LANGUAGE,
LITERATURE AND TRANSFORMATIVE EDUCATION:
A TRIADIC NEXUS IN THE QUEST FOR A BETTER WORLD
Professor ’Raheem Adebayo Lawal
Department of Arts Education
University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria
A Keynote Address in the 39th International Convention of the Association of Nigerian Authors, Held in Ilorin, Kwara State from 3rd to 6th December, 2020, with the theme “In Search of a Better World: Literature as Catalyst for National Development”
1.0 PREAMBLE
I must begin by expressing my profound appreciation to the organisers of this all-important convention for counting me worthy of this keynote address. The theme of this convention is at once topical, apposite and enduring in a paradoxical sense, due to the cyclic, rather linear, progress of history. However, language, in its primary linguistic and other extended senses, is a tool of literature, a cultural oeuvre, both of which can best impact society positively in the context of balanced and transformative education. This understanding has informed my “triadic nexus” symbolism in explaining how literature intersects with language and education in humanity’s complicated and continuous search for a better world.
2.0 INTRODUCTION
The potential of education as an instrument for positive social transformation and sustainable economic development would now seem to be a universally acknowledged truism. The United Nations has lent credence and support to this time-honoured position by charging nations of the world, irrespective of their divergent levels of educational and socio-economic development, to commit a substantial portion of their annual budgets to the education sector. This would thus explain why, when journalists enquired from him his three top priorities on assumption of office, the former British Prime minister, Tony Blair, responded pointedly that his first priority was education; the second, education; and the third, education (Adeyanju, 2009).
Although successive governments in Nigeria have failed to live up to the bidding of the United Nations, the National Policy on Education is unequivocal in its affirmation of the role of education as an instrument par excellence for bringing about rapid national development. (FGN, 2013). The Federal Government of Nigeria has also zeroed in squarely on education as the panacea for the current inter-twined crises facing almost all the social systems in Nigeria, as it noted that without education Nigeria will not attain global relevance, neither will she create a good society or an informed citizenry (FGN, 2006).
In spite of huge verbal and financial commitments to education by most nations of the world, there has been unprecedented crisis in education, beginning from the second half of the last century. This was the period when the Factory Age gradually gave way to the current Information Age as propelled and sustained by the ideology of globalisation. This crisis has been well captured and documented in such books as Compulsory Miseducation (Goodman, 1962). World Educational Crisis: a Systems Approach (Coombs, 1968), School is Dead (Reimer, 1971), Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1972), and Deschooling Society (Illich, 1973). The core thesis that runs through these books is the growing irrelevance of the school system in ensuring the greatest good for the greatest majority (Lawal, 2008).
The result could not have been anything but global economic melt-down, which is a euphemism for describing how the greed of a few nations of the powerful centre, through the recklessness of their multinational conglomerates, has fouled the economic air of the powerless nations in the periphery. But the backlash in the social and political spheres both intra-nationally and internationally has been more debilitating as evidenced by the following catalogue of widespread maladies plaguing the world:
• Churning out of job-seekers rather than job creators due to the growing irrelevance and dysfunctionality of education especially in the developing world.
• Social contradictions particularly in the third world countries where employable people are not employed into positions yearning for employment.
• Gradual but steady enthronement of misery and poverty even in the so-called developed world, as many nations in the first, second and third worlds compete maniacally in the amassment of increasingly accomplished weapons of mass destruction.
• Widespread violence, terrorism and counter-terrorism within and among nations leading to genocides and unprecedented refugee problems.
• Urbanisation without corresponding industrialisation in the developing world resulting in high rates of unemployment and all manner of crime ranging from child labour through prostitution to armed banditry, kidnapping and, more recently “adult-napping”, as well as intra-national and trans-national terrorism.
• Human life is trivialised and reduced to deceptive statistics such that, as the percentage of illiterate people, for instance, may be decreasing especially in many third-world countries, the actual member of real human beings plagued by illiteracy continues to be on a steady rise. This is due to uncontrolled population explosion and counter-productive social policies.
