The black man is capable of managing it own affairs, a popular quote made by the greatest African leader ever Osagyefo Doctor Kwame Nkrumah as part of his Independence Declaration on the eve of 6th March 1957 at the Old Polo Grounds, keeps ringing in the ears of many when it comes to bringing up African generational thinkers.
The black man is capable of managing it own affairs, a popular quote made by the greatest African leader ever Osagyefo Doctor Kwame Nkrumah as part of his Independence Declaration on the eve of 6th March 1957 at the Old Polo Grounds, keeps ringing in the ears of many when it comes to bringing up African generational thinkers. This article, ‘ The Evolution of African Generational thinkers, focuses on Africa’s educational system, the challenges and possible solutions to making this dream a reality. For starters, several factors contribute to nurturing individuals to become generational thinkers. Education in some parts of the world is helping to shape the minds of young people to be problem solvers while other parts of the world are busy memorising notes given in class.
The origins of African education may be found in Egypt and in Northern Koera. One of the first convenient mediums for retaining accurate information, papyrus, was used to develop systems for learning and developing new ideas. In fact, one of the first forms of higher education in Africa was the School of Holy Scriptures built in Ethiopia and Al-Azhar which was in Egypt.
These schools became cultural and academic centers as many people travelled from all over the globe for knowledge and instruction. Well before contact with external cultures, Africans had developed pools of understanding and educational tools. Although the quality of education and the quantity of well-equipped schools and teachers has steadily increased since the onset of the colonial period, there are still evident numerous inequalities in the existing educational systems based on region, economic status, and gender.
Education in many precolonial African states was in the form of apprenticeship, which was a form of informal education, where children and or younger members of each household mostly learned from older members of their household, and community. In most cases, each household member learned more than one skill in addition to learning the values, socialization, and norms of the community/tribe/household. Some of the common skills that people in pre-colonial Africa had to learn to include, dancing, farming, winemaking, cooking (mostly the females), and in some cases selected people learned how to practice herbal medicine, how to carve stools, how to carve masks and other furniture. Storytelling also played a significant role in education during pre-colonial Africa. Parents, other older members of households and Griots used oral storytelling to teach children about the history, norms and values of their state, household and community. Children usually gather around the storyteller who then narrates stories, usually, using personifications to tell stories that encourage conformity, obedience and values such as endurance, integrity, and other ethical values that are important for cooperation in the community. The harmonized learning outcomes, an effort by Patrinos and Angrist (2018) to combine data from different tests across regions, finds that learning outcomes for countries in Sub-Saharan Africa concentrated in the bottom half of the learning spectrum; although they are not substantively lower than what would be expected for Africa’s income levels. A combined measure of schooling quantity and quality—the learning-adjusted years of schooling shows more African countries performing below what their income level would predict. Further, the quality of learning outcomes does not appear to be rising in recent years. Le Nestour et al. (2020) document steady increases in adult literacy rates between 1940 and 2000, mostly linked to increases in enrollment.
Seen here is the list of African countries by level of literacy.
This entry includes a definition of literacy and UNESCO’s percentage estimates for populations aged 15 years and over, including the total population, males, and females.
Several factors contribute to the reason why Africa is struggling to bring up generational thinkers and the following are a few.
“Teaching children in their mother tongue builds a strong foundation for learning. Yet, in many African countries, students often begin school in colonial languages, creating barriers to understanding. Embracing local languages can enhance education and preserve cultural identity. 🌍📚 #MotherTongueEducation #CulturalPreservation”
Mother tongue instruction usually refers to teaching students basic skills in a language that they already know when they arrive at school. In many African countries, the historical norm has been to teach children in a colonial language (e.g., English, French or Portuguese), even though most children arrive at school with little or no ability in that language.
Teaching children to read in a language they speak at home increases the rate at which children learn to read. While impacts on initial reading ability in the mother tongue are promising, the objective of many parents is for their children to be literate in the colonial language, which may explain some of the resistance that parents have posed to mother tongue instruction reforms, as in Kenya. Several recent studies suggest that mother tongue instruction has positive impacts on children’s ability to subsequently learn a second language. However, the effect is not as strong: students taught in their mother tongue do not perform any better in English and perform worse in mathematics compared with students taught in a non-mother tongue. Meanwhile, there is some evidence of impact beyond literacy. In Ethiopia, where mother tongue instruction reforms took place in 1994, researchers have identified long-term impacts on educational attainment and civic engagement.
TEACHER REMUNERATION AND ACCOUNTABILITY POLICY
Teachers play such an instrumental role in students’ education, recent evidence on high rates of absenteeism and low levels of pedagogical and content knowledge suggests that better teacher policies may be useful to boost education outcomes. Teachers can often feel unappreciated and battered by the ever-changing education landscape and negative press. Creating a supportive positive environment within your school and telling your staff how much they’re valued can help to build a more confident culture. Make a habit of thanking your teachers, it’s quick, easy and can make a real difference.
