Towards democratisation of education in Nigeria – the role of state (I)
Without such a retrospect, a people will live in a crude present and, having no buttress from the past, will fare badly from the rough winds of life – John Buchan The rough winds of life, the crude present of lost opportunities, disappointed hopes and shattered dreams which are the everyday experiences of many […]
Without such a retrospect, a people will live in a crude present and, having no buttress from the past, will fare badly from the rough winds of life – John Buchan
The rough winds of life, the crude present of lost opportunities, disappointed hopes and shattered dreams which are the everyday experiences of many Nigerians, have marked and delineated the reliefs of their lives for so long, that the purposes of the existence of societies are almost forgotten or remain somehow obscure. Alongside this, ignorance of the role of the state in ensuring better prospects for citizens not necessarily by way of a social contract, but as a duty, serves as blinders over our eyes, that prevent us from seeing the path that can take us towards the attainment of higher levels of material and cultural development.
Only education, when provided liberally to the majority of the people over time, can remove those blinders over our eyes and reveal to us the shiny prospects of truly enlightened societies where rights are taken for granted and their proper enjoyment is the norm. Understanding the concept of “rights” in determining the measure of democratisation is essential in discussing access to education in this day and age in our country. It is necessary in this regard, to arrive at a consensus whether education is a human right to be enjoyed by all, or a privilege to be accorded only to the few who can afford the costs entailed in providing this service to deserving individuals.
For, education is a service just like healthcare, housing and security, which are indispensable in enabling the individual and groups to enjoy the fruits of citizenship and the fulfilment of their expectations for living wholesome lives. Education, like the other listed services, should be provided by the state freely without encumbrances to the people, by way of fulfilling its duty. Approaching education as a right of every citizen of Nigeria will enable us to locate the discourse on the democratisation of this vital service in the context of national development and integration, as well as in meeting globally established norms under the regimes of social, cultural, political and economic rights.
Rights and freedoms are functions of enlightenment and availability of spaces for the cognition of such principles, therefore; education plays a critical role in providing the space and the ability to fully understand, treasure and enjoy these inherent gifts of providence and organised society. Without education, rights are essentially meaningless factors in the normative structures of societies that do not translate in concrete terms into the emancipation of the citizens mentally and spiritually, and granting them the range of choices in life that will enable them to determine their existence and the way they should be governed.
Democratisation and egalitarianism are not used interchangeably here, or in the naive sense of creating a completely equal and classless society. They are used more in the sense of creating favourable conditions for accessibility and affordability to as many members of the community as possible, to receive education as a means of securing freedom, accelerating national integration and creating a commonality of behaviour and shared destiny among Nigerians. The levelling effect of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), for instance, is a function of the higher educational system in our country that has proved a useful integrative machinery over several decades.
Stable and better established nations have used the symbolism of national values, ideologies, projects and physical developments to foster the sense of nationhood and continuity of the nation-state over centuries and even millennia. Besides education which is the foundation of an egalitarian society and the means of continuity of the nation-state, monuments like great mosques and cathedrals, libraries, museums, archives, palaces and houses of assembly, great public buildings, universities and schools, transportation hubs, national parks and game reserves etc., have all been used to provide the sense of perpetual existence of the nation and the determination of their creators to make these symbols serve as unifying forces of their countries.
Such projects, moreover, provide certainty about the future hopes and survival of the countries concerned. It is with these undertakings that many countries today have survived beyond the lifespan of nations or communities undisturbed by the passage of time or the proclivities of human destructiveness. Providing a space for social anthropology to determine the level of egalitarianism and democratisation of a society is essential to our ability to dedicate special attention to the progress of our country. Access, availability, affordability and commonality, are the basis of egalitarian societies. They also form the fundamental requirements of a democratic society or country.
Where these factors are not generally provided for or placed manifestly at the disposal of the citizenry, the slow and painful work of making them available must form the tasks of any government that aspires to be democratic and popular. This particularly holds true in the case of educating the nation. Education is not the development of the mental faculty of an individual only. It is the imparting of useful knowledge to the larger society across generations towards the uplifting of the national collective and the directing of the pool of knowledge towards the making of enlightened and informed citizenry.
Education is the organised process of imparting or acquiring essential knowledge by means of which people can adapt to their immediate environment and also learn about other communities of people, features, phenomena and incidents. Most importantly, education binds one generation to another and creates a continuity of purposes and values that form a national outlook as well as the sense of nationhood. The democratisation of education must be a conscious and deliberate undertaking that is fostered by the state as a policy of creating uniformity of attachment and conscientious affinity with the idea of a national identity and shared destiny.
A defined and established curriculum for each subject or discipline provides certainty and a predictable sense of continuity in learning, that also makes the art or profession of teaching a standardised vocation. On the basis of these two factors, long-term programmes could be drawn up and established for each department and faculty. In that way uniformity is created towards having a national or even a universal system of education. That finally makes it possible to democratise education to make it available to all social and economic classes and groups of people who are required to participate in a prearranged programme of instruction leading to the issuance of testimonials or certificates of having gone through the mill.
The most important aspect of this universalisation of curriculum is that it holds no barriers to age or gender in terms of granting access to education for everyone. Egalitarianism as a means of levelling social classes can only be brought about in practice by an equitable system of education. Creating opportunities for all and sundry to achieve decent education therefore is the foundation of peaceful and progressive societies. The grammar schools of England, the gymnasiums of Germany, the ecoles elementaires in France and others throughout Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, China and Japan, provided the basis for the establishment of a system of development based on merit and recognition of personal exertion as opposed to class privileges and inherited rights.