Obafemi on Nigeria’s Ever-Changing University Education – Part 2

Obafemi on Nigeria’s Ever-Changing University Education – Part 2


Education, stories, and storytellers
As I alluded to in the quotation above, the fields of the humanities, whether they be songs, music, literature, philosophy, history, media, or religion, provide the stories that give meaning to life, and even the Bible. It also gives meaning to discoveries in science and technology, such as those seen in Research born out of university education.

Omonision and animal friends
The fable of Omonision from my Okun farm, part of which is located in Oworo, Lokoja, where this new Federal University is located, is instructive. Omonision nourishes both the body and mind of each animal friend. Very simply, the story is as follows.

The king of a certain kingdom took two wives. Each gave birth to a child early in the morning. The wife of a senior man who had trouble sleeping trampled her child to death. She rushed her lifeless child to the riverside and dumped it there.

However, she was captured by a village head hunter. She made a deal to keep him quiet by sending her ransom every month. She hurried back to her home with her stone in hand, where she bathed in the ram’s blood and replaced it with the innocent living child of her junior wife. The verdict was passed in favor of the evil senior, and the junior was banished from the village and thrown into the evil forest at the mercy of wild animals.

Her natural kindness was proven. She cooked a delicious yam dish that attracted the nostrils of her hungry animals, drawn to her songs and dances. They feasted and became her friends. They visited for her feasts and gave her supplies and protection. The truth soon became clear. Feeling guilty and failing to pay, Hunter recanted.

The Wicked Woman was banned along with the scheming Hunter. The search team brought the victim, Omonijon, back to his home. The animals missed their friends’ food, entertainment, and companionship. They were anxious to have her back soon. they sang sadly. And everyone can participate in the song through the refrain.
Lead: Omonijon mi (Dear Omonijon)
Reference: “Please come home early.”
Lead: Amyoung Koni Jijae ((You taught us) to eat pounded yam)
Reference: Uomosewarehoinbo
Lead: A merin koni kiko (Who taught (us) to sing)
Reference: wo mosere wo hoinbo
Lead: Mujyo Small Circumstances
Reference: Uomo Swale Hoing Bo…

However, Omonision disappeared, leaving behind aspiration, emotion, education, and civilization among the wild animals. A university education is nothing more or less than that. Wo mo se wa hoin bo..

Education in a changing era…
However, education is changing rapidly. It’s no longer the way we knew it. This parallels changes in human patterns and characteristics due to advances in technology. This technology has permeated virtually every field, with education taking its share. We have witnessed a transition from traditional education systems (from pre-formalized to pre-digital) to modern, technology-centered teaching styles.

At that time, chalk and slate were normally used, but we renewed them and painted them black with Cam Wood (Abnormal-kun). It has since been deprecated and replaced with presentation slides.

Smartboards have also become popular. What lies ahead will be an increase in the means of learning. It’s not always in the classroom as we once knew it, but in the palm of our hands, through our smartphones, we are exposed to an avalanche of information and learning resources hourly.

digital age
IPADs, computers, and other electronic devices in the world of Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, and augmented reality (AR) bring us another variation of learning and education. New variations deviate from structured and institutionally progressive ones, but the processes of the school system, although random, are equally exposed and lead to processes that cannot be ignored. In some cases, these variations allow for structured courses, while in others they are individualized.

The pre-civilizational challenge is how to avoid obfuscating learning by circumventing the learning process. Through the downsides of machine learning, the aforementioned threats to learning and the concomitant effects of creating intentional falsehoods (misinformation), sharing them inadvertently (disinformation), and spreading dangerous lies and propaganda (misinformation). There is no other option but to consider the risks. A good example of this is what the World Health Organization (WHO) once deemed an infodemic, given the many conspiracy theories that followed the coronavirus pandemic.

Redoubling remedies for endangered learning cultures is essential to preserving natural patterns of knowledge generation, sharing, and transfer, not only for the benefit of learners but also of society and the future. In addition to the application of new countermeasures, it will be necessary to improve governance, improve regulatory implementation, increase literacy rates and strengthen social order through the creation of national consciousness and the essence of performance.

What is important in such situations is how individuals acculturate to new information and how their level of consciousness is raised. These methods are changing and ask us to be careful, lest efforts to integrate learning and practice fail due to increasing confusion of meaning as a result of the proliferation of unstructured learning methods. . The intention here is not to undermine new sources of learning, but to highlight the possible differences between form and substance, given the dangers of social and new media and the death of reading culture among new youth. It’s about being aware. This generation is glued to the internet, smartphones, Androids, and iPhones, permanently obscuring print. So we’re talking about the death of reading culture, print culture.

This is even more important for societies in transition. Anxiety can arise during the transition period. It may be when our gaze is directed both forward and backward at the same time, just as the Greek idol Janus gazes in both directions at the same time. This matrix requires constant self-reflection to move your resolve forward rather than backwards. Yet moving forward requires vigilance, reassessment, and continued awareness of where we are, ahead of where we need to be. Again, past time, present time, and future time.

Education in a cultural context
That said, the process of internalizing information and adjusting outlooks is important for defining the context of the university education system. To understand an education system that does not exist in isolation, it is even more important to understand how this affects a society in flux. That is why the educational system must be creative and rooted in the culture of the people as a starting point for learning. As we “modernize” we must remember the place of informal cultural systems and the essence of indigenous technologies.

It needs to capture the essential essence of people on an ongoing basis, not just once. This is to narrow the gap between ideas and reality, between imagination and truth, between perception and knowledge. This is even more true in an evolving world where change is becoming permanent. It cannot be overstated that permanent changes are constantly being imposed on our ability to respond.

This challenge stems from the increasing diversity of innovations, their divergent sources, and the growing benefits involved. The process can be overwhelming at times given resource limitations, i.e. the pace and space of change. This situation emphasizes the importance of localization. The apes of Omonijoon’s forest have learned human ways, relational lifestyles, and entertainment, but they remain in their natural habitat and miss Omonijou, maintaining the new upbringing given to them by Omonijou. I did. Wo mo se wo hoin bo…

Localizing knowledge in a society in transition means understanding the immediate educational needs of the environment and developing a curriculum that closely matches the progress of that environment. This means allowing learning to proceed from the local context first, before it is expanded to cover the larger world of beneficiaries. There, you will soon encounter a proliferation of the aforementioned learning resources, in real or fake form. . What we’re talking about here is the need to be careful when swallowing hook, line, and sinker, a so-called global best practice. This means that today, in our new education system, our context, culture, art, knowledge, behavior and culture are completely denied. Practice.

Expansion of understanding of processes and procedures may come about through educational trips and tours, or different types of learning in other climates, but between the local environment in the first place and the global scope in the second. The interconnectedness between is bound to produce a well-honed individual. The individual’s worldview would have begun to witness changes from the local environment, where well-bred residents ponder the need to preserve shared memories and patterns. This should lead to the question of what we need as a people.
to be continued
You can contact Afe Yado at 08055213059.

Source: guardian.ng

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