Walking down the streets of Nigeria through the corners of nations which the white man called tribes, the sight of a pig iron extracted from an iron ore is crystal clear. The cloud of hear-say and superstition has thickened over the roofs and even a thicker cloud of corruption emitting through greed, nepotism, imperialism and bad governance as Chinua Achebe identified in his ‘the trouble with Nigeria’ has showered heavily the dew of inflation, the lightening of high interest rates, the thunderstorm of the devaluation of naira, does that stand in for why coins has gone extinct or account for the disappearance of one naira note from the market?
The sound of flood that sweeps off the ability to process raw materials and deliver finished goods to the market invites over dependency on importation as though the land is void of natural resources. However, the manual of constitution and the fiscal policies wrapped in government regulation is projected on the lectern like in the news but with covered lids, the coat of unity and progress are often betrayed by poor infrastructures so for health sake, citizens in the bourgeoisie class will go through the Atlantic ocean to regain good health and proletariat dwell in the overcrowded government hospitals relying on faith. The kingdom of the mixed economic system which capitalism reigns over has become the home of exploitation, to have filled barns at the expense of another’s one tuber of yam or one grain of corn. Fuel could be sold at one hundred and forty four naira and if you ever pay one-fifty or one-forty-six naira, you forfeit six naira or four naira but one cannot purchase this black gold for less or hire-purchase. Exactly how did we get here today in Nigeria? Why have the basic necessities of life become luxuries that one has to be above the lower class to feed three square meals without in between meals, have good change of clothes, good roof over one’s head and then begin to nurture the idea of better mobility and having a data connected smartphone which have in this era become attached to daily living. These militants have our economy sailing swiftly into the Atlantic Oceans, perhaps every Nigerian needs to become a soldier to fight these militants, sail ships to gather from the ocean our treasures and metamorphose to miners with a furnace that will turn our pig iron to refined gold.
Inspired by Aunna Onyekwere’s ‘the Nigeria economy and factors that militates against it’
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The dictionary and so many other scholars have defined knowledge in the different ways but with emphasis on it as a “noun”. In practice, elites have termed knowledge to be skill and efficiency, society has termed it running streets, labour market terms it paper qualification, and for clarity sake in this work, it is termed ‘the known’; simply put, refined information. The philosopher Socrates said, “to know good is to do good, and not to know good is to do evil” which means that what you do or not do reflects what you know or don’t know (your action and inaction reflects your knowledge and ignorance), and as the work unfolds, the components of K such as culture, education, and skill acquisition, will be illuminated.
Academically education is basically divided into formal or informal education. Here, we will look at education from both the idealist and empiricist view. The idealist (idealism) which is championed by Plato, the philosopher conceives education from the Greek word “educere” which means to “lead out”. That is to say that man is born with an innate idea, there are things which one just knows how to do perfectly well or just understands so easily as though one has done that for a long while, this school of thought explains that it is so because one has known those things already, but is unaware of the existence of such abilities or ideas, so education becomes the way to lead such abilities and ideas out, bringing it to the open where the person is aware and makes use of them. For the empiricists (empiricism) the notion of education conceived by John Locke is derived from the Greek work “educare”, which means “to train or teach”. The idea behind this notion is that man was born ‘tabula raza’ which means ‘empty/blank slate’, this literally means that man knows nothing except what he has been thought by his environment or nurture. The point here is not state which school of thought has it right or wrong because they both make salient points which is the focus of this column. This point is that the essence of education is to lead out and to train or to teach; to bring to awareness by leading out that which is unseen but exists, one may refer to such as “potentials” and then, to teach that which is unknown, good enough they both work hand in hand, flowing from the unknown to the known. Why is this the case? Simply because every good teacher with the aim of having successful students must be to teach them effectively by relating from what he assumes or is certain that they already know, and every good student, who is not a paper student, (students who read or just cram to pass exams), relates to understands something new from what they already know, think of it, it is difficult to relate with something you have never seen before, if you are able to flow easily with something new, it simply because you have been able to relate that to something you already known, hence, the implication of Socrates’ Socratic method. Education on this level is basically about everything that can be known both by interest and necessity. Such includes, skill acquisition. For whatever you want to be (interest), acquire a skill that will help you achieve that and enhance the innate idea and ability that has prompted that within you(necessity), also pick a vocation that equips and develops you better for the kind of problems you want to solve(interest). Education is incomplete if self is not developed.
Merriam Webster defines culture to be the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religion or social group. In the 20thc, the subject social studies defines culture as the totality of a people’s way of life. Humans when thrown into existence stumble on circumstances in a bid to identify the essence of their existence and become accepted by each other in the society they find themselves, they unconsciously begin to come up with means and patterns which inversely is their response to challenges in their environment, gradually these patterns discovered in the face challenges and self-actualization become a way of life and a norm which over time metamorphose into the culture of a society and is passed on to generations. As the society grows and develops there may be a paradigm shift as a result of model crisis, and just like in science, there will be hypothesis, experiment, observation, test, theory, law and the cycle goes on, but the sole aim is to solve that problem. One may wonder what this may be driving at, the point is one fundamental knowledge that must be gathered is the knowledge of culture, in knowing the culture one understands “the why” behind the norms, standards and values of a people, this one knowledge is key to any successful revolution.