Education as building villas in the air

That was preceded by an affirmation that the ability of primary school children to learn shall be anchored in ‘’one-year Early Childhood Care Development Education’’; while children in classes 1, 2 and 3 in public primary schools, will each be given textbooks for ‘’core subjects’’ of English Language, Mathematics, Basic Sciences and Technology.  To promote […]

That was preceded by an affirmation that the ability of primary school children to learn shall be anchored in ‘’one-year Early Childhood Care Development Education’’; while children in classes 1, 2 and 3 in public primary schools, will each be given textbooks for ‘’core subjects’’ of English Language, Mathematics, Basic Sciences and Technology.  To promote quality in the teaching skills of teachers he announced that ‘’over 600,000 teachers from across Nigeria have participated in diverse training programmes’’.
The torrent of goodies may well have been targeted at an assembly of cocoa or tanned leather exporters. His words were, however, more warmly received when he turned to tertiary education, announcing that TETFUND will give each university 912 million Naira in 2014 alone. Each college of education is to receive 581 million naira; and each polytechnic 661 million naira. It was clear that these ‘’stakeholders’’ in education had built their villas in the air.   
The Minister’s enthusiasm for improved quality in primary schooling is in tandem with high rates of interest in education shown in UNICEF’s report that 98 per cent of children who enter primary school i urban areas reach grade 6; compared to 97 per cent in rural schools. The study ignored the over 12 million children who do not enter primary schools at all. He did not openly address Professor Henry Bienen’s paraphrasing of Nyerere’s view that ‘’primary school education should no longer be considered as preparation for higher schooling but be a full education in itself, training people for the life they must lead on the land’’.  That radical view accepts the colonial heritage that secondary and tertiary education does NOT have room for the vast majority of hundreds of millions of Tanzanian or Nigerian children enrolled in primary schools as well as the whole school-age set. To add pepper to this raw wound those excluded are abused as ‘’failures’’ even if they scored distinction grades.
Minister Shekarau warned against those who do not get quality education become unemployable ‘’school leavers’’ who flare up as armed political mercenaries during elections; armed robbers; hired assassins, kidnappers, and armed rebels. Unmeasured wasted brain power become sources of insecurity for Nigeria. His planned Summit for Teachers will, presumably, face the challenge of inventing a DEMOCRATIC; transparently free, compulsory, and nationwide primary school system that offers education for building successful lives for the hundreds of millions of children who cannot enter post-primary schooling because the country cannot as yet provide teachers, classroom materials, lecture halls, or laboratories for it
There are problems over teachers. In Malawi, children aged six to 12 years blocked roads on 19th December, 2014, and smashed over 40 vehicles because their teachers were on strike. A minimum of 6,600 teachers had ‘’not seen the pay cheque since May 2014’’. Over 70 government officials are on trial for stealing over 30 million American Dollars meant for running government services.  In Bulgaria the low pay of 4,300 Euros per year has led to good quality teachers migrating to Luxembourg where a teacher can earn up to 101,500 Euros a year, or to Germany with between 38,200 to 51,400 Euros per year. In Niger Republic a teacher earns 1,200 Euros per year; and teachers have to walk long distances to collect their pay.  When in 1968 Tanzania introduced farming into schools, there were no teachers trained to teach agriculture.
A 2007 research studied pupil scores in English and Mathematic in selected schools in Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Botswana and South Africa. They reported that pupils who spoke the language of instruction in the community ‘’achieved better than pupils who rarely or never did’’. The highest scores were by pupils in Tanzania, Zanzibar and Kenya where Swahili is also the language of instruction. The matter of the use of Nigerian mother-tongues for teaching to university level was not mentioned by Minister Shekarau.
The late Professor Aliu Babs Fafunwa quoted a 1925 colonial education policy which asserted that: ‘’ the educational use of the vernacular and the provision of text books in the vernacular are of primary importance’’.  The prospect of thousands of translators, small scale publishers and book sellers engaged in mother-tongue education in Nigeria awaits the planned National Summit on Teachers.