2,030 Abibisika (Black Gold) Points

Rank: Unranked Obibini

“The educational systems in different kinds of societies in the world have been, and one, very different in organisation and in content. They are different because the societies providing the education are different, and because education, whether it be formal or informal, has a purpose. That purpose is to transmit from one generation to the next, the accumulated wisdom and knowledge of the society and to prepare the young people for their future membership of the society, and their active participation in it’s maintenance or development.

This is true, explicitly or implicitly, for all societies – the capitalist societies of the West, the communist societies of the East, and the Pre-Colonial African societies too. The fact that Pre-Colonial Africa did not have “schools” except for short periods of initiation in some tribes – did not mean that the children were not educated. They learned by living and doing. In the homes and on the farms they were taught the skills of the society, and the behaviour expected of it’s members.

They learned the kind of grasses which were suitable for which purposes, the work which had to be done on the crops, or the care which had to be given to animals, by joining with their elders in this work. They learned the tribal history, and the tribes relationship with other tribes and with the spirits, by listening to the stories of the elders. Through these means, and by the custom of sharing to which young people were taught to conform the values of the society were transmitted.

Education was thus “informal”; every adult was a teacher to a greater or lesser degree. But this lack of formality did not mean that there was no education, nor did it affect it’s importance to the society. Indeed, it may have made the education more directly relevant to the society in which the child was growing up. In Europe, education has been formalised for a very long time. An examination of it’s development will show, however, that it has always had similar objectives to those implicit in the traditional African system of education.

That is to say, formal education in Europe was intended to reinforce the social ethics existing in the particular country, and to prepare the children and young people for the place they will have in that society. The same thing is true of communist countries now. The content of education is somewhat different from that of Western countries, but the purpose is the same – to prepare young people to live in and to serve the society, and to transmit the knowledge, skills and values and attitudes of the society.

Wherever education fails in any of these fields, then the society falters in it’s progress, or there is social unrest as people find that their education has prepared them for a future which is not open to them.”