Book Burning, Education, and Hausa “romance” novels (I)

As the firemen invade the home of an old woman who has been found with a library of books, the fire chief Beatty tells her, “You know the law…. Where’s your common sense? None of those books agree with each other. You’ve been locked up here for years with a regular damned Tower of Babel.” […]

As the firemen invade the home of an old woman who has been found with a library of books, the fire chief Beatty tells her, “You know the law…. Where’s your common sense? None of those books agree with each other. You’ve been locked up here for years with a regular damned Tower of Babel.” (35)
In this society, everyone is expected to think alike. Anyone who behaves differently is a threat to order. When a fireman Montag begins to regret destroying books, his boss Beatty tells him. “A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?”(53)
But when Montag is tempted to sneak a look at the books he is burning, what he reads changes his life. He does indeed become a threat to those who would attempt to cleanse the world of literature. “Those who don’t build must burn,” an old professor tells Montag. “It’s as old as history and juvenile delinquents.” In Montag’s world, history is no longer taught in schools, and the government keeps its people bombarded with entertainment so that they won’t think about the wars that are going on or how children have started to kill other children for fun.
I remembered Fahrenheit 451 last week when, shortly after I turned in my column, I went online and discovered that former governor of Kano State, Ibrahim Shekarau, had been named education minister.
I hope that Malam Shekarau, a former mathematics teacher, will be a fine education minister. The fact that Polytechnics and Colleges of Education suspended their strike after meeting with him is promising. But when I heard the news all I could think of were the photos I had seen of him (published in Sunday Trust, 20 May 2007) standing over a fire burning Hausa novels at Government Girls College, Dala—and about the Kano censorship crisis during his administration. I wonder what kind of education children can expect when not only history has been purged from the national curriculum, but when novels, indeed novels in one’s own language, are seen as a threat.
According to Halima Musa’s article in 20 May 2007 Sunday Trust, Shekarau stated on the occasion of the book burning: “We want to change the reading attitude of our children so that instead of reading these obnoxious love novels, they should begin to read books that will increase their knowledge.” The book burning was part of the “one girl, one book” campaign started by the Kano State Societal Reorientation Directorate, A Daidaita Sahu. In a 20 January 2007 interview with Odoh Diego Okenyodo in Weekly Trust, then head of A Daidaita Sahu, Bala Muhammad, described how teachers at a certain secondary school speculated that their students were failing because of reading habits. Muhammad goes on to describe how “All students were called to assembly and teachers went into the dorms to search for novels in closets and wardrobes. Incredibly about 4,000 (four thousand) romantic and titillating novellas were retrieved in a school with about 2,000 students!” Muhammad states that A Daidaita Sahu intended to exchange “unrecommendable reading materials for our didactic novellas.” Apparently that exchange included burning the books the girls had chosen for themselves.
The educational philosophy in evidence here seems to presume that reading “romantic novellas” for pleasure are harmful to the education of girls, without looking at other factors such as the conditions of the schools or skills of the teachers. The Kano state government did not cite any educational studies to back up these assumptions. In fact, research done elsewhere has shown that, to the contrary, reading for pleasure is actually beneficial to education. According to a report by Christiana Clark and Kate Rumbold, “Reading for pleasure: A Research overview” published by the British National Literacy Trust, a 2004 Scottish analysis showed that “Overall, those reading a large amount of fiction tended to score highest on the reading tests.” S. Krashen’s 1993 study, The Power of Reading, they say, suggests that “students who choose what they read and have an informal environment in which to read tend to be more motivated, read more and show greater language and literacy development.”
A study released 11 September 2013 by the Institute of Education at London University indicates that beyond reading skills, test scores in vocabulary and math were higher for adolescents who read for pleasure. Researcher Alice Sullivan states that while it may seem surprising that reading would improve math scores, “it is likely that strong reading ability will enable children to absorb and understand new information and affect their attainment in all subjects.”
On the other hand, Clark and Rumbold point out, “studies show that when struggling readers are not motivated to read, their opportunities to learn decrease significantly,” as Baker, Dreher and Guthrie suggest in their 2000 book Engaging young readers. A 2004 study by Wang and Guthrie published in the Reading Research Quarterly suggest that children who read because they want to get certain outcomes “are less likely to get enjoyment from books” and less likely to understand tests.
What does this say, therefore, about the burning of reading materials girls chose for themselves? I will address some of the common objections I’ve heard to the thriving Hausa popular literature next week, but let me end this week with these thoughts. One of the things that particularly troubles me about the book burning incident and the A Daidaita Sahu forced “exchange” is that it seems to be particularly directed at girls and downgrades the reading and writing experiences of women. I interviewed a young woman who funded her reading habit by renting out the books she had bought. She told me that she preferred to read Hausa novels by women, as did most of the women who rented from her. I also heard this from marketers who sold the book. The Hausa literary movement has, to an extent I have not seen in any other popular literary movements in Africa, inspired women to write and women to read. The novels have become a way for women to earn income, and a way for women’s voices to be heard. Attempts to suppress and control these novels are yet another way of trying to suppress and control women’s voices, what they can say, what information they have access to. Burning women’s novels at a girl’s school, in my opinion, will not make girls study harder. It seems to me that it merely reinforces to girls that their creative endeavors are not valued and their preferences are worthless. It seems to me to reinforce that school is a boring place where you learn to regurgitate what your teachers write on the board or give you in handouts rather than a place where you learn to think and question and debate and pursue the things that excite you.
Let me end with a contrasting example, I am a life-long reader. In secondary school, I read dozens if not hundreds of science fiction, fantasy, and historical romance novels. My English teacher would sometimes roll his eyes when I showed him what I was reading, but he didn’t stop me from reading them. Did I neglect my homework for these novels? Yes, I did. I would usually come home and finish a novel before I started school assignments. As a result, I often fell asleep, candle burning dangerously close to my head, before I finished my homework. Did my neglect of my homework for reading popular novels hurt me in the long run? Well, I just finished a PhD in African literature. You be the judge. I am glad I was lucky enough to have parents and teachers who encouraged me to read what I liked and gently suggested new books that stretched me further.
I hope that those who make educational policy in Nigeria focus not only on solving political squabbles but also on their educational philosophy as a whole. I hope that book burning is no longer part of the plan.
#BringBackOurGirls