• Desecration and break-down of the sacred institution of marriage and family life especially in the so-called developed world. The level of promiscuity in the western world has reached an alarming proportion. At the close of the last decade and century, most European women would seem to have settled for the practice of having children out of wedlock, believing that they do not need men to survive. The result is that at least half of all the babies in Sweden are born to unmarried parents, while it is about one in three in France and England. (Newsweek Magazine, 1997).
• Unfettered neo-liberalism, which is the ideological foundation of globalisation, has facilitated the naturalisation of those sins for which God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. The U.S is in the vanguard of nations which have legitimised homosexuality by according “gays” and “lesbians” legal rights leading to a gradual but steady institutionalisation of same-sex marriage. The perverse social orientation is now in tacit support of accommodation rather than correction or re-education of sexual deviants.
• Sexual symbolisation of womanhood and the enthronement of the unholy trinity of money (via trade liberalism) war (via popularised violence on the television and internet) and fashion (as guided by the sex motif).
• Unprecedented youth crisis all over the world as a result of absentee/vacuum and alternative parenthood, irresistible peer group pressure and unregulated avalanche of decadent values through the electronic media. The reading culture is gradually dying while youths are generally driven by sex, not only as a habit, but also in their mode of dressing and musical tastes.
The seed for the crisis just described was sown during the Factory Age and has fully germinated in the current Information Age. During the Factory Age, to which a great portion of the 20th century belonged, the proliferating demands for specialists in the sciences and technology eroded greatly the broadly humanistic base for a balanced and positively transformative education, the type of education that can ensure total and genuine human development at individual and national levels.
It would seem therefore that the potential of education as an instrument of positive change and genuine human development has not been exploited by most nations of the world. This has stemmed largely from pervasive misconception and, at times, deliberate distortion of the meaning, nature, process and product of education. The goal of all meaningful education is human development in a balanced and positively transformative sense at both personal and national levels.
We may now proceed to examine the more popular misconceptions and distortions with regard to the nature and goal of education, before examining the meaning and content of functional education, and finally locating language and literature within a humanistic and positively transformative paradigm in the quest for a better world.
3.0 WHAT EDUCATION IS NOT
· English is an international Lingua Franca which ranks first among the language of home pages on the web. The pervasive influence of English has led to the misconception, especially in the Anglophone nations of the third world, that a person’s proficiency level in English is indicative of, or even synonymous with the individual’s level of education.
· Education is not schooling, although the school system in the modern Age represents part of the continuous human search for ways of making life increasingly richer and nobler for the individual and the society. However, what goes on in the school system may run counter to education in the truest sense of the word and may indeed be in the service of miseducation. The renowned British writer and philosopher, George Bernard Shaw, had once remarked somewhat shrewdly that schooling had disrupted his education. The well-documented evidence of personality imbalance and behavioural maladjustment among many products of the school system in many nations of the world, including especially Nigeria, would seem to lend support to Shaw’s persuasion.
· Education is not inculcation or imparting as no individual, not even an infant, is a passive, unthinking and unfeeling receptacle of knowledge, values and skills to be absorbed willy-nilly. Unfortunately, the National Policy on Education, even in its latest edition, still uses “inculcate” profusely in the statement of educational aims and objectives.
· Education is not a mere process of cultural transmission from generation to generation, as no culture is sacrosanct, static or self-sufficient. Every culture requires constant self-assessment and self-renewal on the basis of its internal development as well as external influences from other cultures, while retaining the core or essence of its positive ethos.
· Education is not merely acquiring knowledge and skills without a solid foundation of human and humane values for deploying the knowledge and skills to virtuous and noble ends. When the Swedish scientist, Alfred Nobel, invented the dynamite, his intentions were pure and progressive. But rather than positively utilising the dynamite, his fellow scientists reinvented it as a weapon of mass destruction. Science and technology, therefore, without a sizeable dose of humanities would be a rudderless ship destined for the rocks, and this, unfortunately, would seem to be the parlous and pathetic state of the world today.
· Education is not a process of commodification of its human input as packaged products to a money-driven and greed-impelled labour market, no thanks to the anti-humanist impetus of economic liberalism as a key component of globalisation. Conversely, the primary goal of education is to liberate, edify and elevate the mind, body and soul of its recipient to such a lofty and noble level so that the individual can positively affect others and the society at large.
