Reflections On Education

They say things always come in threes.

I was thinking about education in Nigeria when I came across two items trending on Whatsapp media: a screenshot of an article in the Guardian about how Nigeria is losing its teachers to the migration wave and a 4-minute video of Naja’atu Mohammed tasking students of Ahmadu Bello University to secure their rights to free quality education. Then came along, a speech by Usman Bugaje Ph.D. at the Gombe State University convocation last week reflecting on how fit for purpose our education is and that sealed the theme for this week’s article.

There is a legend about Lee Kwan Yew – the founding Prime Minister of Singapore and chief visioner for the country: the first thing he did on assuming office in 1959 was to increase the salaries of teachers to the same level as ministers. True or not, Yew knew that Singapore needed a largely well-educated population in order to thrive economically and sustain the vision of building a good society and he invested in this. Decades after, the proof of impact of Singapore’s education system lies not in global rankings, as these are political in themselves, but in the nature of its society, the behavior of the people and the effectiveness of governance.

Education is supposed to, through knowledge, enlighten, uplift and catalyze. But it is also an agenda setting tool, a useful platform to brainwash and acculturate which speaks to the content of education. What thinking, what vision for the future drives’ primary, secondary and tertiary curriculums in Nigeria?

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The content problem

Lately – over the last 3 years in particular, I have felt the weight of being under educated about many things particularly the history of the world and what it means to be black – (or brown as I have been corrected by children who look at their skin and wonder why anyone would refer to them as black). Why did I not learn in secondary school, at the latest in university, that race is a construct? Instead of World War Two, I would have been better served learning about Toussaint Louverture and the epic struggle that was the Haiti revolution. Why was I still learning in the Eighties, 20+ years post-independence, that Mungo Park discovered River Niger and why did the history of Nigeria end in 1960?

“We constantly need the validation and sometimes authorization of European and American institutions for our decisions and policies. This was made possible because in the schools we went, we were not taught our real history, we were fed on imperial propaganda that show-cased the famous people of the West… “- Bugaje

It is not clear that our curriculums are fit for purpose but it is clear that the general attitude about education and getting certificates is warped. The anecdotes about graduates who cannot compose are connected to stories of teaching jobs as reward to political allies and ‘special examination centers’ where students excel.

Education should be relevant to communities, and reflective of history and future. It should provide students with skills beneficial for society – doctors, teachers, artists, scientists, philosophers, engineers, data analysts etc. We also need the education for the future: technology, artificial intelligence, navigating life on earth with a changed climate, the evolution of culture and arts in a digital world, the science and art of disinformation and whatever else we imagine communities will need as we adapt. There is a divide between our no longer ivory towers and the communities within which they operate. In Bugaje’s speech describing the relationship between University of Sankore (989AD), in Mali and the community, we learn that “the community that supported its scholars and its students were tied very closely to each other. … the university was the symbol of the spirit of the community, the guardian of its morals, and formulator of its hopes and aspirations…” This description of the symbiotic relationship between host community and schools might have once been the case in Nigeria- but not any longer. Along with the increasing abuse of power by those in government and steady theft of public funds, we have seen an erosion of ethics and morals, nowhere more distressing than in our schools, courts, and other institutions required to uphold the rule of law.

The third element of education is building character and apparently convocation protocols typically refer to graduates being conferred with degrees ‘in character and in learning’ but what is the character that is being shaped in our schools? Whoever coined the phrase one rotten egg spoils the rest was too harsh – it is lazy to say or believe that everyone is corrupt or ‘we are all that same’, but it is increasingly clear that our society is designed to punish or at least highly inconvenience those who try to do the right thing.

What is the future?

Across the country, universities are losing their academics for lack of career fulfilment, poor salaries, unconducive working conditions and inadequate funding for research. The average salary for primary school teachers is N15,000 while secondary schools get on average N37,000. At the Federal Government level, teachers fare a little better earning between N40,000 – N66,000 depending on the teacher’s grade. The annual basic salary of a minister is N168,866 while professors earn between N155,000- N261,000 with the higher range for private universities. As the Naira depreciates, it will become harder for the teachers who do not exploit students with handouts for sale to cope.

However, funding alone will not fix the problem in education. Our culture and thinking about the value and utility of education needs renewal. After decades of social engineering, students no longer know their worth and their power as the conscience of the nation and we are long past the stage for declaring a state of emergency in education in Nigeria. Just as we are long past leaving the advocacy for better education to teachers, students and civil society. Everyone needs to get involved to reform education. If we had the vision, we would realize that we need a national conference on education more urgently than one on sovereignty…maybe both are the same.