The African school system, one may say, is more of a “job-search” rather than a “Job creation” system. Every year, millions of young Africans graduated from their various colleges, universities, and Institutes with the hopes of getting jobs; thus flooding the job market. These youths, if asked what they want after they have graduated, will tell you “I need a job, I want to work”. Yes, we need jobs, but how about we teach them how to create jobs?
Here are eight [8] things that need to be part of the African educational curriculum and need to be compulsorily taught in African schools:
- Emotional intelligence skills (EQ)
- Critical thinking
- Financial Education
- Problem-solving skills
- History
- Maintenance culture
- Sex education
- Self-defence
Why we need to pay more attention and invest in vocational and technical skills? And why we need to the above mentioned eight subjects to be added in our school curriculum?
Science technology and logic needs to be made a priority and embraced as what will solve our problems and give us solutions to the myriad of problems we face as a continent. We are very much anti-science and against logical reasoning, we believe science and logical reasoning belongs only to the Western people.
I was arguing with some people some weeks ago, they claimed some humans turn into owls and come to rest on an electric pole every night and disturbs them with hoots. They said they are witches and they are responsible for many of the problems they are facing. I asked them to tell me the problems, and they listed “poverty and bad health.” I told them that poverty is an economic issue, not a spiritual one, as it requires good government policies. I told them that a human can’t turn into an owl. Biology has explained to us why it is not possible.
They dismissed my explanations and said that I reason like a white man. I laughed. I always get it, that, when you use logic and science to defeat superstitious thoughts and beliefs, people around will tell you that you are reasoning like a white man. Does logic, reason and rationality belong only to the whites? Logic, reason and rationality are human virtues and are not exclusive to whites or Asians. That is what humanity has used and will continue to use for their betterment. We will continue to progress with these things.
Africans need to embrace them in full so that we can better understand the world and how it works. Once we fully understand the world and how it works, we can then fully understand our problems and apply natural solutions to them.
Science, technology, logical and rational reasoning are not exclusive to western people or Asians. They are methods humans have invented or discovered to help them better themselves, solve their problems and make progress.
We need to take science and the scientific process seriously. We need to embrace it, accept it in full and once we understand it we can then invest a lot in it and use it to solve our problems