By Aare Afe Babalola

“Education is the most potent weapon to fight ignorance and poverty, as well as a veritable tool for self-development and the advancement of society.”

EDUCATION serves as a means through which the knowledge, understanding, and skills of a society or group of people are passed from generation to generation. History tells us that every generation prior to the evolution of the writing system passed on its stock of values, traditions, methods, and skills orally to the next generations. Oral traditions were central in all societies when there was no writing. 

The “oriki,”  “ijala” and the quatrains of the ifa corpus or oduifa in Yoruba land are classical examples of a rich oral tradition and mode of worship. In this part of the world, for example, education began with the parents through moonlight tales in which morals were taught and passed down from generation to generation. 

The elders, also, educated the younger ones by telling the events of the past which were passed on from child to child. Starting in about 3,500 BC, various writing systems developed in ancient civilizations around the world which included Egypt known for its hieroglyphs, the Phoenicians writing systems the Greek, the Etruscan and Latin alphabets, the Cyrillic, Aramaic, and the Hebrews scripts and the Arabic. 

Education in the city states of Ancient Greece was mostly private, except in Sparta. Formal education, as we now know it, found its form around the 4th century in the Roman Empire. But during the dark ages and mediaeval era, it was the Roman Catholic Church that preserved education from total destruction; in fact, most of the earliest universities, such as the University of Paris (1160), University of Bologna (1088), were founded on religious principles with an emphasis on character and morals.

It was not until the 18th Century that most of West, Central, and parts of Eastern Europe began to provide elementary education in reading, writing, and arithmetic because politicians believed that education was needed for orderly, prescribed behaviour. In the 20th Century, most of secondary education was only open to those who could afford it. At the end of World War 1, major nations had to give further attention to secondary education.

One golden thread that runs through the systems of education in all ages is that it is programmed to produce the complete man who will embrace all the values of self-reliance, honesty, diligence, enterprise, and self-esteem, ability to face the reality of the world to become what the Yoruba call “Omoluabi” without necessarily clutching his university certificate to look for jobs. Modern or Western education was first introduced into Nigeria in the 19th century, mainly by the missionaries, who established elementary schools and later secondary schools. 

They were of high quality, with an emphasis on character, hygiene, morals, honesty, integrity, enterprise and self-reliance. With the curriculum of teaching morals and character in addition to the ‘three Rs’, these schools were able to produce total men who could stand on their own in their various callings, dictating the pace of things and shaping destinies in tandem with Hert Spencer’s postulation that education is tantamount to complete living.

One recalls the philosophy of Aristotle in this regard: “Education is the creation of a sound mind in a sound body. Education is meant to develop man’s faculties, especially his mind, so that he may be able to enjoy the contemplation of supreme truth, goodness, and beauty, of which perfect happiness essentially consists.” 

Quality education is meant to involve a blend of three elements: the head, the heart, and the hand (the three h’s) and any society that fails to achieve this blend will end up producing half-baked graduates. With regard to my humble beginnings, I am convinced that education is the most potent weapon to fight ignorance and poverty. It is a veritable tool for self-development and the advancement of society. 

Traditionally, university degrees are awarded to graduating students who have fulfilled two paramount parameters or conditions: learning and character, with character coming before learning. If a student makes a First Class in learning, but scores low in character, the university would not award such a student its First Class because the university would not want to send a bad ambassador out to the world. 

But today, how many of our public universities can boldly say they award their certificates to students who have been adjudged worthy in learning and character? In most of our public universities, most students live off campus. Most of the students only attend classes, occasionally, and leave immediately for their houses in the town. There is little or no interaction between the teachers and the students. Students only go through the university, but the university does not go through them. How on earth can the teacher assess the character of such students? 

On a general note, what do we have in Nigeria today? Nigeria now produces several thousand graduates annually, most of whom are bereft of good character. Perhaps this accounts for the reason why Nigeria is where it is today, producing university graduates without character. 

Our educational system has lost colour and character, and that is why the private universities, where boarding is compulsory, and the teachers insist on character moulding have come in to fill the void, as they are able to turn their students into total men and women who will fit into any position in life, no matter their course of study, be it Medicine, Engineering, Archaeology or the languages, and change Nigeria. 

The curriculum in public universities is also grossly deficient, it is geared towards passing the prescribed written examinations mostly by cramming the contents of the handouts. Students are trained to believe that their university certificates are meant only to secure jobs. They rush into offices after receiving their certificates, looking for white collar jobs that aren’t available, causing frustration and desperation.

It can be argued that the rot in the society and the attendant high spate of armed robbery, drug peddling, kidnapping, terrorism (in different shapes, forms, and intensity), corruption as well as insecurity, in the face of the multitude of our graduates, are the direct results of our education system, which has de-emphasized character and entrepreneurship. 

To be concluded….