· The question “what then is education?” would become at this juncture merely rhetorical, for all along we have been hinting at our thesis through its many antitheses. To sum up the quintessence of education as a system with its component inputs, processes and ends, the following illuminating question-and-answer epigram from Siddiqi (1975) would suffice:
· Why do civilisations decline and ultimately die out? The answer is that the seed of their decay lies in the thoughts and habits of the people among whom they flourish. Mainly, it is moral decay that leads ultimately to ruin (emphasis mine).
In this concise and precise thesis is a nugget of wisdom. We would like to conceive thoughts in this submission as the cognitive component; habits, the psychomotor dimension; and “moral decay” as the affective or spiritual consequence of a soul-less education. These three dimensions refer to the three symbolic H’s in the trichotomy of the “Hands” (representing the technical or practical dimension of education), the Head (symbolising the intellectual or cognitive domain) and the Heart, which is the ultimate spiritual goal of balanced and truly transformative education.
4.0 LANGUAGE AND
LITERATURE IN TRANSFORMATIVE EDUCATION:
THE TRIADIC NEXUS
Language and literature can be regarded as social tools and micro-systems within a larger, subsuming system of education. In other words, language and literature are components or subjects as well as instruments or mediums of education. Due to the tripartite nature of their inter-relationship, the triangular model of the inter-connection is aimed at shedding light on the roles of language and literature in balanced, positive and transformative education.
4.1 Relationship between Language and Literature
As indicated by bi-directional arrows at the base of the triangle, the relationship between language and literature is conceived as reciprocal and there is ample theoretical and empirical evidence in support of this. However, the relationship between the two disciplines, which are also educational tools, is tricky and paradoxical. In one sense, language is a raw material of literature as stone or bronze is of sculpture, paint of picture, and sound of music. This would imply that language is but a component or part of the content of literature.
Apart from the fact that dramatic literature relies as well on paralinguistic and extra-linguistic modes, in addition to linguistic communication, literature reworks ordinary language through symbolism into a higher-order semiotic system which can be regarded as a “grammar” peculiar to literature.
In another sense, literature can be situated within the limitless and ever-expanding province of language. In this respect, literature is viewed as an instance of language in use, a name for working well with words by voice or pen. This perspective becomes clearer when we realise that there are countless domains of language use other than the literary.
The perplexing paradox, therefore, is that, like Siamese twins, language is part of literature, and literature is part of language, with each being smaller and at the same time larger than the other. Thus, in the educational context, the teaching of one can be used for reinforcing the other directly or indirectly, implicitly or explicitly.
4.2 Role of Language in Education
Language is perhaps the closest phenomenon to humankind and without it full human development and fulfillment is inconceivable. At the early formative stage and perhaps throughout the other subsequent stages of human growth and development, linguistic development parallels and is closely connected with cognitive development. This may explain why language deformities and impairments may hamper cognitive development.
At the socio-cultural level, no language is ideologically neutral as every language carries with it the cultural and cosmological imprints of its habitual users. Language is thus the repository and conveyor of all that is noble, laudable and memorable in the traditions and culture of a people and is a potent tool for social transformation and renewal through the instrumentality of education.
Therefore, since language doubles as medium and subject in education, much has been advocated for a child’s mother-tongue as an essential part of the stuff with which his mind (or cognitive structure) is made (Lawal, 2014). In addition, to stem the imperialism of exoglossic languages, greater sociolinguistic and educational space is strongly canvassed for endoglossic or indigenous languages, especially in the developing world. Although this proposal is not without its challenges, successive governments in Nigeria have done very little in implementing a balanced and mixed language policy that accords respect and prestige to the local languages while not unduly undermining the status and functions of English as a second language (ESL). The result is crisis in language policy and practice, indicating tacit support for, and inability to stem the tide of englishisation (Lawal, 2015).
Consequently, the potential of the indigenous languages in enriching the content and texture of education through the infusion of worthy values remains largely untapped. Furthermore, illiteracy continues to plague the populace since the local languages, which are supposed to serve as the instrument for the popularisation of literature as cultural practice and for the massification of education, are yet to be appropriately empowered for these noble goalsin the decisive march towards a more glorious future.
