A delightful young lady once told me that education is one very important way of combating the major problems of Africa. I often wondered if such a proportionate entity as Africa’s problems could have such a simple solution, but now I am trying to look past my skepticism and realize the main issue for what it is, what difference if any does education make in any society, with emphasis on Africa.
Do we really appreciate the role education plays in our lives? Just a few decades ago the cost of education was cheap not so much in financial terms but in its accessibility. The people who benefited the most from it where those who realized its importance and were ready to undergo them with their walking barefoot to school over a long distance, the continued cramming of information because of the limited availability of books and the amount of non-school related work they had to do in the house of the teachers and headmaster.
Presently a lot of things have changes. People go to school to pass the time, because they have to and because there is nothing else they could be doing. Some might even argue that education is not good since instead of trying to bring out what is in people, tries to condition them into a fixed way of thought as expressed in the anecdote, “How high can you jump”.
Flea trainers have observed a predictable and strange habit of fleas while training them. Fleas are trained by putting them in a cardboard box with a top on it. The fleas will jump up and hit the top of the cardboard box over and over and over again. As you watch them jump and hit the lid, something very interesting becomes obvious. The fleas continue to jump, but they are no longer jumping high enough to hit the top.
When you take off the lid, the fleas continue to jump, but they will not jump out of the box. They won't jump out because they can't jump out. Why? The reason is simple. They have conditioned themselves to jump just so high. Once they have conditioned themselves to jump just so high, that's all they can do! (http://www.liraz.com/Anecdote.htm )
The rational behind this anecdote, been that the formal system of education does not allow us to think outside the box. Rather, it streamlines our way of thought.
Another argument for the inefficiency of a formal system of education is the fact that presently because of the lack of the infrastructure and limited training, its institution is usually adopted without adequate research and without its restructuring to fit the African society.
Whatever the issues or arguments, education has a lot of positives. Its claim to be the strongest agent of socialization cannot be refuted. Even though schools serve as a breeding ground for indoctrination into the current political system of the state, the youthfulness commands that a lot of debate be carried out. In an area free of supervision, governments are criticized, policies debated on and ideas raised up and squashed. It is a testament to this, that every government however tyrannical fears students. How many times have students been the forerunners of change in a society? Whether idealism is taught in schools, or young people just happen to have it as part of the growing up process, the schools play an integral role in changing the face of Africa.
As we approach the 21st Century, my generation gets prepared for the daunting task of moving Africa from the 18th to the 21st Century. One thing we want to do is coax all factors that will aid us in this process and relegate all negative factors to the past. Hopefully, education is one of the positives we can carry with us throughout our daunting task. As it sets up the platform not only for bringing forth our ideas, but also provides us with enough information about the past, so that we can avoid the pitfalls that come with our idealism.
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