How Nigerians send their kids to ‘hell’

The Nigerian Children’s Day is a variant of the Universal Children’s Day of the United Nations. The UN recommended date for the event is November 20 of every year. The General Assembly of the world body had “recommended that all countries institute a Universal Children’s Day, to be observed as a day of worldwide fraternity and understanding between children. It is recommended that the Day was to be observed also as a day of activity devoted to promoting …the welfare of the children of the world.”

The date 20 November marks the day on which the Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child. According to the chapter, “the best interests of the child shall be the guiding principle of those responsible for his education and guidance; that responsibility lies in the first place with his parents. The child shall have full opportunity for play and recreation, which should be directed to the same purposes as education; society and the public authorities shall endeavour to promote the enjoyment of this right.”

While the mood of Children’s Day still tarries on, it is most vital that parents and education managers give serious thoughts to this section and its implication, if the essence of the day is to truly honour children.

Due to the increasing entry of the womenfolk into workforce, occasioned mostly by hash family and national economies, “the best interests of the child” has not been “the guiding principle of those responsible for his education and guidance”. Most children now find themselves within formal school walls much earlier than their progenitors. This, according to experts and other stakeholders, has copious drawback much in excess of its rewards. Examples abound of effects of ill-timed early childhood education.

For example, a national daily published a grisly suicide story involving an 18-year-old university finalist in October 2011. According to the report, his relation and friends were thrown into utter dismay that the late lad set his life, which was full of prospects, in self-destruct. But in a suicide note, he said that he was by no means too young to die, adding that he has seen it all. “Don’t consider my actions on the basis of an 18-old,” he said, “because I am like an adult who has seen it all in life. It is better to quit the scene for others after giving one’s best in life.”

This left many readers in serious puzzle: How much experience has the teenager truly had in life? What has he done to have giving his ‘best’ at that prime age? But again, considering how early children are exposed to the outside world nowadays, and how much expectation we now have of them, is it any wonder why they would feel like Aristotle at 18? If the self-slaughterer was almost a graduate at 18- and his twin brother was in fact already a medical doctor- at what age did he start formal school? That would put his primary school entry age at three, and his twin brother perhaps less. Why not being insensitive to those he left behind, what had he really not seen or done?

True, there is no silver bullet to addressing this issue, only silver buckshot. In fact, some respected educators have even turned pillars of a rigorous early childhood education system, in the face of its overwhelming damaging effects.

However, pedagogy and psychology titans are unanimous in their view that the application of inappropriate methodologies portends a great danger to the life of a young one. They all agree that teaching children who are below five years with a heavy dose of skills instruction can be very damaging. “The earlier that school try to inculcate so-called ‘academic’ skills, the deeper the damage and the more permanent the ‘achievement ’gap,” said Deborah Meier, a renowned education professor at the New York University who is considered the founder of the modern small schools movement.

It might be tempting to say that this disturbing statement has to be weighed against the academic benefit of back-to-basics preschool models. For instance, an average Nigerian parent would be ostensibly elated to see his 3year old child write numbers up 100, spell and write scores of three-letter words, regurgitate current affairs, and do many other things. However, numerous studies have shown that any such benefits are washed away very quickly in time.

David Whitebread, a senior lecturer of education psychology at Cambridge University, said that any such initial academic achievement noticed in these children soon level up with that of children who did not attend nursery school at all. Although in the short-term they often did better in earlier primary, he insists, “that didn’t mean it was the right thing to be doing.

“You could teach four-year-olds the flags of the world and they would do better at it than if they were not taught them at all. But it wouldn’t make any sense to do so. It is a big mistake. Children learning to jump through hoops are not really learning, not understanding, and a significant proportion will be put off because they are being asked to do something they find difficult. That stresses them out and makes them upset.”

Leading American child psychologist, Prof David Elkind of Tufts University (professor of child development) also wrote: “The deployment of unsupported, potentially harmful pedagogies is particularly pernicious at the early-childhood level. It is during the early years, ages four to seven, when children’s basic attitudes toward themselves as students and toward learning and school are established. Children who come through this period feeling good about themselves, who enjoy learning and who like school, will have a lasting appetite for the acquisition of skills and knowledge. Children whose academic self-esteem is all but destroyed during these formative years, who develop an antipathy toward learning, and a dislike of school, will never fully realize their latent abilities and talents.”

Little wonder then that the practice in most of nursery schools negates the education policies and framework in Nigeria. These schools fail to “teach the rudiments of numbers, letter, colours, shapes, forms, etc., through play…[and] ensure that the main method of teaching at this level shall be through play and that the curriculum of teacher education is oriented to achieve this,” as the National Policy on Education (NPE) states in subsection 13.

