Sunday, May 31, 2015

Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - SUNDAY MUSINGS: “Purpose-Driven Education”: Statement as a Discussant at the APC Policy Forum (by Bolaji Aluko)

This debate reminds me of the title and content of the Inaugural Lecture of late Professor Owolabi of the Department of Philosophy University of Ibadan which he delivered  in 2011. It was entitled 'My People Perish for Lack of Philosophy' The Professor emphasized the place of ethics and values in national development. While we cannot discount the centrality of the STEM disciplines to the evolution and advancement of the modern society, it will be counter-productive to devalue disciplines that are focused on raising or training citizens that are critically conscious of their roles in the society. The new government will do well to be cautious of the  neoliberal stunts that the World Bank has continued to propagate relentlessly in Africa either in economic or social policies. We must not forget so soon how the Bank and its spin doctors even said we dont need higher education in Africa in the 1980s. The ratio of 70:30 in favor of the STEM courses which Egbon Aluminum has proposed is discriminatory and exclusionary to say the least. We have gone through this way before but what has been the contributions of the preferred STEM disciplines to national development in terms of innovation, inventions and scientific breakthroughs? What Nigeria needs is a wholistic education policy that can ensure the training of a mix of quality manpower who dont only work with their hands but are critically conscious, ethically grounded and historically informed. The class who control global capital are not interested in the social sciences as they consider social scientists as avoidable irritants to their obscene consumption. For the past three years there have been strong lobby in the US against the proposal to remove Political Science from being eligible to receive grants from the National Research Foundation
Lets ensure that we have some policy autonomy rather than pandering to all the fancies from the self appointed high priests of development from the. West.


Folu Ogundimu <ogundimu3@gmail.com> wrote:

Adeshina's critique is spot-on. Overemphasizing STEM as a national education policy approach risks turning Nigeria into a country of robotic workers. You cannot aspire to the status of a self-sustaining democracy without having a comprehensive educational policy that prioritizes the arts, humanities, and social sciences as much as you give priority to the STEM disciplines. 

Our failure to grow as a nation could be inversely related to our failure to think critically about our miserable condition. Societies that have come furthest on the human development index and that have achieved the most cumulation of their economy and scientific progress have done so by privileging the study and appreciation of the arts and humanities in early education. And by giving as much emphasis to the study of the social sciences as they do the STEM in post-primary education, they have been able to continuously modernize and re-invent their societies. This is how they have built more resilient and stable democracies. 

I don't see Nigeria growing as a sustainable democracy as long as we continue to fail to appreciate that which makes us understand the quality of our humanity. The critical insight we lack comes from the collapse of a quality education. To redeem ourselves, we need not just produce a country of robots but a country of critical thinkers who know something about their own history and learn to appreciate their own arts, culture, and religion as opposed to the present slavish worship of western and eastern culture and religion. 

So, given all this, I find my good friend, VC Aluko's statement to the APC forum quite disappointing. I know he is capable of modifying his proposal. Given his access to the important voices in the policy formulation process, he owes us a duty to carry a more inclusive and better thought out proposal on this important issue. 

F. 

Sent from my iPhone

On May 31, 2015, at 9:53 AM, 'Adeshina Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I won't say Prof. Aluko's conception of a "purpose-driven education" for Nigeria is disappointing. I will prefer to say it is highly surprising (leaving sufficient room for ignorance on my part). Apart from all the good recommendations in the paper,I genuinely worry about the bold endorsement of the STEM educational policy and the continued advocacy of an educational system that is "truly science-and-technology based,  broadly-conceived, starting very early in our educational system with curricular emphasis on mathematics, English and civic studies,  all steeped in technology-assisted teaching and learning, coupled with staff training, re-training, and credible quality assessment that has continuous student and staff testing components." What does a 'truly sxience- and technology-based education' mean? What further role does 'broadly-conceived' play in defining it?

As if to make the issue clearer, Prof. Aluko also recommends a  "greater emphasis should be on doubling to quintupling to increasing admissions by an order-of-magnitude increase, with the ratio mix of students being 70-30 science/technology-based students rather than humanities/social science." This isn't different from the policy thrust of the National Policy on Education and its lopsided recommendations which essentially undermine the role of the humanities and the social sciences (HSS) in national development. 

Why this STEM-based approach rather than a more holistic STEAMSS (science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics and the social sciences)? Even the National Sxience Foundation of the United States has a broader definition of the STEM disciplines to include the social sciences. How "purpose-driven" is an educational policy in Nigeria which relegates the HSS to a minimal ratio in educational and development matters? Why do we keep buying into some global policy frameworks without an attempt to learn or unlearn their failures and inappropriateness for our national circumstances? (In this regard, what is the difference between the Washington Consensus and STEM?) Do we need purpose-driven education or ho

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