Chibok Girls, Technology and Education
Last week’s convocation lecture by Professor Wole Soyinka at the 3rd convocation of the Kwara State University, Malette, Kwara State calls for cavernous national introspection. It is assertive in its pronouncement of the value of education and also bold in its dislike for Boko Haram, the terrorist group that continues to desecrate morality and education, especially in northern Nigeria. According to Soyinka, ‘… members of the group unfortunately acquired knowledge of how to make destructive weapon but failed to acquire that that promote humanity … I will like to suggest that both nationally and internationally the iconic image and symbol of the struggle we are still undergoing today remains the image of numbers of young school pupils whom we handed over to the enemies of education. All 200 and 40 something of them are still missing; I will like to suggest that the iconic image of that struggle is the photographs of those young pupils in the open air taken by the brutal captors and broadcast all over the newspapers, international media, Youtube, internet etc. That group of depersonalised, coward, terrified captured young children who were like all you here, in search of the Golden Fleece when they were at the beginning of their journey. That image which was published so widely and was taken by their enemies in a gloating manner was meant to strike at our self-consciousness as human beings, as parents and as citizens. I don’t know about other people but that image hurts me even up till today, even when I am not looking at it. When I just recollect those depersonalized children under a tree perhaps, taken by their captors and broadcast all over the world…. The kidnapped pupils are potential doctors when we sent them to take their first qualifying examination; up till today we cannot say whether they are alive, whether they are in slave or sold off. All we know is that they have been dehumanized, brutalized and their childhood has been taken away from them. Sometime I wonder whether we are speaking of a remote, newly discovered planet or we are speaking of this very planet for which you and I standing today….’
Nigeria is presently ranked as the country with the highest number of out-of-school children in the world. The “Education for All 2000–2015: Achievements and Challenges” documentation from the 2015 Global Monitoring Report (GMR) reveals this and concludes that Nigeria has one of the worst educational system in the world. To correct this in part, an additional 220,000 primary school teachers will be needed. And this is only one of the ways that the Education for All goal of the country can be met. While it may be difficult to suddenly push 220,000 primary school teachers into the space, the interim solution lies in the huge resource that technology can provide in this regard. The United Nations Children Education Fund reveals that there are about 10.5 million Nigerian children who are not in school with about 60% of them being girls and are resident in the North. With this, Nigeria dominates twelve other countries with which it accounts for 47% of the global out-of-school population. The other countries are Pakistan (5.1 million); Ethiopia (2.4million); India (2.3million); Philippines (1.5million); Cote D’Ivoire (1.2million); Burkina Faso (1million); Niger (1million); Kenya (1million); Yemen (0.9million); Mali (0.8million) and South Africa (0.7million). The Chibok Girls were rightly hoping to be outside these statistics until Boko Haram struck. The security threats in the north eastern part of the country has led more parents to withdraw their daughters out of school and prevented those of schooling age from being enrolled. Schools that manage to remain open according to UNICEF face the problem of overcrowding understaffing and have little or no resources. In easier statistical expression, it means almost one out of three primary-ages and one in four junior-age children are out of school in Nigeria.
It is time to put technology to the task. While government continues to wrap its head around how to solve this problem, children of schooling age should not be denied access to learning. While we wait for the time when children can be brought together to learn in a safe environment, knowledge can be taken to children in their parents’ room without any major hindrance. Any sane person will agree with the UNFPA on its thought that ‘education is vital to poverty reduction and national building. However, educational opportunities for young people are unequally distributed particularly for girls. Girls are discriminated against in school enrolment for socio and economic reasons. The literacy rate is 73% for men and 48% for women. The gender gap in literacy however decreases from older to younger women. Young people aged 15–19 have literacy rates of 79% for boys and 61% for women compared with older adults aged 45–49 with literacy rates at 60% for men and 22% for women. Rural women are even more disadvantaged than their urban counterparts. Some socio-cultural groups favour more boys over girls in elementary and secondary school enrolment especially in the north while economic hardship in the south propels girls to go into trading to assist themselves and their families instead of going to school.’
It is time to use e-learning to oppress this worrisome drift otherwise we will in future have a barely educated population. The delivery of education where the learners and instructor are though geographically separated but connected should be brought to work. This is the way technology can bridge the instructional lacuna created by poor access to schools or any other physical learning facility. This is the forte of e-learning, especially the remote type wherein educational instructions are already pre-loaded on a mobile device. It will be good for national development if we take a critical look at what success story Opon–Imo has managed to achieve in improving the quality of learning in Osun State. For the about 10 million Nigerian children that are out of school, stakeholders need to decide on the appropriate instructional technology that will fit them in a participatory way that considers the culture of the different demography in this population. Pedagogy ultimately decides on the opportunity a child can access especially in the future. With job placement problems and unemployment on the rise, it will be fair to set children on the disadvantage plain by denying them education at the formative stage in life. The ability to read and write can be taught in programmed form and such device shared to children and monitored. Examples of innovations in this light include Concord Consortium, a group that designs simple technology to aid understanding of complex mathematical and engineering problems. Another is Glovico.org where students are helped to learn languages through social interaction. CourseSmart is also leading as an electronic textbook vendor. Platforms like Epistemic Games help to immerse students in the world of adults by putting them in a number of occupational roles and asking them to solve real-world problems. The enormous nature of our primary and secondary educational system is in demand of quick solution. The e-learning approach is a quick-fix while we wait for an institutional overhauling.
