By Kayode Komolafe
President Umaru Yar’Adua has appropriately made education an item in its famous seven-point agenda. The huge challenges facing the nation in that sector justify putting education in the priority list of any serious government at any level.
However, beyond the proclamations made during electioneering last year, not much of policy articulation has been done on the whole of the seven-point agenda. It would, therefore, be preposterous to expect any effective implementation of policies on the items of this agenda. The technocrats of the federal government are believed to be still busy putting together policies to translate the agenda into reality. In fact, that is what officials who rationalise the tardiness of the government mean when they say the President is characteristically taking his time to plan before embarking on action. Meanwhile people are justifiably demanding action.
In that sense, the sort of debate being promoted on this page on education is quite timely and apposite. In the last few weeks, Yusuph Olaniyonu has been intensifying his “Visit Your Alma Mater’ campaign while Simon Kolawole has been strenuously drawing attention of the government and the public to the danger ahead in the education sector. Education as a central issue of development deserves all the attention it can get in public discussions. It was Issa Aremu, the Acting General–Secretary of Textile Workers Union, who aptly remarked the other day it was more useful to focus public discussions on the core issues of development rather than some of the monumental distractions that seem to dominate the public sphere.
In the particular matter of education, a thorough discussion of the issues has become a matter of urgency: the sector is fast becoming a disaster waiting to happen. Issues have been raised about quality, standards, training of teachers and provision of infrastructure.
There is also the highly controversial issue of cost and funding. It is worth underlining this because the dominant ideology that seems to be influencing the policy choices in education may proof highly injurious to the society in the long run. This is the ideology that you can freely apply a market recipe to the burgeoning problem in a social sector such as education. It is this ideological mindset that has permitted the criminal neglect of public schools while members of the upper classes have turned the exorbitant fees they pay for their children and wards in private schools into a status symbol.
It is one of the tragedies of our time that even government officials do not go beyond the common lamentation in appreciating the virtual collapse of public educational institutions at all levels.
To be sure, the debate about what to with education in the age of globalisation is also raging in even the developed countries where the education educator has grown to a higher level. Here, we are talking about countries with a high literacy rate and skilled manpower in all departments of life. Yet, they still face different sets of challenges in the education sector. The problems they face may be different from ours, but the greater difference is that they take the issues more seriously than we do here. Any country that takes its future seriously must decide on what to do now in order to improve the standard of education. This invariably informs policy choices.
For instance, as he prepared to assume office as British Prime minister last year, Mr. Gordon Brown vowed that there would be "no place in the new Britain we seek for complacency and no room for inadequate skills, low aspirations". Brown added for effect that: "I want a Britain where there is no cap on ambition, no ceiling on talent, no limit to where your potential will take you and how far you can rise”. What is the plan on which this aspiration is based? It is to keep children in schools or training until they attain the age of 18. Brown believes that this would create a “ clear pathway” for them to either pursue education or apprenticeship. As part of the policy articulation, National Council for Education Excellence was proposed.
Brown’s predecessor, Mr. Tony Blair, gave a similar attention to education as he tried many policy options, some of which naturally proved to be highly debatable.
In the United States, serious reflections are also taking place on how education can be managed to meet the challenges of the modern world. In his celebrated memoirs published last year by the Penguin Group and entitled The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, devotes a whole chapter on “Education and Income Inequality”. Greenspan, who was in charge of the American Central Bank for almost two decades, celebrates the efficacy of free market as he gloats over what he is convinced are the deficiencies of the socialist system. That much is expected from a man who was in the command room of not just the American economy, but indeed, global capitalism for so long. Beyond monetary policies, he is concerned about proficiency in mathematics, the pay of teachers and the curriculum. The book, which is good read, is recommended for any one who likes to understand the workings of global capitalism.
Yet, it is instructive that Greenspan’s enthusiasm about market solutions is tempered when it comes to education. He writes: Another education imperative goes beyond fostering market forces in schools. I recognize that left to their own devices, market incentives will not reach the education of those children "left behind" (to borrow a term from current U.S. education legislation). The cost of educational egalitarianism is doubtless high and may be difficult to justify in terms of economic efficiency and short-term productivity. Some students can achieve a given level of education far more easily, and therefore at far less cost, than others. Yet there is danger to a democratic society in leaving some children out of sync with its institutions. Such neglect contributes to exaggerated income concentration, and could conceivably be far more costly to the sustaining of capitalism and globalization in the long run. The value judgments involved in making such choices reach beyond the imperatives of the marketplace”.
Our market forces theologians, privatisers and deregulators may wish to reflect on what a man, who could as well be called the chief priest in the temple of global capitalism, has to say in terms unbridled applications of market to deep social problems such as we have in the education sector. When it comes to education, the market certainly has its limits. It is even more ironic when those who were educated at public expense join the chorus of the purveyors of these socially injurious ideas.
An American legislation is concerned about “children left behind” despite the high level of development in that country. In a poor country such as Nigeria where about 10 million children are estimated by international agencies to be loosing out in the race for education, policy makers are not passionate about what to do to prevent some children being left behind as the education train moves on into the future. Policies should be influenced by the determination of government to ensure that no Nigerian child in 2008 is “left behind” in gaining access to quality education that would make him or her compete in the socio-economic and political environment of the future. It is not enough as some policy makers glibly say that the issue in education is not funding and that those advocating increase in funding only want governments ‘to throw money at the problem”. The fact is that Nigeria is yet to meet the UNESCO standards regarding funding of education.
The problem with the public education system would not be solved as long as those who design policies and implement them carry on with the mentality that education is just another commodity. Treated as a commodity, quality education would simply elude the children of the poor who are in the majority. It is the duty of the government to ensure that this does not happen. The neo-liberal mantra that government cannot do it and it should, therefore, be left to some amorphous private sector is not just acceptable.
As Yar’Adua gives flesh to what he wants to do with education in his seven-point agenda he should drop the idea of education as a commodity for the children of the poor. While the rich patronise the exorbitant private schools, the governments should adequately fund public schools to ensure quality education for the majority of Nigerian children.
Beyond that, the policy should tackle the question of standards and rigour in all Nigerian schools.
In making policy choices on education the government should be guided by the principle of social justice. To price education beyond the reach of the children of the poor is a terrible injustice and it is antithetical to the provisions of Chapter II of the 1999 constitution. Education should be a tool to reduce social inequality. But left in the hands of free marketeers as policy makers, it could be a tool to widen the inequality. If Greenspan is thinking about “educational egalitarianism” in the United States, why would our neo-liberal reformers not give a thought to the frightening possibilities that in the Nigeria of 2020 millions of teenagers may still loose out in the race for quality education?
Kayode Komolafe wrote this piece for The Horizon.