In clear violation of the NPE, nursery schools now subject their pupils to rigorous learning process. Instead of teaching subjects rudiments through play, play is given a life of its own – treated separately as a recreational activity or sports. It is not clear if these schools do this simply to outpace rivals or are totally ignorant of the relevant NPE sections. One thing is certain through: most school proprietors and administrators are completely oblivious of the enormous damage to the child in the ensuing ill-conceived pedagogic principles.

“I don’t believe that drilling children hard has serious negative impact on them,” said a school administrator, who spoke on condition of anonymity, “Rather, it teaches them hard work early in life, such that they become used to it .Or have you not heard of teenagers that have a second degree? Come on, we are in jet age:”

Even parents are caught in this labyrinth web of craze. In fact, it seems that inappropriate curricula in nurseries are a response to the demand by parents for their kids to be Aristotle. But unknown to these parents, the Nigeria Minimum Standards For Nigeria Certificate in Education, as designed by the National Commission for Colleges of Education, do not expect nursery pupils to be numerate, apparently because of the repercussion. Its curriculum for Early Childhood Care and Education (ECE 326, Mathematical Skills for Early Years), only expects nursery school pupils to “identify and recognise numbers 1 to 10″.

A mirror of the views of other parents, Mr Kayode Ogunwole, an Abuja-based parent, said: “It depends on the individual child. But generally, I am inclined to believe that hard work doesn’t kill. For example, I had to withdraw my daughter recently from a nursery school because she wasn’t learning anything. Imagine, she is almost five and they were still teaching her four- letter words’ but now, she even correct me.”

According to experts, however, the danger of early childhood education in Nigeria is not only in the regimented curriculum development and presentation. The amount of time children spend learning in school also has a direct impact on their mental and emotional wellbeing. In developed countries, pupils below five years hardly spend more than three hours daily with a school caregiver.

Meanwhile, the average daily school time for nursery school pupils in this country is seven hours. “These days, children of tender age are now as stressed as their parents,” said Mr Bukola Fayese, an experienced educationist. “They wake up very early in the morning like their parent to attend a stress-inducing nursery school; they come back only to be awaited by another lesson teacher for another round of stressful session. That is why our children nowadays are very tensed and cranky.”

In addition, the ratio of children to caregiver is usually inappropriate, in clear violation of the National Minimum Standard for Early Child Care Centres in Nigeria (NMECCCN), as prescribed by the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERCDC). The NMECCN stipulate that the teacher/child ratio for 3-5 year (nursery pupils) should be 1:20 for 3-5 and 1:10 for 0-3 year olds (playgroup). There is practically no school or centre that obeys this directive in Nigeria.

While parents proclaim their love for children by commemorating the Children’s Day in Nigeria and most other countries, the United Kingdom is one of the few countries that does not honour this day. Britain’s former Prime Minister Gordon Brown once said: “There is no positive need to the day, other than to add an unnecessary school or work day-off. We have bigger things to think about.” If the word of Brown is not true for Nigeria or the Nigerian case not even worse, parents must seek the interest of their child in their choice of early childhood education programme.

Education and the Death of Creativity

ANALYSIS

It is now a few weeks since I took my daughter for her first day of school. As an education activist who is aware of the realities of education in Nigeria and the broader region, this day had a very special meaning for me. As I dressed my daughter in her beautiful light green and white uniform, I thought how lucky she is to have the opportunity to go to school at all.

And hers is not an ordinary Nigeria school where teacher-student ratios no longer matter, facilities are wanting, infrastructure is in a sorry state, and texts books are almost a luxury. My daughter is particularly fortunate because she is going to a school where she will have her own class teacher and have less than 30 other children in her classroom.

Looking at her as she walked into her classroom for the first time, I thought of the thousands of children in our region who are deprived of this opportunity. These are children who will never step into a classroom at all - and will never take the first exciting step on the journey of education.

Like other proud parents, I took a host of photos of my daughter on her momentous day - pictures that capture her excitement, anxiety, curiosity and desire to learn about the world. But there was also an unsettling thought in my mind - a fear that even in this school, the education system might not allow her creativity to flourish.

Like other six-year-olds, my daughter is a very creative little girl. Give her paper, glue, dough and cloth and she will make things that leave you wondering where on earth she got the idea from. Her mind is inquisitive and will ask you questions outside the norm.

For example, at the end of last year, I suggested to her and her older brother that we travel somewhere else at Christmas - not back to Malawi as normal. Her brother welcomed the idea. But not his sister. A few days later she told me she would not be coming with us but would be going to Malawi alone because she had found out that she was old enough to go on a plane as an unaccompanied minor. In her own small world she had come up with a solution to the problem she was faced with. Will her school and education nurture this creativity? Or will it just fizzle out as is the case with so many of our learners?

As I watched her settle into school, I kept thinking if this day would actually signal the start of the slow death of her imagination, curiosity and creativity - and her (often irritatingly lengthy) quest to understand things by asking question after question after question.

