D and used
to foster development at home and ultimately exported. The list is endless;
herbal medicine, artifacts, iron and steel products, traditional clothes,
folklores, proverbs, cassava, yam, solar energy, dance, music, agricultural
practices or movies, to mention but few. Consciously, diamonds, gold,
oil and cash crops such as cocoa and coffee have been omitted as those
have been manipulatively procured by the west and can only be reclaimed
after Africa has found a voice in global discourse by being true to
its authentic self.
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Posted by Robot| 08.01.2008 20:55