Literature is thus currently a class sociolect, an exclusive code of a privileged circle, as class distinction in the literature of modern times exists both in the works themselves and in their audience. Even when writers write about the condition of commoners, they are members of the educated elite and are mostly read by members of the same elite. More significantly, the language question clearly separates the elite from common folks - exogenous languages for elite literature and endogenous ones for the masses, most of who even struggle with literacy in their mother-tongues. How much of serious literature transcends this sociological divide is a potential subject of in-depth research. How much of popular literature, on the other hand, promulgates and perpetuates the cherished prejudices and parochialisms of its folk audience is also an urgent theme deserving empirical investigation.
Most writers therefore remain confined to the privileged elite due primarily to their medium and message, but ultimately as a result of their ideological mindset which has excluded them from the commercial literature of the mass culture. This may explain why writers such as Okot P’ Bitek has opted for the Fabian, bilingual option, writing both in endogenous and exogenous languages. A few other writers could not go beyond the tokenism of nominal rebirth: James Ngugi mutated into Ngugi wa Thiong’O, George Awoonor-Williams transformed into Kofi Awoonor and the celebrated Nigerian humanist poet and dramatist, John Pepper Clark, could only attain partial nominal metamorphosis into John Bekederemo-Clark before his final Transfiguration. The following is a bilingual pair of poems in my modest unfolding experiment in bilingual poetry, while foraging foolhardily in a dense forest of fiction where angels even fear to tread.
True Mothers
(For Alake)
By R. Adebayo Lawal
They are not mothers
Just because through them
Children had come;
They are mothers and moulders,
Models and mentors
Because through them
Children go very far,
Further than they had come.
Abiyamͅoͅ
(FúnÀlàkéͅ)
Láti oͅwóͅ R. Adébáyòͅ Lawal
Abiyamoͅ ni ìyá gidi,
Òǹwoni ti o ju òǹbíni loͅ
Ìyá tí ó ń jeͅ ìyà nítorí oͅmoͅ,
Ìyá tí ó ń fi ewé iyá ro èͅfóͅ,
Kí oͅmoͅ ó lè rí sͅoͅkoͅyòͅkòͅtòͅ jeͅ.
Abiyamoͅ kóͅ ni ìyá tí oͅmoͅ ti ara rèͅ wá,
Ìyá gidi ni ìyá tí oͅmoͅ ti ara rèͅ loͅ,
Tí oͅmoͅ wá loͅ, loͅ, loͅ…
Tí oͅmoͅ wá ga, ga, ga…
Tí ó ga ju ibi tí ó ti jade wá loͅ.
4.3 Potential of Literary Studies for Balanced and Transformative Education
This is not the place to evaluate this position, but perhaps it is sufficient to say that the aesthetic function is fundamental to all creative arts, including literature, and is therefore a desideratum and indeed a sine qua non; and that any piece of literature that satisfies other secondary functions without the primary intrinsic one would hardly qualify as literature.
The didactic function of literature lies in its potential not only to imitate our world in all its imperfections, but also to recreate it by artistically exposing the drawbacks and attempting to perfect the imperfections. Literature does this by reflecting not just past and present “realities”, but by also anticipating feasible ones and proffering more virile and transformative alternatives. This explains the predilection of many writers for the artistic and futuristic projection of experience as evident, for instance, in Achebe’s A Man of the People and Anthills of the Savannah, Soyinka’s A Dance of the Forest, Orwell’s 1984 and Osundare’s The Eye of the Earth, among several others.
Being ultra-sensitive men and women of intense social vision and commitment, literary artists employ their art not just to please and tease, but also to preach and teach vicariously and reach the soul of humanity. When we consider a writer’s moral and social vision, we attempt to evaluate the quality and magnitude of his or her concern for a better world, part of which is the need to ensure that in our current craze for scientific and technological advancement, we do not take a sane step forward and several depraved ones backward.
The contemporary world is full of pains, worries, suffering and despair. Social, political and economic challenges are mounting in their magnitude and becoming sharper in their intensity. Poverty, disease, misery, crime and war seem to be taking over the world in spite of pompous claims and glaring efforts of science and technology in solving old problems but only to create many new ones. Due to its soul-searching and soul-mending potential, literature serves the therapeutic purpose of a tension-reliever as well as an elixir, through which we are firmly re-assured that, despite wide-spread senselessness and suffering, there is still hope for humanity.
