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| a young Lady who earns living as a guitarist, she didn't need university education to do that, the best she could do is to go to a music school but here in Africa, she probably will be considered a failure for not going to university. |
My reason for taking this topic is to appreciate it that we have an understanding of education in Africa, unfortunately our understanding of education is
an error; it can be well described as
“MIS-education. When purpose is wrongly
conceived then the process and results can
never be adequate. What is Education? In my
opinion, Education is the process of conscious
mental development, moral development and
development of aesthetic values through information. I guess you agree with me
on that. At what point did we leave this
responsibility to “whatever schools can
provide” alone? What role does the family and
society at large plays in regards to the
definition education above? We have allowed
school to define the character and life focus
of our children because we fail in our
definition of education. The school actually carries
fewer burdens compared to the family and the
society which they will return to after school
years.
Schools in Nigeria have found a short cut
to justification by simply packaging the
students to pass promotional and external examinations
as an adequate return for the fees paid by the
parents. The initial question come; are the
student thereafter educated or just branded as
“PASSED”? Just by passing WAEC or graduating
from a University, a youth feels on top of the
world and unable/unwilling to learn new
things. Education actually has no clear
gradation as we try represent by academic
qualification but it is the expansion of
the capacity of the human mind to accommodate,
process and produce viable results congruent
with contemporary civilization or advance it
further. It is the detailed understanding of how humanity has started from pre-civilization, age by age until now and how they have lived and catered for their needs. Is there anything actually new? Man has always provided himself food, shelter, clothing and information. The only thing that could be new is the evolution of technology which in effect boosts human efficiency at the provision of same food, shelter, clothing and
Information as earlier stated.
Education
is the continuous contemplation on the processes of production, analyzing the effects of each of the factors of production; Man, Machines and Natural Resources, the different mix possibilities and results. It’s unfortunate that we
have
limited our so called education to Careerism. Parents and Teachers ask a child to choose a
career and start mentoring the Child towards
that as an end in it. The children follow that
diligently and become Doctors, Lawyers, and
Engineers etc. but after school they can
barely function beyond programmed or indoctrinated
professions. They are blank in almost every
other thing; they are not critical enough to
even research new ideas in their own fields!
What could be worse? Most University graduates do
not even understand the need to cover sensitive
parts of the body, just because non-schooled showbiz models wear lousy jewelries, open up their body for advertisement companies, dress improperly to attract attention.
The unschooled gangster rappers have suddenly become the models also for those who have spent four years in the University. What other proof do you need to explain that such candidates have gone to school but have refused to be educated? We have graduates today who lack communication skills, not just their popular inability to speak and write in clear English, but that they don’t even have the adequate morality of relating both with elderly people in the society, they are often very rude, also when it comes to relating to younger ones they are also very proud.
In essence, apart from
having
a University degree, there is nothing enviable
about their ways of life or their intellectual
judgments, if they have.
Most of those we call educated due to our wrong definition of
education require the society to provide them
a job than having the ability to create one,
but that is what our academic institutions have been designed to produce.
How come most of those who didn’t go to university but developed themselves
technically stand independent in their
vocations and make headways without
complaining of unemployment? They must
actually be more educated than our “STATUSSED
UNIVERSITY AND POLYTECHNIC GRADUATES” who are
often intellectually stranded after school.
Every human
being is a potential force in economics but
the viability of the force is dependent on the
capacity infused in him/her which can only be
through education, but not essentially through
university alone.
Tales by
moonlight and folklores were avenues used in teaching uprightness and morality to children in Africa. When a child looses morality and uprightness, rarely can he/she get anything right in life because negative attitude repels among diligent and conscientious people. Families had ways of incorporating children in domestic chores so that when they grow with learning responsibility, it will be part of them when they become of ages and are independent. Domestic corrections (even forceful at times
with heady/violent children) are effective ways of culturing the attitude of
children.
Many of the times when they take discipline
in school for granted, School Principals defer to parents in order to make
discipline effective.
These are ways to make a complete
rational man out the children for them to
produce new answers for our society; advanced
commerce and industry, plan government and
take Africa out of the present states
hopelessness. Poverty is defined as the state
in which one lacks a usual or socially
acceptable amount of money or material
possession. The main argument about poverty
among us in Africa has suddenly and wrongly
been reduced to non-earning of enough salary
that can guarantee a socially acceptable
amount of money or material possession as quoted
above. That perspective is too simplistic and
misleading. In actual fact, not all societies in human history and existence had been organized
along wages and salaries, yet people had lived
there-in above poverty.
The
actual philosophy of poverty is the inability of any person or group of persons to be able to use time and nature around them to produce useful values that are adequate to guarantee a socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions. The
philosophy applies
either in large corporate environment, SMEs or
rural communities.
So the guilt before every individual
and Africa in general is that we are not
training or children to solve problems, (our youth
are not determined to be trained), taking advantage
of the yet available resources; human,
material, technological and infrastructural to
the most optimum. They are cultured to
complain of what they don’t have without being
able to utilize what they yet have.
Start thinking and creating values locally, start creating values of international competitiveness both for local markets and exports. In actual truth, the reason anyone will be poor as a youth today will be inability to use the education
gotten to produce adequate value(s) for
society that could guarantee an equitable exchange
for a socially acceptable status. Industry is defined as a systematic labour (exertion of force) especially for some purpose or the creation of something of value. Regardless of the size of the industry available to you, or the industry you can create; every youth in Africa must grow with an industrial mindset as defined above.
They must wash-off the mindset that their
goals in life are just to work for someone
else to earn salary, which is not always
guaranteed. A whole lot of times they are
caught in an eventual trap of disappointment
and loss of life-purpose. Just as published in
The Guardian newspaper on 2nd and 3rd
November 2015, in an essay titled WHEN
EDUCATION BECOMES INDOCTRINATION which was
written by Soul’e Rhymez, a social analyst, poet and
songwriter, Education was defined the development of the mind and the
whole being through learning and putting to
work what was learn. According to him, truly educated
people are said to be: “people that are original,
resourceful and creative, who dream dreams and
think out the box to attain their dreams and
fulfill their passions.
If we make concerted effort to redefine education from what it is
now to what it ought to be, we would have succeeded in alleviating poverty to
the barest minimum level possible.
This
essay was written by Olusola Akinbinu, a Commercial
Writer; an Advocate for the Redefinition of
Education in Africa and a valuable member of
Great Minds Initiatives International.
He is based in Akure, Ondo State, Nigeria.
Email: Look4sola@gmail.com.
Twitter: @AkinbinuOlusola
To join this great movement of redefining education for the
benefit of all and have your voice heard, contact Stephen on: +2348163800077 or
send TEC to the same number via WhatsApp.
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