MOTHERS /WOMEN AS CHAMPIONS
OF QUALITY EDUCATION IN AFRICA
Introduction
The term education comes from the Greek word educere which means to lead out. It refers to the imparting and acquiring of knowledge through teaching and learning, especially at a school or similar institution. Education is a life long process that instructs one on how to learn. It is a process that involves teaching, schooling, tutoring, instruction, edification, learning, training, tutelage, informing, and forming. It is a formal approach to teaching where teachers instruct students in courses of study within learning institutions. However, there is also informal education which does not require one to be in a formal setting for learning or in a school. Informal education refers to the general social process by which human beings acquire the knowledge and skills needed to function in their culture. Formal and informal education complement each other in the sense that informal education which takes place in the first school; which is the family paves way to any formof formal education that follows in ones life time. It is at home in the family where every human person receives his or her first education; it is where every person learns or at least should learn how to learn. “After all, what is education but a process by which a person begins to learn how to learn?” Peter UstinovDear Me1977.
This paper urges that, the champions of quality education in Africa are the mother or women. The quality of education is judged by the education products. Teacher and professors, doctors and priests, kings and lawyers all owe their first education to their mothers or at least to women who socialized them. Mothers offer the basic education to their children in families. Even those who grow up in orphanages, their care takers are mostly women. The quality of hospitable, courageous, loving and world leaders or models like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu of South Africa, Nyerere of Tanzania, Chisano of Zambia and Kofi Annan of Ghanaon the African continent are products of mothers or women’s education role. Mothers or women are that champions of quality education in Africa. In several families, where many men are unable to pay fees and scholastic material for their children, women sacrifice their bestto pay for the total education of their children or to supplement on the meagre resource of their husbands. They strive to take children to the best schools in view of offering the best quality of education possible. With the assistance of the World Bank, African governments have continued to build schools in order to meet the demand of growing populations and the inadequate resources have led to a decline in the quality of education offered. In many African nations, women are at the fore front to complement on what the children do not receive at school. They teach values, ethics and morals that enable many Africans to become men and women of character when they grow up. Africa as a continent torn apart with wars and diseases, women are the one who teach not only by words but life examples how to be peace lovers, peace makers and carers for the vulnerable in society. Any form of education if it is devoid of values, it produces academic giants but social dwarfs. It is the women who spearhead value education from the cradle of a home.
Education in Africa
In ancient Africa, from conception to death, mothers taught their children the basic survival skills and decorum acceptable in a given culture. On reaching adolescence, a separation was made where girls received special instructions from their mothers, aunts and other female adults in a family, village or clan. On the other hand, boys were instructed by their fathers or other elder males in family, village or clan. Generally, through informal education, parents, elders, and priests taught children the skills and roles they would need as adults. These lessons eventually formed the moral codes that governed behaviour. Since they lived before the invention of writing, preliterate African used an oral tradition, or story telling, to pass on their culture and history from one generation to the next. By using language, people learned to create and use symbols, words, or signs to express their ideas. When these symbols grew into pictographs and letters, Africans created a written language and made the great cultural leap to literacy that begun in Egypt. It was in ancient Egypt, where formal education flourished from about 3000 bc to about 500 bc, with priests in temple schools teaching not only religion but also the principles of writing, the sciences, mathematics, and architecture. Even when formal education flourished, the irreplaceable educative role of mother’s was emphasised as it laid foundation to formal education. For any society to flourish in all dimensions, the education of women is crucial as potential and irreplaceable teachers. “Educate a woman and you educate nation.”
