Africa is the mother of civilization. It is the center and origin of modern technology, but today Africa has lagged behind and far behind in development.
Poverty is a major problem in African development, because money has a very important role to play. Education is an integral process through which the mental and physical faculties of an individual are developed, making him aware of the circumstances in which he lives and, from the conscience, allows him to take full advantage of those circumstances. However education is acquired, it is neither free nor cheap – it is about money.
Poverty has created such a large gap that people prefer illiteracy and are managing to cage the African child to be incapable of many things. Poverty has caused many people today to listen to their children, especially boys, in trades instead of sending them to school. Some parents also prefer to send their sons to agriculture and their girls to marriage because they consider this to be more beneficial than the education they can acquire.
An educated person is expected to acquire skills such as literacy and numeracy and skills to pursue various vocations using their hands. It is also expected to be useful to himself and to his society and to contribute particularly positively to the growth of that society.
With the current trend of the formal school system, the number of African children not attending school is alarming. The wealthy few among us have taken over the system as their status symbol, and when challenged by simple help, private schools become the most preferred, subjecting public schools to perpetual decline.
Most of the African child population is between the ages of 0 and 22. In fact, the child has to move from preschool age to the various levels of the formal educational system until completing the first level of tertiary education. By the time he completes his first level of tertiary education, the person has become an adult and therefore it will no longer be appropriate to refer to him as a child.
In Nigeria, for example, the government has taken different steps to achieve balance and empower children through mass literacy, but the effort has not borne fruit. However, the imbalance in the development of the country’s education system between the northern and southern parts contributes to considerable debate in the Nigerian education system. While one part of the geographic constituents believe that education is necessary and could be very useful to train their children, the other part depends solely and strongly on the government for the education of their children, which aggravates the possibilities of educating the children. children as expected.
Although funding is a crucial factor in providing the necessary facilities in our quest to educate our abundant children, it is not the only factor, not even the most basic. Below are some other factors that militate against African early childhood education.
1. Facilities: Insufficient learning facilities pose a great threat to early childhood education. Lack of classrooms, laboratories, workshops, libraries, instructional materials, and other buildings at all levels can hamper early childhood education. Furthermore, the lack of maintenance of existing facilities also contributes to the problem of early childhood education in Africa.
2. Workers – Shortage of teachers and other school workers, more specially trained, who can handle important jobs when the need arises. Basic subjects such as Physical Sciences, Languages, Technical and Vocational, need qualified teachers who can handle them, but in most schools they are lacking. In some places where there are teachers, their employers abandon them to work in hostile environments, making their work so difficult that they are forced to leave teaching for greener pastures in public and private services, because for them, the educational merchandise is it does not provide them with satisfactory rewards, and no one wants to be a teacher today. Educating the African child becomes a waste of time and resources when schools lack qualified teachers and workers.
3. Discipline – With serious disciplinary problems in all facets of our educational system, achieving a quality education for the African child is a mirage. Absenteeism, strikes, riot crimes, bad exam practices and even murders affect the education of children in Africa. In most cases, teachers lack the necessary motivation and, as such, deny their employers their full commitment to duty, showing low morale in their jobs. In fact, all stakeholders are guilty of disciplinary problems: teachers, students, educational planners, and administrators.
4. Administration. Constant changes in policy formulation and implementation have been occasionally cited as one of the problems in education today. The continuity and stability of the African child in education is seriously affected.
5. Economy – The current economic situation places a heavy financial burden on many parents in the course of raising their children.
6. Parental and community responsibilities – Parents and other members of the community have shirked their responsibilities towards the education of their wards. With this kind of ugly development, educating the African child will continue to be a burden and an impossible task.
However, there is hope in sight if the government will come to the rescue. However, our attitudes towards education must change, so that we all see it in its basic objective of preparing the mind for responsible citizenship. With this, educating the African child will not only be possible, but will be a great success.