Give teachers professional development opportunities that can act as a supportive guide for improvement. Most people are aware of their weaknesses but don’t know how to fix them, which leads to a lack of confidence. Creating a culture that hinges on peer support and collaboration and providing time and tools for teachers to develop is great for building confidence and a stronger culture as a whole. The demands of teaching can be overwhelming, from paperwork, lesson planning, marking and the many extracurricular activities teachers generally take on. When a leader doesn’t assist teachers who feel overwhelmed, they can lose their sense of efficacy. As a result, the teacher’s practice can also be affected. Try to empathise with your teachers, listen when they ask for help, and do what you can to help them manage their responsibilities. Doing this will make your teachers more likely to feel valued and supported in getting things done. An alternative strategy is to train teaching assistants to assist teachers. In Ghana, schools were randomly assigned to hire teaching assistants from among the country’s youth employment programs to either work with students who had fallen behind during school, work with students who had fallen behind after school or just work with half of the class, thereby reducing class size. All three interventions improved student learning, although the first two had the largest impacts. Interestingly, relative to the Ghana-based, teacher-led targeted instruction intervention mentioned above, the remedially targeted teaching assistant interventions not only doubled the impact on student test scores but also doubled the cost, so cost-effectiveness was comparable.
The Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) as described on their website www.schoolfeeding.gov.gv “is an initiative of the comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) pillar 3 which seeks to enhance food security and reduce hunger in line with the United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals.
The government of Ghana in 2005 piloted the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) to provide food to children at school. The objective was to reduce hunger, and malnutrition and increase enrolment and retention and secondly boost domestic food production in deprived communities of the country. If the National Secretariat would apply good project, program and portfolio management principles through a well-developed and coordinated multi-sectorial policy integration implementation process devoid of the usual one-man approach to policy implementation in Ghana and political interference. Whist employing, strong linkages between, local economic policies and National economic policies through effective decentralized structures the GSFP could become sustainable.
Coupled with improved agricultural and natural resource management and increased socially inclusive development practices.
The educational sector is on the cusp of a digital transformation. New technologies and advancements in student learning pose the challenges of managing a traditional IT network. And yet at the same time, these challenges are driving innovation and opportunities across campuses worldwide.
For education institutions to adapt and evolve their technology to meet the demands of their teachers and students
Another infrastructure challenge in the education sector is space and accessibility. Most spaces are intended to meet the needs of student’s classes, not the institution’s IT environment. As campus initiatives are constantly changing, IT teams must remain agile and be able to scale and grow accordingly. These needs become more complex requiring comprehensive solutions to solve the challenges of heating, cooling, space, and managing massive data.
Having a better-shared understanding of how the design of school infrastructure affects educational outcomes is very useful for those doing education sector work and a wider range of salient factors can be addressed for the same amount of expenditure. This will make it possible to develop better projects and to meet the specific needs of the children and teachers in question, with positive impacts on educational outcomes.
It will increase the efficiency of the resources invested in school infrastructure projects and will lead to more effective cooperation between the different specialists involved in the development of school infrastructure
STEM is not just an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics but an education method that integrates all these subjects.
It addresses the concerns that these disciplines or subjects are often taught in isolation while the fact is that they are all intertwined. It is a cohesive interdisciplinary approach based on hands-on learning.
In today’s world, it is impossible to dissimilate these fields from one another. Pick any item from your household or office and try to fit it in just any one of the STEM subjects. You will find it impossible to do so, for everything is integrated.
Science and Math lead to technology development, which is then integrated with engineering to make it useful in our lives.
STEM encourages kids to experiment, make mistakes and learn from their own experiences to reach correct outcomes, rather than relying on what the textbook says.
Critical thinking, logical analysis, inquiry and project-based learning are the keystones in STEM education.
It boosts the curiosity in the kids, making the learning process fun, relevant and everlasting.
This is a paradigm shift from traditional education, which vitally lacks hands-on learning, to learning that is much better and deeper.
A key flaw with isolated learning is that often students are unable to apply the concepts learned to actual problems, lowering their productivity or understandability and hence implementation.
STEM-based learning for kids can and should start as early as two years of age. In the early years, a kid’s brain to knowledge is like a sponge is to water. The learning pace of the kids in the initial 5 years is unprecedented and cannot be the same ever in life again.
Introducing subjects in early years in a proper way helps in building a positive attitude of kids towards education. Hands-on STEM learning wires a child’s brain for better problem-solving and critical thinking, leading to metacognition & growth mindset.
They are curious learners and have reasoning skills. Strengthening these innate abilities should begin at the earliest level rather than reserving it for later years.
Metaphorically, think of a building under construction. You cannot start constructing a strong, sturdy building from the 5th or 6th floor onwards.
You have to start with laying a strong, rock-solid foundation. Architects emphasize a lot on laying a strong foundation for the building to make the structure well-equipped to bear harsh circumstances. Once a strong foundation is laid, the upper floors or higher levels are easy to achieve with similar strength. The same stands true for building a child’s learning acumen.
Let’s take a look at a palm tree, it takes about four to ten years for it to mature to its fullest, and its roots go deep down the earth before it shoots up.
