BY  TARE YOUDEOWEI

Professor Ayo Banjo while giving the 2012/2013 Convocation Ceremonies lecture on Learned Academies and Social Responsibility, stated the need for the use of the mother tongue in early education, particularly science education and the roles learned academies are to play in nation-building.

His words: “Language plays a major role in the design of a science curriculum in a country like Nigeria. The language factor looms as large in the Nigerian education system as the science factor. With the education system, there is research evidence from the University of Ife to show that teaching in the mother tongue in the early years of schooling is far more productive than going straight for English.

“By discovering the way in which science was practised in ancient cultures of Nigeria, links can be established between cultural and modern science. This is pertinent because modern science looks alien to the ordinary Nigerian, particularly in the rural areas and an important part of this has to do with the use of language. The efforts of linguists may yet provide a method of making modern science yield its secrets even to monolingual Nigerians by establishing a metalanguage which provides equivalents between the ancient Nigerian apprehension and analysis of natural phenomena and the modern Europeanised mode.”

Professor Banjo, who explained that “modern Learned Academies are a collection of individuals who are eminent in their fields but who wish to give society the benefit of their learning, both individually and collectively, would appear to be indispensable catalysts for development in developed and seriously developing countries of the world,” suggested that the Nigerian Academy of Science, established in 1977 to engage in vigorous advocacy for the application of science to the solution of the country’s problems and creation of scientifically enlightened citizenry, pursue science infusion into culture.

“Leadership of the Academy of Science is vital in helping to infuse scientific attitude and method into the indigenous cultures of Nigeria, so that modern science becomes fully domesticated in the cultures. One simple way of doing this is by giving enough prominence to scientists in the public life of the country as is the case in developed countries. The public needs to be exposed constantly to rational explanations of phenomena instead of having the mysteries of the unknown reinforced. Scientists need to be more evident in the media helping the public acquire the scientific attitude,” said 80-year-old Prof. Banjo.

On education in Nigeria, the Professor had words, particularly for the Academy of Education which attempts to influence government policy through regular annual lectures and conventions; “it is generally recognised that Nigeria faces gargantuan problems in the area of education on which genuine national development ultimately depends.

The entire education system needs to be subjected to bold and original thinking in form and content, paying greater attention to Nigeria’s unique problems than to the facile borrowing of practices from abroad. Primary and secondary levels of education need to be entirely reconstructed to provide, on one hand, suitable inputs into the tertiary level, and on the other hand, produce truly civilized morally upright and refined Nigerians.