The possibilities of human experience are somewhat infinite in spatial, temporal and situational terms. Literature helps in shrinking our world by providing vicarious experiences which are not only presented vividly and memorably but are also difficult to gain through other means. Because literature is trans-spatial, trans-temporal and trans-circumstantial, it enriches us cognitively by broadening our horizon through the substitution of the real for the imaginary.
As stated earlier on, an essential tool of literature is language selected and patterned artistically to achieve aesthetic and educational effects. The cognitive or intellectual appeal and function of literature is partly linguistic. Literature fosters language development by presenting words, patterns, usages and images in picturesque, meaningful and memorable contexts. In fostering positive intellectual, emotional, moral and spiritual development, the literary artist stimulates our emotions, deepens our imagination and sharpens our intellect so intensely that we are able to rethink our condition and contemplate life from a refreshing and more edifying perspective.
However, literature is essentially an affective discipline and it is thus, together with language studies, in the core of the humanities – those disciplines principally concerned with the cultivation of human and humane vales. It possesses an intrinsic capacity for enriching the intellect and the soul through its humanistic selection, elevation and projection of lofty and enduring values. But the potential of literature is not confined only to the cognitive and affective domains of education; literature also promotes learners’ psychomotor development through the dramatic skills of dancing, singing, acting, miming and oral poetic performance.
Unfortunately, literature programmes at the secondary and tertiary levels of the Nigerian school system have long been lopsided in favour of a low level of cognitive development, with little consideration for the equally, if not more significant areas of affect and psychomotor, apart from the higher-order intellectual goals. At the secondary school level, in particular, learners are reduced to robots that are merely forced to swallow and later regurgitate ill-digested literary terms and techniques. This pedagogical orientation has reduced literary studies to a boring and dreary exercise of the lowest intellectual level.
At the tertiary level of formal education, the anti-humanistic predilection rears its monstrous head in the 40:60 admission ratios for humanities and science and technology students respectively. One wonders whether it would take millions of Nigerian scientists to manufacture, for example, simple tooth-pick unaided from outside, be it the plastic type or the wooden brand which is less technologically demanding.
At all the levels of formal education, the literary curriculum needs sizeable doses of the affective, cognitive and psychomotor content of the oral tradition. African oral poetry, for instance, satisfies the basic attributes of all fine poetry, namely:
a) To appeal to us intellectually and imaginatively so that we think profoundly and intelligently about some concept or aspect of life; and
b) To affect us emotionally so that we feel either deep delight or intense pain.
In achieving intellectual appeal, the oral poet is capable, as his modern counterpart, of conjuring powerful images with words (Akporobaro, 2013). For example, in describing a bloody war, a Mandika poet paints the following macabre picture:
You would plunge into human blood
Up to your knees
Blood was soaking the wells
And they were collapsing, (Okphewo, 1985)
The oral poet can also describe with seriousness and depth some of the fundamental problems of human existence. The following Susu poem (from Guinea) analyses the “content” of the human head in a deceptively simple fashion, more from a psychological than a biological perspective.
The Well
(Traditional; from the Susu, Guinea)
There is a well
That has five kinds of water
There is sugared water
And salty water
There is tasteless water
And bitter water
The fifth water is red,
Red like blood
The well is the head.
(Okphewo, 1985)
In the same vein, Yoruba divinatory poetry underscores the critical place of character in the workings of Fate, first at the personal level and ultimately, by extrapolation, at the national and global levels. I have attempted to re-render the following excerpt freely but figuratively in polyphonic prose, although I must confess, incongruously, when juxtaposed with the mellifluent cadence of the original Yoruba version.
