What is to be done about Nigerian education? (7)

In the first two parts of this series (“Discrimination against polytechnics” and “Restructuring higher education”) I argued that the most pressing task facing us is not the reorganization of our higher education system (urgent as that task is), but the establishment of manufacturing and agricultural industries that would absorb the skilled manpower we have so far produced.  Nigeria cries out for more and more skilled manpower, and invests heavy sums of money in producing more; but the ones we have produced we make little or no use of―for the simple and obvious reason that there has been no coordination between our educational planning and our planning for industrial and agricultural development.

Be that as it may.  When we do get down to the job of revamping or just reforming our higher education, what ought to be the curricular content?

I have urged that we study both the structure and the content of the American and Russian and other higher education systems, and freely borrow whatever we find usable from them in constructing a system suited to our needs.

The merits and demerits of early specialisation, which is the hallmark of the British system we presently operate, have been debated for years, both in Nigeria and abroad.  But one incontrovertible disadvantage of early specialisation, at least as presently practised in Nigeria where it starts in the fourth of five secondary school years, is that it exempts the bulk of our youth from the rigours, responsibilities, pleasures and benefits of mathematics and science.

Starting in Form 4, some 70 to 80 per cent of Nigeria’s secondary school youngsters abandon mathematics and the basic sciences-physics, chemistry, biology – either because they don’t feel up to it, or because their schools lack the teachers and the laboratory equipment.

But these are the very subjects which are essential in any society whose goal, like Nigeria’s, is to achieve an industrial revolution and a technological culture.  The United States and Russia did not get to be world leaders in science and technology by exempting their youngsters so early from mathematics and science.  Quite the contrary, these subjects are studied by all of their students right up into the university.

The mass literacy to be achieved through study of the humanities and social sciences is certainly necessary for a civic society; but a technological society must in addition achieve and maintain both mass numeracy and mass technogeny (compatibility with machines) through continuous study of the mathematical and physical sciences and their practical applications.

The American “general studies” programme compels every undergraduate, whatever his field, to take courses in mathematics, natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, one foreign language, and sports during his first two university years.

Similarly, in Russia every student goes through courses in natural sciences, social and economic sciences including history, philosophy, political economy and the theory of scientific communism, one foreign language, and sports during his first two years in a university or institute.

Already a version of this Russian-American general studies model is in operation in our universities.  Our task now is to scrutinize it, revise it thoroughly, make it Afro-centred, and insert it into the curricula of all our higher institutions.

The revision could go as follows:

ADMISSION

Students should be admitted not into a single, narrow, pre-chosen subject specialty as at present, but into a faculty or cluster of subject areas, e.g. humanities/social sciences (including law); natural science; engineering/technology; medical science; economic science or business studies, etc. (See Table 1. The list is not exhaustive).

During the first two years of general studies, a student will have time to discover or confirm what subject or subjects within the cluster interest him most, and will then devote his final two, three or four years studying them in some depth.  Admission to a department or subject specialty may depend on performance in the general studies courses or (especially for law) on a separate department aptitude/eligibility test.

SPECIALISATION

Given the basic tasks of nation-building which we have before us at this point in our history, breadth of knowledge and versatility of practical skills are to be preferred above specialisation.  Therefore a general degree combining two or three subjects (e.g. one major subject, two minor) is to be preferred to an honours degree in a single subject.  A general degree should be the norm in humanities, social science and economy, perhaps less so in natural and medical sciences and engineering.

GENERAL STUDIES

As with the Russian-American models, the general studies programme is intended to provide the student with the basic knowledge and orientation he needs to function as a citizen of his nation and of the world in this technological age.  It is Afro-centred and Nigerian-nationalist in focus (see Table 2).  It will fully occupy the student’s first two years of study, with six courses per semester, each course consisting of 3 to 4 hours of lecture/workshop/lab per week.  It is compulsory for all students regardless of specialty.      

To advance national integration and communication, every student is required to study and be able to speak, read and write one of the three majority Nigerian languages other than his own.  A proficiency examination may shorten or eliminate the two-year study time for those who already possess the skill.

