EDUCATION in Africa has a history reaching back many centuries. Certainly the achievements of the traditional civilizations of Egypt and Ethiopia are properly known. Then, early within the first millennium of the Common Era, the Moors and other peoples on the northern fringe of Africa made notable contributions to world education and culture. And throughout the past 1,000 years the Saharan and sub-Saharan peoples had several centers of learning—Timbuktu, Agadez, Gao, Katsina and Borno, where books written in Arabic were in great demand.
More than 800 years ago at Timbuktu, in Mali, faculties provided advanced education. Katsina, in northern Nigeria, has been a center of studying since earlier than the sixteenth century. It was there that, about 200 years ago, Muhammed ibn Muhammed grew to become noted as a specialist in numerology.
The aforementioned cities have been dominated by Moslem culture, and mosques have been the centers of learning. However, the cost of learning below the tutorship of the mallams was very excessive and so few persons might afford it. The educated minority exercised large influence, and were the important thing administrators, legal professionals and clerks. But the bulk remained illiterate.
In the non-Moslem, sub-Saharan cultures, schooling was largely nonliterate, by oral instruction relatively than by use of reading material. Educational programs varied from tribe to tribe, and there were different degrees and levels of training, relying on the social and cultural growth of a specific tribe. The coaching covered a fairly wide range, with specialized instruction at different age levels. Each academic system had specific types of preparation for the roles of people in society. A have a look at the system of education among the Yorubas in precolonial Nigeria illustrates this.
The Yoruba System
Among the Yorubas, training in obedience, etiquette, speech and counting came early in the child’s life and was given inside the family circle. Children rapidly learned to precise themselves in their language. Progressively, they mastered the proverbs, poetry and folklore of the group or tribe. In this manner they realized the historical past and the ethical and philosophical attitudes of their people. They had to learn a variety of greetings, recognition of levels of social seniority and the correct etiquette in reference to these. Religious schooling included training in rituals, sacred festivals and the roles of diviners.
At an early age, children were taught to count up to 20 on their fingers and toes and to do easy addition and subtraction with the help of stones. As they progressed in knowledge, they had been taught weights and measures, using cowrie shells (which served as money) and the artwork of bargaining.
Specialized training for boys focused on farming, working in metals and wood, searching and the use of herbs and medicines in medicine. Skills were handed on from father to son. Inclination and natural abilities also were considered, and youngsters were encouraged to develop their aptitudes. Therefore, many have been apprenticed to artisans outside the family clan.
Girls received coaching in weaving and dyeing cloth. They realized to make pottery, to plait mats and baskets and to produce cosmetics to be used in beauty treatments and hairdressing. They have been taught the artwork of cooking, of brewing beer and of extracting oil from the kernels of the palm nuts. Thus they had been prepared for their role as women in the family and the community.
The tribes that had a rural, pastoral or bush tradition concentrated more on farming, herding and looking or fishing. Some academic systems restricted progress into new fields of information by preserving a closed society. Membership often was restricted to those of certain ethnic origins or religious beliefs. This circumstance contributed toward a stagnation of knowledge. Nevertheless, the training that was provided amply served the wants of those societies.
The Colonial Era
In the wake of the missionary explorer David Livingstone, European missionaries began to increase their activities in Africa within the second half of the nineteenth century. Mission schools started to be set up in cities and villages, and proper out in the bush, where college students attended in simple loincloths or were fully naked.
These colleges were arrange on sectarian lines, with Catholics having their very own schools and the Protestant religions theirs. This tended to section the individuals religiously, and complete areas got here to be considered the province of a particular religion. Divisions in social levels developed between the literate and the nonliterate segments of every community, and there was a gradual undermining of family influence. Other imbalances were created as a result of traditional patterns of education had been being uprooted and were not replaced by any uniform standard.
Still, a start had been made toward widening the horizons of knowledge in Africa. As more folks learned to read and write, the knowledge of the world, contained in books, became obtainable even to the remotest tribes. The literate historical past of non-Moslem, sub-Saharan Africa started to be revived.
Although the individuals showed aptitude in learning, there were obstacles to overcome. The missionaries often had to be taught the native languages first. Then they had to teach the youngsters in their very own European languages, by which books had been available. Some did good work in formulating alphabet systems and compiling dictionaries so that lots of the local languages could be put into writing. This provided the idea for translating the Bible into many African languages.
