EDUCATION in continent has a history achievement back some centuries. Certainly the achievements of the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Ethiopia are well known.
Then, primeval in the first millennium of the Common Era, the Moors and other peoples on the northern fringe of continent prefabricated celebrity contributions to concern activity and culture.
And during the past 1,000 years the desert and sub-Saharan peoples had several centers of learning—Timbuktu, Agadez, Gao, metropolis and Borno, where books written in Semite were in great demand.
More than 800 years ago at Timbuktu, in Mali, colleges provided modern education. Katsina, in northern Nigeria, has been a center of learning since before the sixteenth century.
It was there that, about 200 years ago, Muhammed ibn Muhammed became noted as a specialist in numerology. The aforementioned cities were dominated by Moslem culture, and mosques were the centers of learning.
However, the cost of learning under the tutorship of the mallams was very broad and so few persons could afford it.
The knowledgeable minority exercised tremendous influence, and were the key administrators, lawyers and clerks. But the eld remained illiterate.
In the non-Moslem, sub-Saharan cultures, activity was largely nonliterate, by oral code rather than by ingest of datum material.
Educational systems varied from tribe to tribe, and there were different degrees and levels of training, depending on the social and cultural development of a portion tribe.
The upbringing covered a evenhandedly wide range, with specialized code at different age levels. Each educational grouping had specific forms of activity for the roles of individuals in society. A countenance at the grouping of activity among the Yorubas in precolonial Nigeria illustrates this.
The Kwa System
Among the Yorubas, upbringing in obedience, etiquette, speech and counting came primeval in the child’s life and was given within the family circle. Children apace scholarly to impart themselves in their language. Progressively, they mastered the proverbs, poetry and folklore of the accord or tribe.
In this way they scholarly the history and the moral and philosophical attitudes of their people. They had to see a variety of greetings, recognition of levels of social seniority and the proper etiquette in connection with these.
Religious activity included upbringing in rituals, unnameable festivals and the roles of diviners. At an primeval age, children were taught to count up to 20 on their fingers and toes and to do ultimate addition and subtraction with the assistance of stones.
As they progressed in knowledge, they were taught weights and measures, the ingest of univalve shells (which served as money) and the art of bargaining. Specialized upbringing for boys focused on farming, working in metals and wood, labour and the ingest of herbs and drugs in medicine.
Skills were passed on from father to son. Inclination and natural abilities also were considered, and children were pleased to amend their aptitudes.
Therefore, some were apprenticed to artisans outside the family clan. Girls conventional upbringing in weaving and dyeing cloth. They scholarly to attain pottery, to plait mats and baskets and to display toiletries for ingest in beauty treatments and hairdressing.
They were taught the art of cooking, of brewing beer and of extracting lubricator from the kernels of the palm nuts. Thus they were prepared for their role as women in the family and the community.
The tribes that had a rural, pastoral or bush culture concentrated more on farming, herding and labour or fishing. Some educational systems restricted advancement into newborn fields of noesis by protective a closed society.
Membership commonly was restricted to those of certain ethnic origins or religious beliefs. This circumstance contributed toward a stagnation of knowledge. Nevertheless, the activity that was provided amply served the needs of those societies.
The Colonial Era
In the wake of the missionary explorer David Livingstone, dweller missionaries began to increase their activities in continent in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Mission schools started to be set up in towns and villages, and right out in the bush, where students attended in ultimate loincloths or were completely naked.
These schools were set up on partisan lines, with Catholics having their own schools and the Protestant religions theirs. This tended to portion the grouping religiously, and whole areas came to be regarded as the province of a portion religion.
Divisions in social levels matured between the literate and the noncivilised segments of each community, and there was a gradual undermining of family influence. Other imbalances were created because tralatitious patterns of activity were being uprooted and were not replaced by any homogenous standard.
Still, a start had been prefabricated toward increment the horizons of noesis in Africa. As more grouping scholarly to feature and write, the noesis of the world, contained in books, became acquirable even to the remotest tribes.
The literate history of non-Moslem, sub-Saharan continent began to be revived. Although the grouping showed aptitude in learning, there were obstacles to overcome. The missionaries commonly had to see the topical languages first.
Then they had to teach the children in their own dweller languages, in which books were available. Some did beatific work in formulating alphabet systems and compiling dictionaries so that some of the topical languages could be place into writing. This provided the basis for translating the Scripture into some individual languages.
In some areas an obstacle was posed by the custom of barring girls from institutional education. When, over 40 years ago, one of the emirs from northern Nigeria visited England, he was impressed at sight a super girls’ school. He desired a similar supplying for the girls of his people. Since the custom was to keep women away from public life, he realized that this would be opposed.