Similarly, the appropriate foreign language for us today is French, since Nigeria is surrounded by French-speaking neighbours.

The course usually called “Use of English” should be abolished.  Students entering higher institutions should already be proficient in English, which for better and for worse is this nation’s official language.

“Introduction to Technology” is intended to “show and tell” all non-engineering/technology students how all sorts of things are made, and how they work, and to teach them to make some of those things.  The stress is on the application of science, on the processes of production of agricultural and industrial objects in everyday use, e.g.: sugar, paper, soap, ink, plastics, petrol, steel, cement, paint, cloth, aluminium, radios, TVs, telephones, computers, refrigerators, airconditioners, drugs, engines of all sorts.  Also, plant culture and animal husbandry, and the whole range of mechanical, metallurgical, electrical-electronic, chemical and agro-industrial sciences.

Whenever possible, there will be visits to mines, steel factories, refineries, industrial plants, workshops, farms, etc.  Lectures and demonstrations will be conducted by a team including experts from industry.

It is through such a programmed effort to demystify technology and diffuse technological knowledge through every level of our educational system, that a technogenic society, one that is at ease with and able to make and manipulate machines, will in the end be created.

TEACHER TRAINING

The training of teachers deserves separate comment.  Although in an earlier article of this series I recommended that polytechnics and colleges of education be harmonized and equalized with universities, I am not entirely convinced that colleges of education ought to exist as separate institutions except insofar as we might wish to introduce the Russian higher education model of almost total decentralization into specialised institutes, which certainly has its merits.

In any case, whether in a university department or a separate institution, the programme for the training of teachers need not differ substantially from the training of other students in any specialty.  The specific courses in educational foundations, teaching methods, curriculum development and child psychology, which form the core of teacher training at any level, could together constitute one of the two or three subject areas which an undergraduate elects for his general degree.

Deep and firm grounding in the would-be teacher’s specialty subject or subjects (e.g. chemistry and physics) would require exactly the same courses taken by any other undergraduate specialising in those subjects not a watered-down version, as seems presently the case in departments and colleges of education.

In short, I am inclined to think that the higher education of would-be teachers should consist of the normal undergraduate diet of courses, general and specialised, plus approximately 12 months worth of drilling in methods, practical teaching, etc.

Teacher training at higher institutions should continue, for now, to focus on production of secondary school teachers; but the teacher training secondary schools (TTC, WTC), whose job it is now to train primary school teachers, should be abolished and their function merged into the upper (senior secondary) half of the New Policy 6-3-3-4 system (more on this in next article).

CONCLUSION

The universal insertion of a general studies programme into all higher education in Nigeria may well mean the extension of undergraduate degree time from 4 to 5 or even 6 years.  If so, well and good.  The amount of time needed for study depends on how much needs to be studied.  And we must recognise that as an under-developed nation the sheer quantity of elementary and basic knowledge our youth must master, both for our own survival and for advancement in the world today, is much greater than the quantity needing to be mastered by their counterparts in the developed countries.

For example, colonial education, which is what we have had so far, compels us, at various levels, to master colonial languages and colonial social sciences and humanities―West European history, literature, philosophy, religion, music, art, sociological, anthropological, psychological and economic theories-paying scant attention to our own.

An educational system designed to serve the Nigerian and African person would require that we master our own language, social sciences and humanities plus moderate doses of the colonial/Western ones.  We have little choice in the matter.  We certainly cannot continue to study their past and present culture and society and ignore ours; nor can we, at this historical point in time, totally disregard theirs.  The time required to deal with both is certain to be longer.

But who says that a bachelors degree must be done in four years?  Or that the first degree must be called a bachelors degree?  There are several countries in Europe, Russia included, whose first degrees are either called a masters degree or generally recognised as equivalent to the masters degrees of most other countries.  A variant of this is the practice of the British University of Oxford which confers a masters degree on its graduates two years after graduation without any further academic work.

The Nigerian system is entirely free to work out and insist on its own course requirements, length of study time, and name of degree to confer on its graduates.

To be continued

Onwuchekwa Jemie