Education articles

EDUCATION in Africa has a history reaching back many centuries. Certainly the achievements of the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Ethiopia are well known. Then, early in the first millennium of the Common Era, the Moors and other peoples on the northern fringe of Africa made notable contributions to world education and culture. And during the past 1,000 years the Saharan and sub-Saharan peoples had several centers of learning—Timbuktu, Agadez, Gao, Katsina and Borno, where books written in Arabic were in great demand.

More than 800 years ago at Timbuktu, in Mali, colleges provided advanced education. Katsina, in northern Nigeria, has been a center of learning since before the sixteenth century. It was there that, about 200 years ago, Muhammed ibn Muhammed became noted as a specialist in numerology.

The aforementioned cities were dominated by Moslem culture, and mosques were the centers of learning. However, the cost of learning under the tutorship of the mallams was very high and so few persons could afford it. The educated minority exercised tremendous influence, and were the key administrators, lawyers and clerks. But the majority remained illiterate.

In the non-Moslem, sub-Saharan cultures, education was largely nonliterate, by oral instruction rather than by use of reading material. Educational systems varied from tribe to tribe, and there were different degrees and levels of training, depending on the social and cultural development of a particular tribe. The training covered a fairly wide range, with specialized instruction at different age levels. Each educational system had specific forms of preparation for the roles of individuals in society. A look at the system of education among the Yorubas in precolonial Nigeria illustrates this.

The Yoruba System

Among the Yorubas, training in obedience, etiquette, speech and counting came early in the child’s life and was given within the family circle. Children quickly learned to express themselves in their language. Progressively, they mastered the proverbs, poetry and folklore of the community or tribe. In this way they learned the history and the moral and philosophical attitudes of their people. They had to learn a variety of greetings, recognition of levels of social seniority and the proper etiquette in connection with these. Religious education included training in rituals, sacred festivals and the roles of diviners.

At an early age, children were taught to count up to 20 on their fingers and toes and to do simple addition and subtraction with the aid of stones. As they progressed in knowledge, they were taught weights and measures, the use of cowrie shells (which served as money) and the art of bargaining.

Specialized training for boys focused on farming, working in metals and wood, hunting and the use of herbs and drugs in medicine. Skills were passed on from father to son. Inclination and natural abilities also were considered, and children were encouraged to develop their aptitudes. Therefore, many were apprenticed to artisans outside the family clan.

Girls received training in weaving and dyeing cloth. They learned to make pottery, to plait mats and baskets and to produce cosmetics for use in beauty treatments and hairdressing. They were taught the art of cooking, of brewing beer and of extracting oil from the kernels of the palm nuts. Thus they were prepared for their role as women in the family and the community.

The tribes that had a rural, pastoral or bush culture concentrated more on farming, herding and hunting or fishing. Some educational systems restricted progress into new fields of knowledge by preserving a closed society. Membership usually was restricted to those of certain ethnic origins or religious beliefs. This circumstance contributed toward a stagnation of knowledge. Nevertheless, the education that was provided amply served the needs of those societies.

The Colonial Era

In the wake of the missionary explorer David Livingstone, European missionaries began to increase their activities in Africa in the second half of the nineteenth century. Mission schools started to be set up in towns and villages, and right out in the bush, where students attended in simple loincloths or were completely naked.

These schools were set up on sectarian lines, with Catholics having their own schools and the Protestant religions theirs. This tended to segment the people religiously, and whole areas came to be regarded as the province of a particular religion. Divisions in social levels

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