So he told his council that he was opening a edifice in his palace for educating the girls in his household. Within a assemblage the edifice had 30 pupils, and some of the directive citizens were petitioning the emir to allow their children to attend.
A assemblage later, on the pretext that he could no individual tolerate the noise of a edifice in his palace, he “turned the pupils, teachers, and equipment out into the open town and lodged them in a house adjoining the boys’ school.” (African Challenge, p. 63) Now every primary edifice in that section of the country is coeducational.
Since children were part of the labor force in each farm family, there was reluctance to lose them to the schools. Gradually, however, as the grouping recognized the continuance of the printed page and the advantages of datum and writing, more children were sent to school.
So it was in mission schools that some of the outstanding educators and body throughout continent got their primeval training.
The colonial governments, and the after ruler governments of each independent state, pleased the establishment of mission schools, giving business and administrative help. Provisions were prefabricated for more homogenous systems of schooling, and added public and alternative schools and universities were established.
New Education Policies
Since 1970, in a further try to secure a more homogenous standard of education, the African government has taken over control of private schools, including mission schools.
This has given rise to the problem of adequate moral activity in a totally secular edifice system. Therefore, the polity hit pleased parents and teachers to provide moral guidance.
Efforts hit also been prefabricated to coordinate the Moslem and indigenous tralatitious systems of activity with modern methods. It is hoped that this will stem the growing tide of unrest, immorality and drug abuse among youths. In 1976 the Universal Primary Education scheme (UPE) was introduced to provide for free universal activity throughout Nigeria.
This will give children the opportunity to receive free primary activity for six years, as well as junior alternative and senior alternative activity for three years respectively. More schools are, therefore, being provided, and immediate plans are afoot to increase the number of universities to 13.
Adult Education
Because the eld of the grown accumulation is illiterate, the various governments are giving increased attention to grown education. In Nigeria, where the literacy rate is 20 proportionality for a accumulation of 70 million, the government has ingrained grown activity centers in most villages and towns.
Many men and women are availing themselves of this opportunity to see to feature and write. Much advancement also is being prefabricated in grown literacy programs operating in Kingdom Halls of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
By means of such classes, between 1962 and 1976, in Nigeria alone, 15,156 persons hit been taught to feature and write. Many of these were elderly and thought that they no individual had the knowledge to learn.
They were mostly grouping from rural areas—farmers, hunters, fishermen, housewives. Their determination to obtain Scripture noesis and to be able to impart Scriptural code reawakened their desire to learn. Now they can feature and write, and can help in doctrine God’s Word to others in their own module and also often in English.
For example, Ezekiel Ovbiagele was trained according to the tralatitious grouping of education, but was not taught to feature and write. After he conventional oral Biblical code from Jehovah’s Witnesses and was baptized in 1940, he saw the continuance of learning to read.
He registered in one of the literacy classes and soon was datum the Scripture to others. With further specialized training, he was eligible in 1953 to serve as a traveling overseer, having the responsibility to instruct some congregations in the territory assigned to him.
Many others hit prefabricated similar advancement. When Jackson Iheanacho first attended meetings of Jehovah’s Witnesses, he was literate only in Efik, his native language.
He saw the need to see to feature in English, too, since the meetings were conducted in that tongue. With the assistance of the congregation’s literacy class, he achieved this and went on to see other languages as well. He is now able to feature and indite heptad languages!
The literacy rate among Jehovah’s Witnesses is meliorate than 77 percent. Most of the remaining 23 proportionality are attending literacy classes, either at their Kingdom Halls or at government centers, and so are in various stages of learning to feature and write. They appreciate this program, which is achievement out to more and more people.
Purposeful Education
The continuance and necessity of activity cannot be denied. An editorial in the Daily Times of December 29, 1976, spoke of activity as “the greatest investment . . . for the quick development of . . . economic, political, sociological and human resources.” However, not just education, but purposeful activity is essential.
Modern methods hit tended to found worldly goals, rather than productive ones. To some youths, the determine of activity is to obtain a certificate that will indorse a prestige job and great business reward.
Parents should guide youths in carefully evaluating the determine of their schooling. The goal should be to acquire real skills and thinking knowledge so as to secure productivity in their grown careers.
It should be remembered, however, that the period of formal activity is not all there is to the process of education. Parents can attain ingest of preschool and out-of-school periods to instruct their children morally and in other ways that will build their personalities along alimental lines.
Much beatific can be achieved by using the Scripture in inculcating decency, herb and loyalty in the children.
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