In the Very Beginning, Ìwà (Character) was a woman and wife of Ò̩rúnmìlà who divorced her because of her unbearable dirtiness. Ìwà (Character) left for Olódùmarè’s (God’s) home angrily, as she was Olódùmarè’s (God’s) grand-child, being a child to Sùúrù (Patience), Olódùmarè’s (God’s) first son. Hence, the popular Yorùbá aphorism which notes that Patience (Sùúrù) is the Father of Character (Ìwà). After the divorce, Ò̩rúnmìlà’s life became miserable and empty. Everyone deserted him and he was helpless and hapless, living from hand to mouth. This is the inevitable consequence of parting ways with Character (Ìwà), his beloved wife. He had no other choice than to decide to embark on a search mission for his estranged wife. And as the voice of Legend intones, “whoever lacks character (Ìwà) loses all Good.”
Disguised in the esoteric, other-worldly regalia of a masquerade, Ò̩rúnmìlà started the search for his wife, Character, to no avail. He first visited the house of the glib gossip and notorious tale-bearer, to no avail. He proceeded to the homes of his envious and numerous kinsmen, but he was greeted with disgrace and granted no audience. In his unrelenting search for “Character”, his wife, he chanced upon the foot-loose, itinerant bard, who reminded him that “character is the queen of fortune” and without her Ò̩rúnmìlà’s tragedy and travails would know no end. Sobbing and sweating now profusely, Ò̩rúnmìlà directed his search to the residences of the sixteen (16) deities.
One after the other, they chided him and admonished him to heed the advice of the itinerant bard. Thoroughly exhausted, dejected and impoverished, he remembered faintly his father’s epigram: “God is the dependable and unflinching Pillar of support even when the whole world abandons one”. He then resorted to proceed to Heaven and plead with Olódùmarè (God) to give him back “Character”, his wife. Surprisingly, he found his wife with Olódùmarè (God) and pleaded with her to follow him back home, but she refused. When the plea became persistent and she was moved by the pitiable sight of her once handsome husband, she gave one condition for her return to him – that he must use his own hands to deftly mend and massage her, his “Character” to soothe her own pains.
The voice of Legend then admonishes us all:
If we are wealthy,
But lack character,
Our wealth belongs to others;
If we are blessed with offspring,
And we lose character,
Our children belong to others;
What matters most is character,
Only character,
For an elder who has character,
Has all worth and wealth.
Without prejudice to the polytheistic overtones, the humanistic cosmology implicated in this folkloric excerpt affirms the potential and potency of sound character in achieving a more peaceful, balanced and just world. This progressive persuasion has also been given artistic affirmation and fillip by quintessential Achebe in his last classic novel, Anthills of the Savannah:
In the beginning Power rampaged through our world, naked. So the Almighty, looking at his creation through the round undying eye of the sun, saw and pondered and finally decided to send his daughter, Idemili, to bear witness to the moral nature of authority by wrapping around Power’s rude waist a loincloth of peace and modesty…
The story goes that in the distant past a certain man handsome beyond compare but in randiness as unbridled as the odorous he-goat from the shrine of Udo planting his plenitude of seeds from a huge pod swinging between hind legs into she-goats tethered for him in front of numerous homesteads; this man, they said, finally desired also the ozo title and took the word to Idemili. She said nothing. He went away, performed the rites, took the eagle feather and the titular name Nwakibie, and returned to tell her what he had done. Again she said nothing.
Then as a final ritual he took shelter according to custom for twenty-eight days in a bachelor’s hut away from his many wives. But though he lived there in the day for all to see he would steal away at dead of night through circuitous moon-swept paths to the hut of a certain widow he had fancied for some time; for as he was wont to ask in his more waggish days: why will a man mounting a widow listen for footsteps outside her hut when he knows how far her man has travelled?
On his way to resume his hard-lying pretence at cock-crow one morning who should he behold stretched right across his path its head lost in the shrubbery to the left and its tail likewise to the right? None other than Eke-Idemili itself, royal python, messenger of the Daughter of God – the very one who carries not a drop of venom in its mouth and yet is held in greater awe than the deadliest of serpents!
His circuitous way to the bachelor’s hut thus barred, his feet obeying a power outside his will took him straight and true as an arrow to the consternation of his compound and his funeral.
