opinion
By Emmanuel Mutyaba
Although the traditional
African system of education used to cause positive changes in society, the one
forged for us by the colonial masters has done the opposite.
Traditional Africans were inventive but today's African
scholars have nothing original to show to the world; they just recite ideas
already said by Europeans and North Americans.
The term education was derived from a Latin word ducti,
which is related to the homonym dc that means to lead forth, bring out, bring
up, unfold the power of the mind. This means that education should lead to the
development of the educated's potentials to improve himself and of society of
which he is part.
It leads to the individual's personality development
which is comprised of: physical, intellectual, moral, social, economic,
spiritual dimensions as well as national development. No doubt that education
is fundamental in any society for the creation and maintenance of the social
structures that help to preserve the lives of the citizens.
Education that can lead to development of an individual
and his society, therefore, has to emerge out of society's environment and its
learning process must be related to the life and patterns of work in that
society.
For
example, in traditional Bemba (former Northern Rhodesia), children by the age
of six had to be able to name fifty to sixty species of tree plants. This was
so because they were in an environment where household needs were met by tree
plant products.
In traditional Africa, education had a survival-value not
just for the sake of knowing. Such type of education to life was contrary to
the fake colonial education which prepares the youth to despise manual
productive labour in favour of working in industries and businesses of
foreigners.
The colonially-created education that we follow
encourages dependence which, rather than training creativity and inventiveness,
trains students how to memorize and reproduce ideas to pass exams. This is
verified by those schools which we see in the media praising themselves for
having a greater number of first grades in P7, S4 and S6 Uneb exams.
The point should not be how many got high grades but how
many can do something with the education they got. I suspect that majority of
the university graduates in technology-related courses cannot produce anything
with their degrees apart from working in industries of foreigners. This means
that they have been schooled without being educated.
Colonial education,
which we still cling onto, corrupts the thinking and sensibility of the African
and fills him with abnormal complexes. True education is supposed to help us
develop our cultures, not to be ashamed of them; it is supposed to develop our
intellectual independence.
As teachers, we feel proud when we teach students Western
ideas and methodologies as if Africa had nothing of its own. This approach
promotes a self-distractive system of education that leads to self- alienation
and dependence. This explains why when an internal problem comes, we kneel
before Europeans and Americans and ask them for what to do.
There is, therefore, a very urgent need to restructure
African education systems both formal and informal. They should be designed in
such a way that can lead to an effective decolonisation of an African mind,
procure and secure a respectable true African identity based on historical
achievements.
I
believe that this is the only way that we can acquire the psychological prop we
need to formulate the political setup that will guarantee economic, social, and
religious progress needed for African development.
Fellow Africans, do not despise the wisdom of your
ancestors. Let our education be characterised by the wisdom they passed onto
us. Let us interpret it according to the signs of our time. The current
education teaches us to despise our tradition; but let's remember that an
uprooted tree cannot withstand the strength of the wind.
Traditional wisdom is not outdated astuteness; we can
still use it to reconstruct Africa. Just as a firm hut is built with old bamboo
poles, Africa cannot firmly stand without a return to its old (traditional)
wisdom.
From such wisdom, we can formulate a type of education
that produces well-rounded persons who fit in our societies.
The author is a lecturer at Uganda Martyrs University.
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