“Education: How and where we got it wrong”
Fr. Chika Okpalike
Education has become an increasing area of concern for Nigeria and Nigerians. Countless discussions have been undertaken by experts, stake-holders and office-holders on the situation and condition of education in Nigeria. Most times, it is poor funding that is often presented as the raison d’être for the poor quality, standard and furnishing of education in Nigeria. Even when the administrators and teachers are not doing well, it is blameable on poor funding. How true is this? This manner of understanding accounts for the recurring industrial action in the educational sector even when such actions defeat the argument itself. Like I have always contended, the fundamentals of education in Nigeria are wrong.
Education is a socio-cultural mechanism of integration, preservation and enhancement of life. The individual engages in a lifetime of educational endeavour in a dynamic perfection of being. Formal education is a systematic training aimed at the acquisition of knowledge or skill in general or particular fields of endeavour. In other words, education is a social mechanism belonging primarily to the society, for the good of that society by which culture is preserved, inculcated and developed; while society custodies education, culture constitutes the content of education. Logically, therefore, if the Nigerian society is flawed at the foundation, it cannot educate its citizens because there will be no content for such education.
For the benefit of doubt, let us trace our way from where we began to where we are. It took me a movement away from formal education to understand what education is after nearly two decades of continually being in school. It took me that long to make out the difference between education and going to school. What we often refer to as education is formal education or stricter still, western education; that education brought by Europeans. For the notes, before the advent of these elements, there has been education in our local communities which corresponded with the definition above.
It is important to note also that Europe, for its own ulterior, ultimate gain wanted to create a society, inculcate a culture and extend a civilization. To do this, education had to play a vital role. The idea of the school, as we know it, is an isolated space away from the community where a few members of the community are engaged and trained to fit into that new society, imbibe that new culture and foster that new civilization. As a result, the product of that isolated space looks back at his/her community of origin as flawed and its inhabitants as semi-human; considering self not fit for a continued mingling with the elements and beings of that former society. It was easy for us to begin to think that before this trend, there was no education. The education we got exposed us to a western civilization that we keep imagining, to a western society that we keep dreaming and to a western culture that we keep mimicking. In other words, this education makes us fit better into a western-styled society.
Secondly, Europe needs to train local personnel for an effective colonial administration. So it was education enough to expose them to the rudiment of what was required of them, employ them with enough reward to show for their years of training. Their education was not rooted in the local culture; it only alienated them from their natural society. Their paper qualifications became superior to their humanity; in as much as the knowledge and skill they acquired through the years afforded them means and livelihood, it is worth enough for them to give up their cultural and social identity. Education became a means of acquiring paper qualification to be employed among the crème of an emerging society. At first, they concentrated on training trainers; then teaching was the highest paying job.
As the expatriate professionals were overworked, this education began to train professionals who were taking over from the Europeans themselves – doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers and so forth. With the discovery of oil, and the explosion of a capitalist economy, these diverse professionals were needed to operate the emerging economy. It was the trend that the best of the best from the schools graduated to oil companies, banks, ministries, multi-national companies while the remnants take over the schools. As they were overwhelming the schools the remaining strictly academic took flight into Europe, America and middle-east in search of greener pastures – the brain drain era. When the once thriving public schools were ravaged, private schools began to emerge as commercial schools, that is, school-for-money. Then we thought that those of us who ended up, willingly or unwilling, outside school, doing business or skilled work were not educated. Yet they were calling the shots of functionality in the society. They made money enough to buy the teachers and professionals; enough to employ and pay them. Many of them became the beacon of hope and icon for emulation in the society. Making money, since it became a priority, took different shapes and forms because education which should preserve, inculcate and develop good culture and morals has failed; the former local and traditional education abandoned, the western education not sustainable. Even the teachers themselves engaged in making money, anyhow they can, to be like those they considered better. The restoration of the dignity of man far from being understood as ignorance paving way for knowledge became movement away from the doldrums of material poverty to acquisition of paper money whatever the worth. Then those things we used to refer to as extra-curricular became money spinners, think of football, music, drama, etc. As a result, education as we have narrowed it began to make less sense.
The sad thing is that those who discuss education in the public domain have the schools at the back of their minds. Education is much more than going to school. The older generation use to taunt us (school goers) with “Oguru akwukwo agughi uche” whenever we screw-up in culture and/or morals; O how correct they were! Unless the society is structured to function, you cannot generate a functional philosophy of education. Put 100% of our budget in education the way we understand it today, it will sink. Restructuring is not a matter of politics; it is just a way to begin. Every economy that withstood the exploitation of Europe and America restructured through national thought-pattern, local world view and philosophy to generate education beyond the boundaries of the school. The fundamental philosophy that drives Chinese education, politics, science and technology is Confucian; so is India rediscovering and restructuring itself with instrument of the Hindu tradition. Without a Nigeria, there will be no Nigerian culture, no Nigerian politics, no Nigerian education and as we speak, there is no Nigeria except the one designed to service British interest, the one that has malfunctioned at the hands of those who hold it hostage, the one whose citizens are still faced with the fundamental problem of identity. No amount of funding can resuscitate education in such a Nigeria because in this climate, no amount of money is too much to be squandered. A formidable foundation of nation building will dispose a people to the requiring sacrifices to build a culture they believe in with commensurate morality which gives education content. Restructuring is just a beginning that will jump-start an education of integration, patriotism and progress, a beginning that will generate a people for integral education which will move all sectors of the social, economic and political enterprise of Nigeria into the society of our dream. God bless Nigeria.

God Bless Nigeria real good!