Resumo de Education In Africa

There are three kinds of education in Africa. There is the old, traditional education. These are the left-overs of the colonial schooling, which varied according to how the colonial masters viewed African needs. There is also the Post-independence attempt to establish an education that is suitable for the needs of modern Africa. The old education came naturally out of the traditional ways of life; there was much to commend it. A young person has to learn how to deal with the danger that surrounds him and how to treat his peers. The young person learns about the skills of the axe, the spear, how to hunt for game in the forest, traditional dancing, how to treat a lady respectfully and how to be a successful wrestler from old men. His mother taught him how to behave before the elders, how to speak politely to people and how to grow up to be responsible. Throughout his childhood, he was thought how to associate with people irrespective of their religious and cultural beliefs. He was made to know that he belonged to a particular kin and tribe. He was also taught to conform to the ways of his tribe .he lived among his kin who gave him the security in sickness and in old age. Several properties were distributed according the kin in which one belonged. Law and ownership of land, too, were based on kinship. The child learned the rites which kinship would demand throughout his life, from his birth to maturity, marriage to old age and then to death. Much of this education is done informally. His home constituted his school there he learned traditional legends, myths and proverbs. This social education laid great emphasis on correct conduct and confidence. A traveler in east Africa in the 1910s wrote that he had seen three children between four years and six years preparing a meal with out supervision. But several tests of endurance were a more formal part of this education. Chagga boys in the old days had to sleep In holes, in the ground and in the night for a period of nine months, usually in the cold mountain air. A boy was required to go on a lonely expedition into the forest to kill a wild animal like a lion or a leopard with a bow and an arrow. Bena girls, were ducked in streams, or terrified by women pretending to fall dead at their feet, and by the appearance of monsters. All these traditional l education had the great advantage of preparing a child for life in the community: it did not in general encourage him to be ambitious or independent, or teach him to meet the needs of the modern world. So, in the colonial years, church missions and European schools taught the kind of things that children in Europe were taught this produced small, westernized elite in some colonies, but it was severely criticized in some quarters for being unAfrican. Reading books had European birds and snow scenes in them; arithmetic problems dealt with taps, and wall-paper rolls. Few of these things had anything to with many African children?s settlement. Colonial education was critised by some people because it was, according to them, it was done by the colonial masters and that they had a desire to inculcate the values of the colonial society in the people and to train individuals for the service of the colonial state. The state interest in education was based on the need for skilled workers like local clerks, typists, bank messengers and junior officials, and there was thus a heavy emphasis on subservient attitudes and white collar skills. In the post-independence era, African needs are being rethought. Questions are being asked such as, how many universities should a country have, why does half of an age group get no schooling at all? Some highly trained electrical engineers are needed for the power stations: but Africa also needs men skilled in the relatively simple skills of wooden bridge construction, laying laterite roads, and building single- storied houses. Civil servants especially need a good secondary school education if they are to deal withmatters ranging from money for a new architectural scheme to collecting information for government approval of a harbour extension. For this reason according to a writer, a developing continent must clearly learn to be practical. In Africa, parents have become convinced that education is the key to a good job and family prestige too. But it has its own drawbacks. In many countries, secondary education and college education means that children have to leave the rural areas where they live with their parents for the towns to go to school there. Some even have to leave the rural areas to do their primary education in the towns due to lack of good schools in the area, there is the also the problem of the high cost of putting a child in school to contend with, which most families could not afford and later, as men, they are not returning to work on the farms to produce the food. apart from the fact that they wouldn?t want to leave the towns to come back to the village, there is the problem of non availability of funds for those willing to relocate to the rural areas to farm besides that, the opportunities and leisure attractions of the towns are too tempting.

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