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WHITHER
NIGERIA’S EDUCATION SYSTEM?
Ozodi Thomas Osuji
In a brief campaign video, the presidential candidate, Pat Utomi, lamented what, to him, is the collapsed
Nigeria’s public education system. He talked about how in the 1950s and 1960s
Nigeria’s public education
system was ranked among the best in the world. Nigerians with secondary
school education were admitted to the best universities of the world
and at them did very well. But today,
Nigeria’s university graduates, he said, are not considered material for admission by Western universities.
Nigeria’s secondary school
graduates are not even as good as elementary school graduates in the
1950s. Mr. Utomi regretted this sad state of affair and said that he
has a plan to fix it. Whereas, he did not particularly
elaborate on how he is going to go about fixing this fallen educational
system, he said that he would make
Nigeria’s education functional and pay teachers well, so as to attract and retain the best minds in the educational sector.
It
is refreshing to hear a Nigerian politician seeking public office
clearly enunciate why he is seeking office and present an agenda of
what he plans to accomplish if elected. One wish Pat Utomi good luck
and wished that other candidates for public office in
Nigeria followed his admirable example and articulated what they plan to do for Nigerians if elected to office.
Let us, briefly, focus on the Nigerian education system and what could be done about it. Clearly,
we have an educational problem in our hands and a problem calls for
solution. The manner of the solution makes a world of difference.
Essentially, there are two ways of going about solving problems: idealistic or realistic.
Idealistic
solutions are mentally constructed solutions that sound attractive but
may not be feasible in the real world. The real world limits what human
beings can do, for space, time and matter have their own immutable
laws, laws that make it impossible for human beings to do certain
things. For example, we can dream of flying but the law of aerodynamics
makes it impossible for us (animals without wings) to fly, unless we
construct mechanical contraptions that obey the aerodynamic law.
Realistic
solutions to perceived problems often do not conceptually sound
attractive but take into consideration the realities of the environment
and are likely to work out in the real world.
A
politician can be idealistic and appeal to our feelings; on the other
hand, a politician can be realistic and appeal to our reason.
Mr. Utomi talked about the excellence of
Nigeria’s yester years' education system. This is true. However,
he seemed to have forgotten something. Until the 1970s, not every
Nigerian had the opportunity to go to school, be it elementary,
secondary or university. To start with, there were very few schools in the country. Many vied for admission to these available schools. Examinations were used to select the few admitted to those schools.
In the
Lagos, where I grew up in 1960s, for example, there were very few secondary schools:
Anglican
Grammar School,
Methodists
Boys
Highs
School,
Baptist
Academy,
Igbobi
College,
Kings
College, Saint Gregory, St Finbars, Ansaru Deen, Ahmadiyya,
Lagos
City
College,
Queens
College, and a few others?
That meant that all the boys and girls graduating from elementary
schools had to sit for what was then called common entrance
examination. The few that passed this examination were selected to
attend these secondary schools (each school admitted less than a
hundred boys, each year).
The point is that only the few, the best, got into secondary schools during the era that Mr. Utomi was talking about.
These
schools were based on the British public school system and, indeed,
taught the same subjects: English language, English Literature,
History, Geography, French, Latin, Greek, Mathematics….Arithmetic,
Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, Statistics, and Calculus…Physics,
Chemistry and biology. All the students were required to
take all these subjects, right from the get go, form one, although for
the purposes of the West African School Certificate Examination they
were required to take about ten of the subjects and must pass, at
least, eight of them.
These schools were not free; they were paid for out of the students’ parents’ pockets.
The
combination of the facts that these schools were difficult to get into,
and were expensive to attend, made students to work hard at their
studies.
Graduates of these schools were as good as those who went to the best of the English public school system (Harrow, Rugby,
Eton, Winchester etc). Indeed, students often
read the same books as was read at those English schools and took the
same examinations.
The
salient point is that those secondary schools were very selective and
exclusive and prepared students as well as could be found in secondary
schools any where in the world.
The
Nigeria of the 1960s had only four universities:
Ibadan,
Lagos, Nnsukka,
Ife and Ahmadu Bello. Generally, each
of these universities had small student populations (ten thousand
students would be the outermost number).
This
meant that the many graduates of secondary schools had to fiercely
compete for admission to the few universities. Naturally, only the best
were able to make it into those universities.
Simply put, only the best made it through yester years’
Nigeria’s educational system.
A Nigerian university graduate in 1970 was as good as the graduates of
the best universities of the world, including,
Oxford,
Cambridge, Sorbonne (
University of
Paris), Harvard, Yale,
Princeton, University of California etc.
