By David Maillu
Published September 16, 2023
The dictionary describes education as “A process of teaching, training and learning; to
improve knowledge and develop skills.” If that is the case, education has
got nothing primarily to do with human beings. All young living beings
undergo process of being taught by their parents in order to be equipped
with skills for their survival.
School education was not common in traditional Africa before arrival of
colonialism. But that does not mean school education is new in
Africa. In fact, the first University in the world was created in Timbuktu
about 800 years ago in what is known today as Mali. It was called
‘Sankore University.’ African ancestors, who were very curious, put down
on ancient paper a lot about the world they lived in. This included ways
to count the stars and the planets, ways to stay healthy such as recipes
for toothpaste, ways to practise religion, and ways to help educate
others.
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Education in ancient Egypt was similar to modern education, both in style
and in curriculum. Images depict children in a classroom, seated at desks,
with an instructor who is seated at a larger desk. For the most part, only
boys received a formal education, girls were taught at home by their
mothers. Egyptian writing is one of the earliest recorded languages, with
a written record spanning over 4,000 years. The earliest evidence of
phonetic writing in Egypt dates back to about 3250BC. The concept of the
written word was first developed in Mesopotamia and came to Egypt through
trade. Egyptian hieroglyphs were the formal writing system used in
Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language.
Africans have always had their form of education. It was primarily
based on marriage, homestead, livestock, hunting, fishing and survival
trades within that framework. Generally speaking, everything revolved
around the family, where marriage and upbringing of children within the
family, neighbourhood and community was paramount. It was about how to live
uprightly and successfully within your family and community. It was about
what your family and the community meant to you and the best you could
make out of them. It was about your contribution to the welfare of those
institutions. You were brought up as an individual pegged to the
community. You were brought up under the philosophical banner, “I am what
I am because of what the community is; the community, therefore, is what
it is because of what I am.” African religion was fundamental in the
spectrum of African social order. You were brought up to know how you
related to your environment and to the creator of the environment.
Colonial education did everything it could to kill
African culture. Marriage and family education, which had been the pivot of
African culture, was excluded, replaced by the philosophy of individualism
and nuclear family. The extended family was discouraged. Polygamy was
killed, described as primitive, just as the religion was described. The
bond between child and parents and family were given challenges. The story
about marriage based on falling in love was aggressively promoted against
marriage endorsed by the family.
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What were the consequences of the ignored traditional education?
Commonplace broken families, broken marriages, marital cruelties, gender
cruelties, increase of crimes in the community, homelessness, children
distributes, prostitution, homosexuality, corruption culture, spiritual
downfall, male chauvinism, sexual conflicts and the rest. The bitter truth
is that today all post-colonial communities in Africa are living in a more
primitive social order than they lived before colonialism in spite of the
modern high school education. The bottom line is that human value has been
sharply devaluated. It doesn’t matter how much academic achievements we
will have, how many millionaires we shall have; it does not matter how
many factories, tarmac roads, railways, sky-buildings, churches and
prisons will be built, the worst is yet to come when the African will
become socially dirty overlooking her glorious social life resting in the
graveyards of history.
This social crime can be addressed by going back to the drawing board of school
curriculum based on African traditional values.
version.
