Part one
It has been said time and again that the gateway for individual success in life is education and the same is true for countries. No country can afford to downplay or neglect its educational system and hope to go ahead with success in the life of its citizens.
Each country may have its own educational system with its own school structure and its curriculum that would reflect the needs of the society and try to address them. This means that it should take into account the standard of the people’s lives and in what way the educated class could contribute to the development and progress of the country.
It is natural that not all countries have the same standard of life and the same standard of progress or growth, the same cultural background and history. Similarly, it is natural that the needs and priorities of each country and society vary from the needs and priorities of the others. The level of the society’s life, the level of consciousness and the level of maturity of the people must also be taken into account before drafting and applying in schools a certain educational curriculum. It is hence natural that the educational curriculum of countries differs from one to the other.
Ethiopia does not have the same needs and priorities as does some other developed country such as Canada or Norway. For that matter, it does not have the same needs and priorities with countries such as India or even in Africa countries such as Nigeria or South Africa. The level of life of these societies in terms of their development needs and the kind of composition of the populations also have their own input in determining what sort of education should be imparted to their citizens.
The introduction of modern education in Ethiopia is not very far away in time. Previously Ethiopia had its own traditional schools which are attached to its religious institutions of the country. Knowledge was transferred from one generation to the other mainly orally with the elderly teaching their children verbally. The clergy had a special role in this process. The same is true with the Islamic schools where basically the Koran is taught.
There was no urgent need for sophisticated knowledge and Ethiopians managed to live using the traditional knowledge that has come down through generations of transfer. When modern education began, the first reaction of the people was one of suspicion because whatever is new and is imported from abroad via alien people was eyed as a threat to the sovereignty and independence of the nation because people believed that new ideas would be aiming to make them change their beliefs, erode their values and change their identity.
At the beginning those who attended modern schools were considered as sort of betrayers of their beliefs and creeds. They were considered to have surrendered to alien values and beliefs. There was a need for some courage to face these criticisms. The then educational administrators had to convince the families to send their children to school with even gifts. Some early schools were even boarding ones with the students staying in the premises of the schools for extended periods of time without going back to their families in between. Covering all the expenses of the students, giving them the necessary uniforms to wear and taking good care of their health were all in the package and that was used as incentive to send kids to school.
Only after repeated attempts and recommendations by members of the aristocracy and the monarchy were the common people made to believe that modern education was not at all a threat to their religion but rather a gateway to civility and advancement. They were shown that those who studied for instance medicine and became doctors were more efficient in taking care of their families and at the same time be of use to society in their capacity.
Those who studied agriculture knew how to use new and advanced methods of farming and better selection of what to sow where and eventually better results in terms of harvests etc. The benefits of modern education were there to see for everybody and those citizens who had been abroad to study and returned to report to their country were shown as evident witnesses of the benefits of modern education.
Within the past decades Ethiopia has hence been using the educational curriculum of foreign countries such as the United Kingdom or the US as they were the first countries who were actively involved in the development of the country’s educational system and English was adopted as the official language of the country although earlier it was French with this honor. The first teachers came from these countries and the first educational textbooks were introduced to Ethiopia from these same countries.
Modern schooling in classes was a new phenomenon here when it all started. There was no awareness on the need for a good education and only through time when the modern government apparatus was founded and people who had been to school began to be hired by these bodies for a salary did people begin to believe in the advantages of getting some form of education from these schools and were convinced to send their children there.
After the first trainees of Ethiopia managed to graduate and were given some posts in administration of local government or as teachers in the school system and people began to see the rise in number of Ethiopian teachers, the spread of modern education began to take momentum and the talk as well got disseminated.
Indeed, every society has its own expectation from modern education. Every society needs practical experience at the expense of theory based knowledge to alleviate its challenges and expects modern education to be the remedy for all ills. As the nation aspires to achieve economic and political change the role of modern education has been serving as a backbone to support all sectors. Using its educational policy and strategies the government is striving to ensure quality education. The plan to give university exit examination tests and other measures are good instances of ensuring quality education and producing problem solving citizens.
BY FITSUM GETACHEW
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SATURDAY 5 AUGUST 2023