In some areas an obstacle was posed by the custom of barring women from institutional education. When, over 40 years ago, one of the emirs from northern Nigeria visited England, he was impressed at seeing a big girls’ school. He desired an analogous provision for the girls of his people. Since the custom was to keep girls away from public life, he realized that this could be opposed. So he told his council that he was opening a school in his palace for educating the women in his household. Within a year the school had 30 pupils, and lots of the leading citizens had been petitioning the emir to allow their youngsters to attend. A yr later, on the pretext that he could not tolerate the noise of a college in his palace, he “turned the pupils, teachers, and equipment out into the open city and lodged them in a house adjoining the boys’ school.” (African Challenge, p. 63) Now every primary faculty in that part of the nation is coeducational.
Since children were part of the labor force in every farm family, there was reluctance to lose them to the schools. Gradually, however, because the people recognized the worth of the printed page and the benefits of reading and writing, more children were despatched to school. So it was in mission schools that most of the outstanding educators and leaders all through Africa acquired their early training.
The colonial governments, and the later sovereign governments of each independent state, encouraged the institution of mission schools, giving financial and administrative help. Provisions have been made for more uniform programs of schooling, and additional public and secondary colleges and universities have been established.
New Education Policies
Since 1970, in an extra effort to ensure a extra uniform normal of education, the Nigerian government has taken over control of private schools, together with mission schools. This has given rise to the problem of adequate moral education in a completely secular faculty system. Therefore, the authorities have encouraged parents and teachers to offer moral guidance. Efforts have also been made to coordinate the Moslem and indigenous traditional systems of schooling with fashionable methods. It is hoped that this will stem the growing tide of unrest, immorality and drug abuse amongst youths.
In 1976 the Universal Primary Education scheme (UPE) was introduced to offer for free universal education throughout Nigeria. This will give children the opportunity to receive free main schooling for six years, as well as junior secondary and senior secondary schooling for three years respectively. More colleges are, therefore, being provided, and speedy plans are afoot to extend the variety of universities to 13.
Adult Education
Because nearly all of the adult population is illiterate, the various governments are giving increased consideration to grownup education. In Nigeria, where the literacy fee is 20 % for a inhabitants of 70 million, the government has established grownup education facilities in most villages and towns. Many men and women are availing themselves of this chance to learn to learn and write.
Much progress is also being made in adult literacy programs working in Kingdom Halls of Jehovah’s Witnesses. By means of such classes, between 1962 and 1976, in Nigeria alone, 15,156 individuals have been taught to learn and write. Many of these were elderly and thought that they now not had the power to learn. They were mostly people from rural areas—farmers, hunters, fishermen, housewives. Their determination to obtain Bible data and to have the ability to impart Scriptural instruction reawakened their want to learn. Now they can read and write, and can assist in educating God’s Word to others in their own language and also often in English.
For example, Ezekiel Ovbiagele was trained based on the conventional system of education, however was not taught to read and write. After he acquired oral Biblical instruction from Jehovah’s Witnesses and was baptized in 1940, he saw the worth of learning to read. He enrolled in one of many literacy classes and shortly was reading the Bible to others. With further specialized training, he was qualified in 1953 to function a touring overseer, having the responsibility to instruct many congregations in the territory assigned to him. Many others have made comparable advancement.
When Jackson Iheanacho first attended meetings of Jehovah’s Witnesses, he was literate solely in Efik, his native language. He saw the need to learn to read in English, too, for the reason that meetings were conducted in that tongue. With the aid of the congregation’s literacy class, he achieved this and went on to learn different languages as well. He is now in a position to read and write seven languages!
The literacy rate among Jehovah’s Witnesses is better than seventy seven percent. Most of the remaining 23 percent are attending literacy classes, either at their Kingdom Halls or at authorities centers, and so are in varied stages of learning to read and write. They recognize this program, which is reaching out to increasingly more people.
Purposeful Education
The worth and necessity of education can’t be denied. An editorial in the Daily Times of December 29, 1976, spoke of schooling as “the greatest investment . . . for the short development of . . . economic, political, sociological and human resources.” However, not just education, however purposeful schooling is essential. Modern methods have tended to determine materialistic goals, quite than productive ones. To many youths, the aim of schooling is to obtain a certificate that can guarantee a status job and great financial reward. Parents should guide youths in fastidiously evaluating the aim of their schooling. The goal should be to acquire real expertise and considering ability so as to ensure productivity of their adult careers.
It must be remembered, however, that the period of formal schooling is just not all there may be to the method of education. Parents could make use of preschool and out-of-school periods to instruct their children morally and in other ways that will build their personalities along wholesome lines. Much good could be achieved by utilizing the Bible in inculcating decency, honesty and loyalty in the children.
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