I remembered a short clip I had watched on www.ted.com on how education kills creativity by Sir Ken Robinson when he addressed the Apple Education Leadership Summit in 2008. In his address, Robinson discussed the distinctive ability of human beings to imagine and be creative. Furthermore, he said that this creative imagination is the most unique capacity that humans possess and that it is the source of all human achievement - and yet this creativity and imagination is systematically jeopardized in the way we educate our children.

Robinson argued that we need creativity in order for us to face the future, "Education is meant to take us into a future we can't grasp (and therefore we need creativity)," he said. "Yet we are educating our children out of creativity."

And while Robinson's address focused largely on the creative arts, I believe creativity goes beyond just the arts to encompass curiosity, hunger for learning, experimenting and questioning to find answers and solutions. Amazingly our young ones possess these qualities in abundance.

But for how long? Looking at her that day, I realized that creativity and imagination can die very quickly at school unless it is carefully nurtured. At school, she would learn 'what is and what is not', that black is black and white is white. They will be programmed to appreciate some subject areas and not others. They will be taught that they will not make it without maths and science - and their love for drawing, dance, drama, sport and other things will be given little attention until they give it up. A lot of their questions will remain unanswered. Indeed, as they get older, many of their questions will remain unasked as they learn to stay within the parameters of what is taught.

But who is to blame? Is it the teacher? Or the curriculum? Or the ideology that is the driver of our system of education? Or perhaps parents and communities?

I believe all of these have contributed in one way or the other to this problem.

Our education systems take most of the blame. Poor teacher training ensures that most teachers do not understand how to foster creativity or why they should. Most curricula are designed to simply pass on information - leaving inquiring minds frustrated and unchallenged. And of course, it is very hard to promote creativity in a class with over sixty children clamouring for the teacher's attention.

And to cap it all, the ideologies of the state, religious institutions and the prevailing culture will influence education systems and impose their views on what education is and what its role in society should be. These determine what kinds of learners are churned out of the system. For example, simply producing more graduates may be the goal of the state - rather than ensuring that graduates can analyze and think creatively enough when they are finished to come up with innovative solutions to the problems those countries like ours face. So we end up with more graduates but graduates who are armed with irrelevant knowledge and skills and ill-prepared for the challenges ahead.

While it is easy to point the finger of blame at the educational establishment, I believe it is also important for us to question whether our homes and communities contribute to this death of creativity and imagination. As parents, we should be asking ourselves - what was the last creative activity we engaged our children in? Have we nurtured their passion for the arts or sports? How many times have we told our children to shut up and stop asking questions? And are our communities supportive of children who possess non-academic talents? Or is everything focused on getting good grades in class?

There is no doubt that much more needs to be done to nurture our children's creativity. However, one critical thing to remember is that creativity cannot happen when we are denied the freedom to be who we are, the freedom of thought, the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them, the freedom to decide who we want to become, and the freedom to nurture our aspirations. But our children think of what is 'right' - of the things they think their teachers, parents and society will want them to do or say or think.

Unwilling subscribers to the 'norm', their freedom to disagree with us is limited and so is the space for them to express their opinions. Disagreeing earns them bad marks in school or at home or in the community.

But this is wrong. Children need be encouraged to use their imagination and creativity and not be forced to conform. To achieve this, we need a total transformation of our education systems to create an environment that nurtures children's creativity, curiosity and imagination. Indeed, these should be the pillars on which we build our education systems. And everyone needs to play a role in supporting these new structures - from the state to teachers to parents to communities.

Starting school is so exciting. But it would even more exciting - and worthwhile - if it were the start of a journey that would allow children to achieve their fullest potential and ensure them of the brightest possible future. A future based on knowledge inclusiveness, knowledge tolerance, and knowledge relevance - knowledge that would assist in the realization of a better, more productive and more peaceful world.

Early Childhood Care and Education

Though appreciable progress has been made in early childhood care and education in the past four years due to government policy requiring every public school to have a pre-primary school linkage, the proportion of children enrolled in pre-primary Early Childhood Care Centers still remains low at approximately 2.3 million children. This represents about 21 per cent of the population of children in this age group.Pre-school age corresponds to a critical period of rapid physical, cognitive and psychosocial development of the child. The quality and intensity of care, nutrition and stimulation a child receives during this period determines to a large extent the level of physical and cognitive development a child can attain.

The caregivers of these centres are generally unqualified: about 85 per cent do not possess basic qualifications and more than half have no formal education. Another major issue in Nigeria’s early childhood care and development is the poor state of the infrastructure, equipment, facilities and learning resources. Essential learning resources are lacking in most facilities while the national curriculum is not yet widely operational. Mainstreaming of the early childhood education course into pre-service teacher training from the 2008/2009 session is expected to provide strategic solutions to some of the itemized problems.