Civilization: That One Thing That Dares Us to Act!
By Amadu Wurie Jalloh
18/09/19
18/09/19
In 2014, the Students Analysts and Writes Network of the University of Makeni conceived the idea of publishing the first students' magazine for the university. The group minted to use the initiative to identify with more writers on campus and create a platform for them to make their voices be heard so to boost their skills and self-esteem. By then my genre of write-up (interest) was only poetry. But I wanted to fit in more prominently by writing an article- though there was a column given for poems, but I wanted to convey something complex but in a more simple language. I had been contemplating on things we do that those before us had done differently, as well as things they did decades, if not centuries away that have not changed a bit until now. It is so I dared to write my first 'article' since I entered university-- a path I have enjoyed treading upon since then. Meanwhile, the normal length of articles accepted for publication then was three pages (double space): I wrote a five pages article, and tried to compress it to have a maximum of three pages, but I still couldn't because then it became illegible that way, so I resolved to having four pages article on the topic civilization. It unfortunately couldn't pass the eligibility test, and was eventually dropped. But the good thing was, I managed to print several copies of it to post on different notice-boards across the township of Makeni.
Now, after years of observation, I have realized that I should make another call for a reform in our education system because it's my believe that it has not been responsive to the challenges we are faced with as a nation (I am trying my best not to infer that the education system in the whole sub-Saharan Africa needs an overhaul, but I am aware that we share common challenges).
Now, after years of observation, I have realized that I should make another call for a reform in our education system because it's my believe that it has not been responsive to the challenges we are faced with as a nation (I am trying my best not to infer that the education system in the whole sub-Saharan Africa needs an overhaul, but I am aware that we share common challenges).
When the subject CIVILIZATION is mentioned in most gatherings amongst Sierra Leoneans, the discus will mostly be centered on one of the following: ONES LOOK, APPROACH, and mostly, THE PECULIAR WAY OF LIFE OF A PARTICULAR GROUP OF PEOPLE. Meanwhile, in as much as that conventional wisdom offers a somewhat correct definition of the term, I, however would say it's not an accurate definition of the term because it's not all encompassing-- it makes a narrow definition of the term civilization.
The fundamentals of CIVILIZATION are: 1) challenges; and 2) answers
Humans, by nature of our being, are among the most vulnerable and weak mammals; but it's our ability to use our mental faculty far exceeding any other mammalian animal to overcome everyday's challenges that has today placed us in the spot among Apex predators, and most importantly, one of the most (if not the most) adaptive animal to have ever inhabited planet EARTH: we have managed to live and strive in the most weather extreme places. Our footprints, due to our aggressive survivalistic instinct, have even exceeded this planet to the moon. We basically have civilization to thank for that.
What About Our Education System?
Since civilization is in essence the responsive impulse to manage, prevent and resultantly overcome the environmental, social and economic challenges we are faced with as a society, the education we give should therefore be equivalent to the answers we seek as a striving nation.
But what are the challenges we need answers to as a nation?
The biggest challenge we are faced with as a nation of Africans is DARING TO DARE.
It would seem like we do not have the courage to respond to our everyday challenges as Africans. Our educational system has been a mere string pulling us towards the answers of another man's challenges-- the West. If you are wondering what I mean by this, come to think of how many graduates the nation of Africans have produced since the spread of Western Education, and how far have we gone in terms of solving our challenges as a nation. Why is it that even after decades of formation we are still host to some of the world's most poorest people? Why is it that despite the fact that our lands are fertile for growth we are still challenged with feeding ourselves? Why is it that despite the fact that our continent, and the country to be precise, is awashed with two third of the world's mineral resources used by industrialized nations to prosper, we yet cannot manufacture or produce end products in our land? Why would a country blessed with massive rains that would wash it population to the sea, and rivers that will obstruct commuters find it hard to provide basic pump-water facility to its citizens who would drink unclean and contaminated waters year round and die in pity? Why would a country with so many challenges not produce the finest entrepreneurs? The questions are numerous, we can spend a day long asking them. Meanwhile, one thing for sure, our education system has not been tailored to give answers to our questions, but rather fit in to give services to a provision that is never there in the first place. Our education system is simply tuned to the Challenges of other cultures and not necessarily ours.