Character development is thus at the core of literature as a cultural tool in the service of balanced and transformative education for the attainment of a better world. This explains the rationale behind the perennial reference to “men and women who have been found worthy in character and learning” each time universities present graduands for their patently grandiose rite of passage. Character is thus foregrounded as foundation for balanced and transformative learning as a man of learning who lacks sound character, much like a man of power who lacks modesty and moderation, is a danger to both to himself and others and can hardly contribute meaningfully to the attainment of the lofty dream of a better world.
5.0 CONCLUDING REMARKS
From the foregoing analysis and exploration, it is evident that the challenges of language and literature in the service of meaningful, balanced, transformative and development-oriented education are quite enormous but definitely not insurmountable. Some of the imperatives are broad-based educational concerns while others are literature-specific as implicit in the following questions:
· How do we reconceptualise the nature, goals and content of education such that the process can be meaningful, relevant, balanced and transformative in relation to national development?
· How can we re-invent the education system so that the over 60 million Nigerians of 15 years of age and below can be accommodated within the system in terms of accessibility and quality of educational opportunities?
· How do we create an entrepreneurial class that will take the burden of job creation off the shoulder of government?
· How can we put our linguistic and literary resources into the service of sustainable national development through the medium of a balanced, productive and transformative education, such that these assets would not turn, like other natural resources, into our nemesis and nightmare?
· How can we ensure the integration of status and corpus planning in the Nigerian language policy in such a way that we can gradually transit from an exoglossic policy to a mixed type in which more and more indigenous languages can be used complementarily and harmoniously with English to achieve nationalism (authenticity as a united people) and nationism (operational efficiency as a nation)?
· Most importantly, in the post-colonial context, how can we ensure that our languages (including ESL) and their literatures serve, in terms of both curricular content and methodology, as the nucleus of a broad humanistic re- orientation in our continuous pursuit of a better world through scientific and technological development within an education system that is functional, relevant, balanced and transformative?
As we ponder these posers, I recall this extract from a memorable chant by the celebrated maestro of Ìjálá poetry, Ògúndáre Fóͅyánmu:
Kò sí dòǹgárì Kankan láyé móͅ
Eͅni tí ó bá lè mú ara woͅn
Ni í yan ara woͅn jeͅ
(The justice system is most unjust
As giants’ trample tread down the dwarfs)
We may now end on the sonorous note of music, a kindred member of the humanities, to borrow the thought-provoking admonition of a veteran Yorùbá songster:
Eͅ sͅe ayée’re o, eͅ dákun eͅ sͅayée’re
Eͅ sͅe ayée’re o, eͅ dákun eͅ sͅayée’re
Ìwà ręę yé oͅ,
Ìwà ręę yé oͅ,
Ìwà ni yóò ku oníwà o,
Eͅ dákun eͅ sͅayée’re
(Let us all live a righteous life
Let us all together build a better world
For your character will definitely count
In the Ultimate Account)
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Lawal, R. A (2003), Semantic perspectives on the place of linguistic competence in a theory of literary competence. In Lawal, R. A (ed.). Stylistics in Theory and Practice, Ilorin: Paragon, 11 – 24
Lawal, R. A. (2008). A cybernetic appraisal of reforms in the Nigerian education sector. In Lawal, R. A et al (eds.) Education Reforms in Nigeria: Past, Present and Future, Ibadan: Stirling -Horden.
Lawal, R.A. (2014). The mother-tongue in the education and development of the Nigerian child. The 2014 Annual Fafunwa Education Foundation (FEF) Lecture at the Nigeria Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), 13/15, KofoAbayomi Street, Victoria Island, Lagos, on 23rd September, 2014.
Lawal, R. A (2003), Semantic perspectives on the place of linguistic competence in a theory of literary competence. In Lawal, R. A (ed.). Stylistics in Theory and Practice, Ilorin: Paragon, 11 – 24
Lawal, R. A. (2008). A cybernetic appraisal of reforms in the Nigerian education sector. In Lawal, R. A et al (eds.) Education Reforms in Nigeria: Past, Present and Future, Ibadan: Stirling -Horden.
Lawal, R.A. (2014). The mother-tongue in the education and development of the Nigerian child. The 2014 Annual Fafunwa Education Foundation (FEF) Lecture at the Nigeria Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), 13/15, KofoAbayomi Street, Victoria Island, Lagos, on 23rd September, 2014.
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