IMPACT OF WESTERN EDUCATION IN SOCIETY
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 The Study’s Background
The education tradition began seriously in Nigeria in 1842, with the arrival of the Wesleyan Christian Missionary at Badagry. It has clearly been the most successful in meeting consumers’ overall formal educational needs, both now and in the future. Schools were built, and the mission struggled for students and members, resulting in a proliferation of primary schools established by various missions.
Okebukola (2011). Christian missionaries in Bambur, Karim-Lamido Local Government Area introduced Western education to Nigeria State around 1923. According to Peter (2001), Christian missionaries have made significant contributions to education since their introduction.
The people of Nigeria have a strong belief in education as a critical tool for the country’s and its citizens’ social and economic emancipation. The social demand for education has remained consistent over time, which helps to explain the phenomenal growth of the education system since national independence in 1960.
The historical overview of the development of the United Methodist Church’s participation in education in Nigeria shows that over half of all primary and secondary schools in Nigeria were private schools owned and managed by private organizations, to supplement the role of the United Methodist, proprietors, individual entrepreneurs, tribal, town unions, and communities who contributed in building schools to the point where they now dominate.
Before the introduction of formal education in Nigeria in the 16th century, indigenous education was practiced. This was non-formal and non-certified in terms of competencies, and it occurred at various stages of a child’s life; knowledge was assumed to be static,
and the pedagogic techniques used were primarily memorization and strict imitation of adults’ behavior; and questioning the logic, meaning, or analyses of knowledge was discouraged because children were to be seen but not heard. Lesourd’s (1996).
Despite the shortcomings of the pre-literate, African societies provided comprehensive training and education to all members of their communities. Individuals’ cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains were all satisfied by the lifelong education. Western colonial education, on the other hand, which was introduced in Nigeria, had ideas and practices similar to British colonial education.
The goal of British colonial education was to prepare clerks for administrative and commercial work. Later, Christian missionaries established schools that were modeled after the British structure, curriculum, and organization. As a result,
British colonial education instilled in Nigerians foreign ideologies, culture, and values. Similarly, learning was geared toward teaching and mastery of specific subjects, and one’s level of ability was determined by one’s ability to memorize and reproduce facts from these subjects.
According to Blege (1996), colonial educationists believe that schools and colleges must only help their students solve mental problems, whereas educational functionalists believe that school is an integral, functioning part of society, vital to its continuation and survival, and thus academic knowledge is useful only if it can be applied to solve societal problems; otherwise, it is harmful to society.
According to Whitty (1991), there was no explicit emphasis on social and political education in British colonial education. It’s no surprise that in Nigeria, vocational and practical training were regarded as only suitable for people with low academic ability, and most parents were strongly opposed to their children attending apprenticeship or vocational schools instead of academic institutions due to the colonial mentality that linked status to academic qualifications.
For education is supposed to transform a society from pre-literate to contemporary nationhood, but the transformation that occurred in Nigeria could not help the country revolutionize and modernize the economy to meet the demands of the growing society because the education system did not emphasize the teaching of life employed or self-employed as they lack skills for any profession.
Some of the conflicted sense of common national identity can be attributed to historical hostilities and rivalries among many of the peoples agglomerated within Nigeria. The colonial legacy, on the other hand, contributed significantly to the new nation’s clash of loyalties.
For example, the structure of British colonial administration of the artificially drawn territory hampered the development of a national consciousness within Nigeria’s vast borders. In colonial Nigeria, Britain’s practice of indirect rule perpetuated separate ethnic and local identities.
The British shielded the parochial political patterns of many ethnic groups by using traditional native institutions and tractable tribal chieftains as their functionaries in exercising the doctrine of indirect rule devised by colonial administrator Frederick Lugard. In the north, where Hausa-Fulani tribal leaders resisted European education, indirect rule aided the survival of isolated tribal identity.
The persistence of separateness was exacerbated by British regional government. From 1906 to 1922, colonial administration divided Nigeria into the Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria, which included Lagos, and the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria. From 1922 to 1957, the administration was further divided into the Northern, Eastern, and Western Regions, with the Federal Territory of Lagos established in 1954.
When Nigeria gained independence as a shaky federation in 1960, these regions became essentially self-governing. The colonial structure maintained ethnic isolation and reinforced it with regionalism, which the independent nation inherited.
The colonial experience provided little basis for fusing ethnic groups in any common sense of nationalism, with the larger ethnic groups dominating the separate political regions. It certainly did not foster a sense of national community or history. As a result, education was found to be ineffective and inadequate in meeting the needs and aspirations of Nigerian society.
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