We are made to go to school and learn about other civilizations. We are made to learn what they say, know about, or think about our CIVILIZATION. We are made to learn about what they were challenged with, and what they did do to get the answers to their problems. And most importantly, we are trained to fit in to their call to assistance to overcome their challenges. We simply cannot do anything with our education if we do not get employment in any of their multilateral organizations established by the Westerners in our lands to extract and exploit the very mineral resources under our feet to uplift them to the next level whilst we remain dependent upon what they throw down to us as a solution. Our nation's economy will suffer drought of they fold up their mining activities in our lands. Our NGOs will crumble if they do not donate to feed our poor and uplift our deprived. We simply are hopelessly dependent on their (un)friendly gesture. Worst still the very books we read in the library seeking answers to our problems are written by them.
The big question remains: Who in their complete sense would feed you with accurate information on how to dominate the world, and eventually theirs? None! And why do we keep believing that studying theories of Western origin can save us as Africans?
We are made to go to school and learn about other civilizations. We are made to learn what they say, know about, or think about our CIVILIZATION. We are made to learn about what they were challenged with, and what they did do to get the answers to their problems. And most importantly, we are trained to fit in to their call to assistance to overcome their challenges. We simply cannot do anything with our education if we do not get employment in any of their multilateral organizations established by the Westerners in our lands to extract and exploit the very mineral resources under our feet to uplift them to the next level whilst we remain dependent upon what they throw down to us as a solution. Our nation's economy will suffer drought of they fold up their mining activities in our lands. Our NGOs will crumble if they do not donate to feed our poor and uplift our deprived. We simply are hopelessly dependent on their (un)friendly gesture. Worst still the very books we read in the library seeking answers to our problems are written by them.
The big question remains: Who in their complete sense would feed you with accurate information on how to dominate the world, and eventually theirs? None! And why do we keep believing that studying theories of Western origin can save us as Africans?
Dare to Dare
I admit, we have a lot to take from the West as examples and lessons, to make our own way out of our problems. Western education has offered us a lot gains, but surely we should not be too confident to say it will give answers to our challenges as a nation. We should dare overhaul our education system to be responsive to our challenges: unemployment, food in-security, natural disasters, diseases, infrastructural deficiency, and most importantly lack of the ability to manage and provoke science and innovation.
Our education system, in essence, should be CIVILIZED. It's high time we started training our students to become entrepreneurs. Teach them to learn to love the environment and make them understand the relativism paradigm. Teach them to do away with fatalism and bring onboard their rich knowledge on curative herbal medicines and research to treat mysterious diseases. Teach them to dare believe they can fly to the sky, hence they should find way to. Teach them that water and fire are the source of every divine scientific reality we are enjoying and we should amass enough Knowledge on how to make more use of them. Teach them to teach the young ones how to think critically and how to think a solution to a problem.
What if we could start teaching our students in the sciences in Sierra Leone how to repair phones, how to develop a computer programme, how to dismantle and assemble a computer, how electrify a house, how to fix a car or a bike, how to design furniture, etc... What if we could bring all the young innovators in Sierra Leone into the classrooms to teach or facilitate lessons in science and innovation teach our high School and university students? What if we can give a new meaning to the dissertations/thesis our Agriculture students are expected to submit a research report on a topic their department master approve before graduation from college into something more practical? What if we can allocate to them lands to start an agricultural experiment on a specific crop or specimen, which they would monitor and report about in their final year to provide a substantive information on what we rely on fr survival? What if our Art students at the university could be assigned to rewrite the history of Sierra Leone to make it more rich, analytical and local as a dissertation upon graduation? What if they could also be given, as an option to writing a phase of our history, the chance to write a film script about local heroes or models fit for cinematography? What if we just dared to ask all the questions about the poor education system we have and try to figure out a possible working solutions?
Because now, more than ever, our challenges as a nation have dared us to act to solve them or we risk perishing in abject poverty, disasters, hunger, diseases, and of course from climate change.