After its palm fruit had been harvested and used as red oil or soup, we can get another oil from the kennel, it does not end there we can get brooms from its branches, we can get a local drink called ‘nsafuo’ or ‘apketeshie’ from it and finally when the tree even seems useless you can still get something useful like ‘ Akokunu’ and Mash room ‘ dombo’ from it.
These are two plants in the same forest receiving the same dose of treatment in terms of climate but they all have their values but one stays longer and still relevant than the other.
From this illustration, the forest represents our educational system, different students in a class, different courses, different IQ levels, different pace of learning and different ambitions.
Life has a way of teaching each and everyone something of great value which will help individuals as they climb up the ladder of success.
Somebody’s process may be different from the other but it does not make that individual less of a person.
Most inner spirits of children are downplayed by either their teachers, parents or even the entire educational system.
Let’s take a look at our educational system again and this time the focus should be creative thinking and innovation rather than ‘ chew and pour ‘ to which we are proud of as teachers, parents and the nation at large.
Allow the young ones to think and encourage them to do what they love and not what we want them to love.
Teachers should note that each child has a different IQ
and a different learning pace.
They should know that there are four different types of Intelligence; aside from the intelligent quotient IQ, we also have the Emotional Quotient EQ, Social Quotient SQ and finally Adversity Quotient AQ.
Intelligence quotient is the measure of your comprehension ability example solving mathematics, memorizing things and recalling subject matters.
Emotional quotient is the measure of your ability to maintain peace with others example; keeping to time, being responsible, being honest, respecting boundaries, being humble, genuine and considerate. Social quotient is the measure of your ability to build a network of friends and maintain it over a long period.
People who have higher EQ and SQ tend to go further in life than those with high IQ.
Most schools capitalize on improving IQ levels while EQ and SQ are played down.
A man of high IQ can end up being employed by a man of high EQ and SQ even though he has an average IQ.
Your EQ represents your character while your SQ represents charisma. EQ and SQ make one manage situations better than IQ.
Don’t teach children to only have high IQ, but also higher EQ and SQ are very necessary.
Then the last one is the Adversity Quotient AQ which determines your ability to go through a rough path in life and come out without losing your mind.
AQ determines who will give up in the face of adversities and possibly even abandon their families.
So as a teacher, being vigilant and discovering the uniqueness of every child is very important.
Teachers should avoid comparing students and encourage the students that no one is better than the other but they are all special.
Teach your students that when a child makes a mistake in class or gives a different answer to a question does not mean that he or she is a blockheaded child.
Teach your students to know that scoring a low make or grade in an exam does not mean they are dumb. Teach them that when they get F9 in a subject, that i not the end of the world but a stepping stone to greatness because failure leads to success.
All these will be properly executed if the government makes the lives of teachers better and sees them as ones who go through the mill to inculcate knowledge into our future leaders and our Generational Thinkers.
To our parents, it is the dream of every child to get the necessary support they deserve in terms of decision making either for a course, career or a life partner.
Expose your children to other areas of life other than academics. They should enjoy doing manual work i.e., sports or art and never use work as a form of punishment.
Develop their EQ, SQ and AQ. They should become multifaceted human beings doing things independently of their parent.
Yours is to guide them as they make the choices. Open up to them the pros and cons and leave them to choose. In that way, we produce better children and more responsible people in the country.
Never compare your child to someone’s child because everyone is unique in his or her way.
Encourage your child to be the best even when it turns worse.
Remember that about 90% of a child’s upbringing is incumbent on the parent of the child.
Do not prepare the road for the children, prepare the children for the road.
Conclusively, It is time for an entrepreneurial and knowledge revolution in Africa. Only a properly educated workforce and entrepreneurial class will have the skills and drive to thrive as new technologies change the nature of work, leisure, the environment, and society – and to tackle our continent’s most pressing challenges.
Many people in Africa and beyond share this view.
When French President Emmanuel Macron visited Nigeria in July 2018, he offered a bold prediction: if Africa’s youngest entrepreneurs worked hard and innovated, he said, they would change their countries and transform the world.
Similarly, when Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg visited a Co-Creation Hub in Lagos in 2016, he was impressed by the “energy” of the country’s youthful innovators – the social entrepreneurs, tech companies, and investors who are collaborating to solve some of Nigeria’s toughest challenges.
But that energy can go only so far without education.
Indeed, while Macron and Zuckerberg are right to be inspired by Africa’s youth, the entrepreneurial and knowledge revolution that is needed to ensure a prosperous future for the continent can happen only if there is also an education revolution. Simply put, we need to get all of Africa’s children in school, so that the next generation of entrepreneurs has the skills it needs to succeed.
Africa faces huge challenges in reforming its education sector. While access to education has expanded dramatically over the last 25 years, and more boys and girls are in classrooms than ever before, many young people are still not learning what they need to thrive now and in the future. If current trends continue, by 2050 some one-third of Africa’s one billion young people will lack basic proficiency in math, reading, and other subjects. Millions will be unemployable and unproductive.
However, coming together as one people with a common goal of bringing up generational thinkers will go a long way in making Osagyefo Doctor Kwame Nkrumah’s quote of black people capable of managing their affairs a reality.
Comments
adamgordon
Thanks for this great post!
miaqueen
Thanks for sharing 🙂