Africa: Education Begins When You Can Ask Why!

Por: africa.com/04-04-2018

I went to a bed-bug riddled school around Yaba (Yabatech) whose unofficial mandate is to make docile the crop of young people who are supposed to be movers and shakers of the community. But alas myself and an infinitesimally few others understood that the Nigerian education system is designed to bring out the corporate slaves in us, hence we educated ourselves beyond the four walls of the college.

Although earlier on throughout 2017, my political appointment as the National director of student affairs for KOWA party Nigeria,tilted my inclination towards researching into the education sector, unbeknownst to me that there is much work to be done and that the pragmatics of real changes begins with restructuring our model of education

My friend John Ashiekaa rekindled the fire when he advised me to take over my mother’s private school as the new administrator, considering that my youthfulness comes along with brilliant ideas and pragmatism that the school needed for her survival.

The last 3months has seen me code switching responsibilities as family head, school manager,business man, political appointee,and a couple of other things I would like to leave off records.

“In my time as the school manager I was able to see from the field, the impact the current education setup has on the challenges facing our immediate society.”

You would agree with me that every organized society today in any part of the world adopts an education model that is in resonance with the solution designed to solve future challenges that have been foreseen to affect the society from the concrete study of her past in relationship with current happenings.

I believe that every society should design her own model of education, ingenious to the people, extracted from the cultural system and lingua Franca with reverence to historical consciousness suitable to meet both her immediate need, and provide enough resources for the coming generation to fight a seemingly lesser and different battle.

The propaganda of our colonial education system is to keep us literate but uneducated enough to find it difficult to solve the smallest of our little problem. The education we have received has made us docile enough not to ask any questions but to rather follow instructions to letter.

Why is our education model not addressing our political, economical, and developmental challenges as a nation? Why have we not been able to ingeniously solve any of our problems? Why do we need to bring in foreigners to help with the smallest of technical work with the vast numbers of tertiary institutions around?

This questions are not far fetched, “our education system is designed to make us uneducated but sophisticated literates.”

Not until young Nigerians begin to ask “why” with the strong intent to know why, we might keep ruminating within the whims of our challenges till the next century. But if we begin to ask unusual questions we would get unusual answers that would lead us in the path of long lasting solutions to our problems.

But until we understand that education begins when you ask why, Nothing will change.

I hope you would start asking why!

Olakunle Olawole

Nat’nl Director, Directorate of student affairs, KOWA Party Nigeria.

*Fuente: https://www.africa.com/education-begins-can-ask/