I took the trouble to rehash
Nigeria’s past educational
system for a reason. Pat Utomi talked somewhat nostalgically about that
past education system. He seems to wish that all Nigerian students
could be provided with such excellent schooling. However, he seems to
have forgotten that then, only a few Nigerians were given such
excellent education.
To the best of my knowledge, no country in the world provides all persons that level of quality education. Even
America does not have the type of quality education that the 1960s Nigerian schools gave its students.
In the
USA, there are essentially two types of education: Mickey mousey education for the masses, offered at K through 12th grade at
America’s public schools, and the rigorous education found at
America’s private secondary schools, such as
Andover.
The
typical American high school is not as good as the 1960s Nigerian
secondary schools. Perhaps, we could compare the private secondary
schools of
America with typical Nigerian secondary schools of the 1960s?
The same applies to
America’s universities. There are about 3000 post secondary school colleges (universities) in
America. Many of these are
simply not good. A few hundreds of these are the best in the world.
Generally, the best universities attract students from the best
secondary schools (mostly private schools) and from the best of other
countries. Graduates of
Nigeria’s 1960s secondary schools did very well at
America’s best secondary schools.
The past educational system of
Nigeria that Pat Utomi
wishfully talked about was highly selective, elitist and undemocratic;
it was, by design, meant to educate only the best and brightest. It was
not designed for the masses. No country can afford to replicate that
outmoded educational system in the extant world.
Even
Britain, the country from which
Nigeria copied its past education system, did not provide such expensive education to all British children.
Britain uses a series of examinations to weed out many students from higher education and redirect the less able to technical schools.
In
Germany, by age sixteen,
secondary school students are tested and a few tracked to universities,
whereas the rest are tracked to vocational schools (and they have the
best vocational schools in the world).
The
relevant point is that what Mr. Utomi is hoping for is idealistic and
not realistic. Idealistically, a country should provide the best
education to all its children but realistically no country does so. And
even if a country has the will and resources to give all its children
the best education, it is frustrated by the little fact that students
come with different intelligence levels, and not all of them can
benefit from top notch education.
Nigeria
does not keep good statistics; nevertheless, we can safely state that
prior to 1970, no more than 60% of Nigerians graduated from elementary
schools, no more than 20% graduated from secondary schools, and that no
more than 5% graduated from universities.
Beginning from the 1970s, education was made available to the masses of
Nigeria. Obafemi Awolowo had
given the then Western region free primary education in the 1950s. In
the 1970s, and thereafter, the other states of
Nigeria followed the West and offered universal elementary education to all their children?
Today,
just about all Nigerian children go to primary schools and, at least,
fifty percent of them go on to secondary schools. Perhaps, 25% of
Nigeria’s secondary school leavers go to universities?
Universities are been built every where, from the four in the 1960s to about 79 today. Just about every young person who wants to go to university can now do so in
Nigeria. (With a
population estimated at over 100 million, the country probably needs
about 500 universities to accommodate all those eligible for university
education.)
What has changed between the 1960s and today is that education is now offered to most Nigerians, as it should be.
In the processes of doing so, unfortunately,
Nigeria has not thought out
where it wants to go with its educational systems. What it seems to be
doing is copying other people’s educational system. She forgets that
educational systems, like everything else, adapts to specific
environments. You cannot necessarily make what works in one environment
work in another.
In
the past, Nigeria used to have the British (elitist) system but has,
more or less, jettisoned it and embraced the American twelve year
public school system (six years of elementary, six years of secondary
education…broken down into two parts, three years of junior high school
and three years of senior high school).
Nigeria is increasingly copying the American four years undergraduate education (as opposed to three years in
Britain); two years graduate
education for the masters and additional three years to complete the
doctoral education before dissertation. However, while embracing the
American university system, it, more or less, still has a somewhat
British academic culture. In the British system, undergraduates focus
on their discipline, only; in the American undergraduate system,
students are generalists though they choose a major.
What is the problem with the Nigerian educational system? There are many problems with the Nigerian educational system. One of the problems is that
Nigeria has not yet produced her own philosophy of education to give its educational system purpose and direction.
In
America, folks like John Dewey, who built on
America’s dominant philosophy, William James Pragmatism, formulated an educational philosophy for the country.
America considers itself
democratic (?). For all citizens to be able to make wise democratic
choices, it is deemed proper to provide them with free elementary and
secondary schooling. Thus, for pragmatic reasons, to have citizens who
make rational voting choices, most Americans are given publicly paid
elementary and secondary education. This education is general in nature. After secondary schooling,
America leaves graduates to
their own devices. Those who desire it go to universities where they
pay for their own education (or are on scholarship).