We have for so long relied on import. We import all the household utensils, we import our food, our cloths, our cars and our teachers. When for instance you ask how long we have been using a pestle and mortar to pound and grind the things we eat in Sierra Leone, historians may tell you we have been using them for centuries. You can go and come back to Africa and still find the African using the same device and technology they have been using centuries ago with no modifications but those brought by the Chinese or Westerners. We take pleasure in buying from them what we could make for ourselves, and later rush to them for help. When you buy from another nation (especially the West and now Asia), you are given them the support they need to buy all you have so to help them engineer their civilization. The most unfortunate reality is, when we are blessed with some genius, we careless them, we refuse them the support they need to answer our problems- consequently loosing them to the West who have become a bank volt for the world's prodigies.
It's so I take to say our education system needs more than pay improvement for its hardworking teachers, it needs more than extension of the years for formation, it needs more than regulatory measures to help curb examination malpractice and corruption, it needs more than employing more teachers, and of course it takes more than payment of school fees. It needs OVERHAULING to respond to the challenges we are faced with as a developing country. In simple term, it needs to be CIVILIZATIONAL CENTERED.
©AWJ
®SAWN
Our education system, in essence, should be CIVILIZED. It's high time we started training our students to become entrepreneurs. Teach them to learn to love the environment and make them understand the relativism paradigm. Teach them to do away with fatalism and bring onboard their rich knowledge on curative herbal medicines and research to treat mysterious diseases. Teach them to dare believe they can fly to the sky, hence they should find way to. Teach them that water and fire are the source of every divine scientific reality we are enjoying and we should amass enough Knowledge on how to make more use of them. Teach them to teach the young ones how to think critically and how to think a solution to a problem.
What if we could start teaching our students in the sciences in Sierra Leone how to repair phones, how to develop a computer programme, how to dismantle and assemble a computer, how electrify a house, how to fix a car or a bike, how to design furniture, etc... What if we could bring all the young innovators in Sierra Leone into the classrooms to teach or facilitate lessons in science and innovation teach our high School and university students? What if we can give a new meaning to the dissertations/thesis our Agriculture students are expected to submit a research report on a topic their department master approve before graduation from college into something more practical? What if we can allocate to them lands to start an agricultural experiment on a specific crop or specimen, which they would monitor and report about in their final year to provide a substantive information on what we rely on fr survival? What if our Art students at the university could be assigned to rewrite the history of Sierra Leone to make it more rich, analytical and local as a dissertation upon graduation? What if they could also be given, as an option to writing a phase of our history, the chance to write a film script about local heroes or models fit for cinematography? What if we just dared to ask all the questions about the poor education system we have and try to figure out a possible working solutions?
Because now, more than ever, our challenges as a nation have dared us to act to solve them or we risk perishing in abject poverty, disasters, hunger, diseases, and of course from climate change.
We have for so long relied on import. We import all the household utensils, we import our food, our cloths, our cars and our teachers. When for instance you ask how long we have been using a pestle and mortar to pound and grind the things we eat in Sierra Leone, historians may tell you we have been using them for centuries. You can go and come back to Africa and still find the African using the same device and technology they have been using centuries ago with no modifications but those brought by the Chinese or Westerners. We take pleasure in buying from them what we could make for ourselves, and later rush to them for help. When you buy from another nation (especially the West and now Asia), you are given them the support they need to buy all you have so to help them engineer their civilization. The most unfortunate reality is, when we are blessed with some genius, we careless them, we refuse them the support they need to answer our problems- consequently loosing them to the West who have become a bank volt for the world's prodigies.
It's so I take to say our education system needs more than pay improvement for its hardworking teachers, it needs more than extension of the years for formation, it needs more than regulatory measures to help curb examination malpractice and corruption, it needs more than employing more teachers, and of course it takes more than payment of school fees. It needs OVERHAULING to respond to the challenges we are faced with as a developing country. In simple term, it needs to be CIVILIZATIONAL CENTERED.
©AWJ
®SAWN
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