Education Psychology and the role of women in education
Today with the advancement of technology and science, Psychology teaches that the environment in the mother’s womb and at home, contributes highly to a child’s disposition to learning. Education Psychology examines factors of motivation, development, teaching, and instruction. For example, to inquire about the origins of a child's disruptive classroom behavior, the operant (or instrumental) conditioning theory of Thorndike and the American psychologist B. F. Skinner may be applied. This theory describes how rewards shape and maintain behaviour. In life, the first person to give reward or punishment is the mother. School violence and vandalism may be partially understood through the social-learning theory of the psychologist Albert Bandura, which describes the conditions under which people learn to imitate models and the first model in the life of every person is the mother. Thus if mothers reward or punish, give good or bad example to their children, they contribute to the formation of a child’s character. Thus the good people we see in society are products of the good work and exemplary behaviours of their mothers or women who initiated and socialised them into the human society.
Educate a woman and you educate a nation
As early as 400 bc the Greeks had discovered the role of women as champions of quality education. In Sparta, the Spartan girls received more schooling but it was almost exclusively athletic training to prepare them to be healthy mothers of future Spartan soldiers. Socrates went as far as advocating for the educating the maids since they are the ones who teach the basic education in the polis or society. In Plato’s Republic, he describes a model society, or republic, ruled by highly intelligent philosopher-kings who should have well educated maids and mothers. Maids and mothers teach the basics of life to kings, lawyers, priests, doctors and teachers.
Champions in addressing the obstacles to quality education
Poverty and disease are linked problems in Africa that are compounded by poor sanitation, unclean water, inadequate housing and wars. Africa suffers from a very high infection rate of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). The other most common ailments include prenatal and maternal conditions, malaria, pneumonia, and diarrhoea. Theses are big obstacles to education. In order to overcome all these impasses, the role of mother or woman is very important. African women are beginning to voice their opinions about the failed elections, poor education systems, military coups, political upheavals, refugee movements, HIV/AIDs, poverty, diseases, economic recessions, structural adjustment, and other crises that severely affect the continent. As they begin to affirm their own identities they are transforming societies since they not only speak but educate fellow women and reach out to the needy like the refugees and raped women in Darfur and the Democratic republic of Congo, women like Wangari Mathai of Kenya work to save mother earth by planting trees, organise tree planting campaigns in schools and they are always aware that the future of the African nations is in their hands although males do not accept.
In the war ravaged areas like northern Uganda, women/mothers are the ones pursuing interests in pacifism, reconcile combatant who return home, and are at the fore front of lobbying the government to sign a peace agreement with the Lord’s resistance army (LRA). Associations like the concerned parents for women who lost their children during the war in northern Uganda is a source of inspiration to the entire Ugandan society on how violence can never be a solution in any conflict. When the Aboke girls were kidnapped by the LRA, women went out in search of their children, and when they returned home, they are among the courageous people who even dare to go to spend nights with their children on the streets since they are afraid of being kidnapped at home. Such behaviours are teaching the young a spirit of sacrifice for peace and for the common good. Such teachings are more valuable than the theoretical lessons that a child could receive at school. People learn more with examples than with words. Forinstance, after the genocide in Burundi, women like MargaretBaraghite collected hundreds of orphans to offer them accommodation and solace. Today, the orphans who grew up with Margaret are among the top leaders in the government and their approach to life is modelled on the compassion and selfless love experienced from Margaret. These are the leaders who are spearheading transformation and change in Burundi with the principles of non-violence and care for the common good.
Conclusion.
Although women inAfrica are mostly concerned with the production of food and clothing for their children, they are the first and irreplaceable educators who champion the offering of quality education to their children. Women have a special calling requiring education for every female on the continent. If women are well educated, they will be in a better position of delivering quality education in homes, schools, factories and offices. Almost in all African nations, females are among the most oppressed group and their literacy is lower compared to male. If women are to continue championing quality education, they need to be educated in the modern sciences which will enrich their natural endowments. Given the role women play in spearheading quality education in Africa, their education and emancipation from all forms of oppression like domestic violence is crucial. Any assistance to be extended to Africa need to consider the role of women in the African society. If women are given better chances in education and employment, the quality of education on the African continent will become better.
By. Evelyn Namakula Mayanja
Organisation: John Paul II Justice and Peace Centre-Uganda
Tel. +256 754 781 736
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