America’s university
education is not practical and functional ala Mr. Utomi’s wishes. For
example, a person graduating with a degree from the liberal arts and
sciences generally has no job opportunities and has to redirect himself
into whatever field he wants to work in. It is only in a few fields, such as Engineering, Medicine, Law, and Business etc that
America’s education is highly specific and functional.
America’s vocational education system, what there is of it, is in shambles. The
Germans know best how to produce technicians: send high school students
who are not academically inclined to trade schools, where they have two
years workshop training in specific trades, and additional two years of
on the job training in their trade; German technicians are well trained
and probably are the best in the world. (Nigeria ought to look into the
German trade school system. We certainly lack people who can fix things. We
produce university graduates who cannot do anything in the work world.
Perhaps, it was better if we tracked many of our so-called university
graduates to trade schools?)
For our present purposes,
Nigeria does not have a well
articulated educational philosophy. It does not know what kind of
education it wants to provide its young people. However, hypothetically
speaking, education ought to produce workers demanded by industry and
other employers in general. Schools ought to be making adjustments to
fit what the market (demand of labor) requires. For example, in the
1990s,
America went through an
Internet revolution. Universities were churning out students trained in
computer science. College seniors were actively recruited by high tech
industries. But today, the high tech industry is saturated and
graduates of computer science often go for years before they could
obtain jobs (if at all). Universities appreciating changes in the
market (supply and demand of labor) are now concentrating on producing
students with other skills.
Pat
Utomi’s proposition for functional education would seem to mean
designing higher education to produce graduates whose skills industry
has demands for. In that light,
Nigeria, a
developing economy, needs doers, lots of engineers (and some thinkers,
pure scientists) and ought to design its schools to churn out these
desired people.
South Korea, for example, designed its school system in such a manner that over 33% of graduates is in engineering!
So what is Pat Utomi going to do to fix
Nigeria’s broken down educational system? First, some one needs to articulate an educational philosophy for
Nigeria. Having done that, politicians like Pat Utomi ought to implement it.
In the absence of such a well articulated educational goal, we are left with our individual views on the subject.
My personal view is that we ought to pay attention to education. We
ought to teach students what they are supposed to learn at each level
of the education process: elementary, secondary, technical and
university. We ought to make sure that our teachers know
what they are supposed to teach (by hiring qualified ones and testing
them to make sure that they have comprehensive understanding of their
subject areas). We ought to pay our teachers well.
We
ought to hold students accountable for learning what they are supposed
to learn at each educational level. Teach all there is supposed to be
taught at each level then test students to ascertain that they learned
what they are supposed to learn. Reality being what it is there are
very bright students, average students and mediocre students. Society’s
obligation is to offer all people equal opportunity (education) but not
to equalize them. Teach them and test them and group them according to
their performance.
Finally, I wish that the public pay for all students education, at all levels: elementary, secondary, technical and university. In
my view, education is a human right. (If you ask: how are we going to
be able to pay for it, where shall we obtain the resources? Well, that
is a topic for a different essay. For a start, we could look into how
America pays for its public education, such as property taxes etc.
Where there is a will there is a way.)
Realism tells us that a developing country like
Nigeria is not likely to have the best education in the world. Good
education systems take time to come into being. Education systems, like
democratic systems, grow over time. Countries develop educational
traditions, traditions that cannot be hurried. The British or French
educational system took centuries to develop. You cannot replicate
those systems in
Nigeria in a hurry. Even if you tried to transplant them to
Nigeria, they would not work as well as they do in their countries of origin, for they reflect the culture of their owners.
This is not to despair, for, in time,
Nigeria would develop an educational tradition, a tradition that reflects Nigerians culture. In the meantime, the most that we can do is build schools, make them as rigorous as possible and leave it at that.
We do not need to worry about the quality of our schools. They will take time before they become as good as
America’s elite colleges. Talking about
America’s colleges, it was only in the 1930s when, as a result of Nazi persecution, Jewish scholars left
Germany and came to American universities, that
America’s universities became first rate. Before that they were considered second rate.
By the same token, in time
Nigeria and
Africa would produce first rate universities. In the meantime, just build, equip and fund them.
*Pat
Utomi, I saw your video tape this morning, thanks to Professor Bolaji
Aluko, who made it available to us and during my lunch hour, sat down
and wrote this essay. I did not have the time to edit or reflect on its
content. It is my on the spur feedback to you. Do with it as you
desire. If there is anything else that I can do to help you accomplish
your goal of becoming the next President of Nigeria, please do not
hesitate in contacting me. God bless you.
Sincerely,
Ozodi Thomas Osuji, PhD (UCLA)
December 20, 2006
Links to Utomi's Campaign Videos
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Posted by Robot| 21.12.2006 07:51