Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fwd: Yoruba Affairs - THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF NOT PROPAGATING KNOWLEDGE IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES.

Please, take note. Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu is not the Minister of Education, but the Minister of Science and Technology!
GSM
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On Sat, 2/18/17, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com> wrote:

Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fwd: Yoruba Affairs - THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF NOT PROPAGATING KNOWLEDGE IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES.
To: "usaafricadialogue" <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>, "WoleSoyinkaSociety" <WoleSoyinkaSociety@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Saturday, February 18, 2017, 2:21 AM


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Forwarded message ----------
From: Julius
Fakinlede <jfakinlede@gmail.com>
Date: 17 February 2017 at 20:17
Subject: Yoruba Affairs - THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF NOT
PROPAGATING KNOWLEDGE IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE
INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES.
To: Yoruba Affairs <yorubaaffairs@googlegroups.com>


I must again congratulate Dr.
Ogbonaya Onu, our education minister, for bringing this
issue
to our national attantion again. The vibrant debate going on
now indicates that
there is a feeling among us that there is indeed something
amiss in the way we
educate our children and that we are not making them get the
most out of our
efforts.


However, putting
all the attention on the academic
attainment of our children does not do justice to the
irreparable loss that our
current system does to us as a nation, mentally,
psychologically, technologically,
sociologically, and economically. It is only right to
conclude that our
inability, as a nation to achieve a scientifically oriented
 culture is due to our refusal to imbibe
science and technology in a timely fashion, if at all. And
this is due mainly
to the fact that we deliberately set ourselves back at least
ten years when we
compare our education in this area to the rest of the world.


Mentally, we
remain a nation that is enmeshed in superstions.
The fruit of science and technology has stedfastly refused
to pry us loose from
many primitive ideas like using humans for sacrifice, an
idea that is further
reinforced by Africa Magic and the like. We read constantly
in magazines like
Alaroye of people killing women and children to make money.
The average
Nigerian child may have watched hundreds of these television
shows before even
beginning school and having his mental state permanently
scored by them. By the
time any form of science is introduced to this child, his
mental state is
already configured into believing that money comes from
human body parts.

The objective of
teaching science and technology at
an early age is so that our children can learn about their
immediate surroundings
and appreciate the beauty of nature. Our children must be
able to count as soon
as they are able to learn anything. They must be able to see
the beauty in plants,
flowers, animals, insects, etc. They must be able to look
into the heavens and
be informed about the sun, the moon, planets, the solar
system, stars, etc. They
must be able to name different types of rocks, stones,
soils, etc. Furthermore,
our children must be taught about their community, and the
culture of their
society. They must learn from science from the very first
day about the impossibility
of transmutation. All these things cannot wait till the
child learns English or
French - it needs not wait. Our languages are rich enough
and sufficient to
trasfer all these knowledge to all our children if only we
take the time to
develop them.

We need to
introduce science and technology to our
children as soon as they are able to learn anything. We need
to modify our number
system so our children can begin to learn to use them as
easily as they use the
English number system. This issue can no longer be
postponed. Our inability to even
call the simplest five or six-figure number in a timely
fashion makes us a
laughing stock, even to our children.


I must again call
on all our universities and
institutions of higher learning in our nation to wake up to
their
responsibility and the challenge of making science and
technology available to
our children - in our language.

FAKINLEDE
K.J.

Senior moderator
– The Science and Technology
Education in Yoruba Site    

Yoruba-Scipedia.wikidot.com
   



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