Education is always a hot topic, politicians manipulate the word promising great things and in England at least for many generations it was sen, rightly or wrongly as the great social divider or indicator, depending on ones perspective. Living in Nigeria has open my mind to a prejudice that I was not aware that I had, these are often perhaps the most dangerous prejudices. It is a prejudice based around what is education. Have grown up in Anglo Saxon Europe I have by default an understanding of "education that has its roots embeded deep in the "Renaissance", I the idea that Education is firstly a noble pursuit a persuite in itself. It is however the idea that education is "rounded" multifaceted, the knowledge of many things, The ideal "Renaissance man" was a scholar, a soldier, a courtier, a lover, a man who could handle an Epee, write a poem, knew the difference betwen a Savingnon and a Merlot, could quote Scripture and science with equal aplomb and in his spare time read. From Hamlet to Hunter Quatermain English literature is filled with such characters the highly unlikely Superintendent Dawglish who populates the pages of the highly readable PD James novels is a modern example. These were standards that had had guided my understanding of education. I went to University with the belief tha vocational degrees with the exception of medicine and possibly law) were for those with out intelligence, there was a vulgarness about studying n the pursuit of mammon. The pursuit of education was almost like the quest for Nirvana, abstract and ascetic. When I first came to Africa some twenty years ago fres from Post graduate days of surfing skateboarding playing water polo and discussing Jacques Derrida at thre o'clock in the morning, ( Sport / study and I was also a pretty competent fencer how Renaissance?) I founs the lack of indigenous knowledge of Leonardo Davinci some what horrifying. OK I was in North Afrtica and I soon learnt that there was an Islamic breadth of culture that had been surgically removed from my education by my Crusader forefathers, Columbus replaces Ibn Battatau, and Cordoba replaces Ancient Greece as the model of the Birth of civilisation, and with time I adapted, I learnt about their Calligraphy and that Arabic grammar was as much anart as Latin, ( and considerably more useful).
Then I came to Central Africa: Money Money Money, education was a means to Money, whatystudy something that will not make you Money, study medicine and get rich, what of the Hippocratic Oath? What of service to science and knowledge. No none of it, business studies, IT studies, economics, how much will I get paid? Study politics and get rich, double your pay with a degree.
At first I thought this was a consequence of poverty, it is not. I think it is a consequence of climate. Northern European Society evolved through violence and blood shed, our land provides food for three months a year, so we were obliged to evolve agriculture, if our crops failed we resorted to violence against those whose crops had not. Then we had to fill the long dark wither, with tales of summer and successful raids, so we developed food storage agriculture food preservation and art. Central Africa is lush and fertile rains for 6 months a year the temperature variation is but a few degrees, the soil is so rich that if you discard an apple core on the ground and come back a few days later it is trying to grow. the days are of unifoem leght through out the year the seas teamed with fish. Writing epic poems about men braving the freezing seas in longboats to rape and pillage foreign lands and bring back salted meat, has no relevance, when the food ran out walk a few miles and there would be something to eat. Wall were built for privacy not protection from siege engines. These days it is true our northern European values have been foisted upon Africa, bu one is forced to wonder, had our fur clad ancestors been blown off course and landed up on the Gold Coast, would they have struggled back to Scandinavia and a six month winter and woven their adventures to sagas, or more likely they would have strung up a hammock between two palm trees and waited for the next load of fruit to ripen and drop to the ground. They would never have heard of the Saab or the Gatling gun, but they might have thought of themselves as rather clever.
