Well with the exception
of parts of South Africa, the peaks of Kilimanjaro or the Atlas Mountains in
North Africa. The point is the average African child knows not what snow or wool is.
Mary had a little lamb,
it’s fleece is white as snow…..a nursery rhyme every English speaking African
child memorized was nothing but a bunch of meaningless words shoved down the
throats of confused kids with teachers who had no clue what they were teaching
either.
In almost all nursery
rhymes sung by kids, the meaning is lost to them, if in fact they assume the
words to mean anything. Take the popular Baa, baa black sheep for
example, how confusing will that be to an African child to ask a sheep if he as
any wool? Not because we literally can’t talk to sheep, but because what wool
is, is lost to him. Sheep in tropical regions don’t need to grow wool, a fact
learned many years later. And to top off the confusion, one bag of wool is for
a dame!
Who is a dame? What
does it mean? The answers to that too come years after leaving school, if one
is curious enough.
The realities in Africa
are not reflected in the curriculum and children just plod along school
corridors repeating words they have no clue as to what they could mean. The
formative years, it will be safe to say, are lost to mumbo jumbo. A lot of the
good grades scored in exams is attributed to memorization, what we call “cramming”.
Literally copy the words in your mind and paste them to the relevant section on
the exam paper.
If education has to be
meaningful and topics of discussion well understood, then a lot needs to change
at the very least. One would be tempted to call for a complete overhaul of the
education system, but such ideas are fought repressively from conception.
This notion of
redesigning the school curriculum across Africa to be more meaningful to
Africans will be dismissed as impractical at this point from many Africans,
especially the so-called intellectual class.
How about simpler
issues like the national anthems of the various African nations? If these songs
are to inspire patriotism and national pride in citizens, why then are they
still in languages that a greater majority of citizens do not understand, the
languages of the oppressors? In fact they do not know what a national anthem
means. At the bare minimum, all that is required is a translation into some
common dialect, but here too calls of tribal bias and ethnic favoritism are
evoked to deter any such move. At some point, we just have to stop worrying
about such issues and do right by our people collectively.
With the exception of a
handful of southern African and East African nations and the North Africans,
all national anthems, especially in West Africa are in French, English, or
Portuguese. Even school children hardly pronounce the words rights talk less of
understanding them, imagine then what the highly “illiterate” masses think of
it.
A Ghanaian state
minister once suggested exactly that; that the national anthem be changed from
the English to native dialects to enhance the sense of nationalism. His suggestion
was dismissed as having ethnic undertones. This is the sad reality of our
situation.
African societies were
traditionally set along ethnic and tribal lines, a fact that was disregarded by
the Europeans. We were bundled into nation states with no regard to traditional
values. Granted, it may be too late or even unwise to re-draw these national boundaries,
but being stuck in this scenario or rejecting any of our local dialects in
favor of foreign ones to avoid any kind of ethnic or tribal disenfranchisement
is absurd. We are actively helping the killing of our own culture and values
with such claims.
Children’s curiosity
and thought process will be greatly enhanced if they are taught in languages
they understand and use every day, even better if the learning environment is
familiar with relatable characters and familiar sounding everyday things. That
much we owe to the future generation. Strides are being made in this regard but
there is still a great deal left to do.
As to what language to
choose, that could be determined by a lot of factors such as lingua franca, or whatever
language or tribe the majority belong to, or a combination of many languages.
It won’t be easy to develop, but any great accomplishment is always worth the
challenges they come with.
Compare the anthems of
Africa’s two giants; South Africa and Nigeria and see which has a greater
impact on you, even though you may not understand the South African languages
used. The African sounding lyrics in them impact the heart more; and awaken
that sense of pride more than Nigeria’s.
We need to start
somewhere and the sooner the better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avPeagYhbgo
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