Teaching the African Child

Learning is fun. Or at least, it is supposed to be. During the course of this MBA, I have met several wonderful people and one of them is Chinwendum, a fiery educationist who is obsessed with learning systems. We once had a class presentation where Chinwe, pitched the idea of using gaming as a learning tool. This resonated with me as an avid gamer because I believe we learn many things unintentionally when we are having fun. Only God knows how many concepts in human biology I learned as a child while watching ‘Magic Schoolbus‘.

There are many words I would never have come across in my life if my father had not influenced me to read novels from an early age. At the time, the goal was not to learn new words. The goal was simply to enjoy a good story from a good author. So when Chimamanda or Chinua Achebe used a word I was unfamiliar with, I grudgingly left my seat to go fetch a dictionary. By reading those books, I understood the meanings, usage, and context those words were associated with. I was learning without even realizing it.

And so?

I once watched a Ted talk on Youtube by a Nigerian speaker, Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu, who also seemed as passionate as Chinwe. She was just as visibly obsessed with the education sectors in Africa. The speaker lamented how at every level of our national life, the average Nigerian, and indeed average African, expresses an inferiority complex to those in the west. We believe everything western is better. When they offer us anything, we take it without question. Why do we do this? She blamed it on our learning systems.

A is for…?

From the time a Nigerian child is taken to school, he is taught that A is for Apple. Really? An apple? In Nigeria’s tropical climate where apples do not grow indigenously? How many Nigerian toddlers get to play with apples or even eat them regularly? Yet this is a child’s first introduction to what school is. A place where he learns abstract things that have absolutely no relationship to his everyday life.

The underfunding of our universities has not helped our plight, and as such, we continue to learn things in our curriculum that have absolutely no effect on our everyday struggles. Thus we have electrical engineering graduates whose mothers sell in the market at night but they cannot create simple solar-powered bulbs to help their mothers see their wares properly or attract customers. Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu argued that the disconnect between our education systems and our current everyday realities is the reason we feel so helpless before foreigners. They have made learning useful for them. We have not. How can you argue with the ones who own ‘A is for apple’?

A is for… Apple Akara

So maybe it is time we had a rethink. How about when we teach our children in school, we use everyday examples that they can relate with. Like A is for Akara? Can we make learning more fun and relatable by employing better techniques? Can we give Newton’s laws of motion a local feel?

The problem of Maths in Africa, is English

Anon

Here’s a radical idea. How about we teach those same laws of motion to local kids in the same language their mothers talk to them at home. So, imagine teaching the basis for dy/dx in Yoruba or Igbo. While some experts believe that this will hinder their mastery of the English language, there are many who have towed this path. Hong Kong and India were colonized by the British, and today they are largely doing well for themselves. Neither of them has English as its sole official language. Even if we choose not to make any regional language official due to marked sub-ethnic differences, and fear of further secessionist ideas (which is nonsense if you ask me), can we at least make learning relevant to the learners?

So dear educators, we love learning when we are having fun. We love learning when we can easily see the relevance. And we love learning, when it feels closer to home. Can you help us bring it home?