What is Western Education?

Western education may be defined in various ways. 

Metaphysical and Epistemic Description

One of these methods of definition is in  terms of the nature and sources of the metaphysical and epistemic roots of knowledge that structure an educational curriculum.

Structural Character of Cognitive Systems

By 'nature' in reference to a body of knowledge or a structure of ideas, I refer to the contents of a body of knowledge in terms of an organisation of a body of ideas into a correlative unit. This involves a consideration of the individual character of each of these ideas and the manner in which they are interrelated within the cognitive system. When you have such a cohesive unit, designed to be used as a template guiding the development of further knowledge, you have a cognitive system. Such cognitive systems are at the centre of educational systems. Various civilisations, at various points in their history, may be defined in terms of the formal and informal development and application of the cognitive systems privileged by that civilisation.

         Metaphysical and Epistemic Roots

By ‘metaphysical roots’, I refer to the conception of the nature of the cosmos  that underlies an educational  curriculum. With reference to metaphysics, I mean ideas about the nature of existence, in what sense a phenomenon can be said to exist  and the relationship between the various existents or forms of being that constitute the cosmos. Every educational curriculum can be described as structured in terms of a metaphysical framework. That metaphysical framework demonstrates a cognitive, social   and even geo-political history.

In  referring  to epistemic roots’, I refer to the ideas and practices about the nature of knowledge, how to assess the validity of knowledge claims and apply knowledge that are privileged in an educational curriculum. These epistemic roots  again demonstrate a  cognitive, social and  geo-political history.

               Metaphysical Roots

One could describe the current metaphysical  roots of Western education and perhaps even of Western society as founded in the  European Enlightenment, as demonstrated by a focus on the human  being as 'the measure of all things', as the central point of reference for understanding the cosmos. The conception of the human being that is privileged within this scheme is again one that achieved prominence in the Enlightenment, a human person defined primarily by their powers of reason.

              Epistemic Roots

That observation leads to the epistemic roots of Western education. The epistemic roots of Western education consist in a focus on the publicly assessable use of reason as the primary method for arriving at knowledge. By publicly assessable, I mean that the use of reason in such contexts should be such as to be capable of assessment by others using their own reason.

             Pervasiveness of and Selectivity in the Metaphysical and Epistemic Roots

             of Western Education

These metaphysical and epistemic conceptions are so fundamental  to contemporary Western scholarship and education that they are often invisible in terms of being questioned by those who practice them. They are challenged from time to time, however. Examples  of this are efforts to contextualise  the use of reason by post-modernists, by demonstrating the relationship between mind and body and  the role of the non-rational, along with other examples across the centuries.

The fact that these metaphysical and epistemic  conceptions are not automatic but represent choices made out of a set of possibilities is demonstrated by the fact the actual metaphysical and epistemic conceptions that inform and are demonstrated in the conclusions of the work of seminal figures in Western are not always identical with what I have just described as central to Western thought. The current conceptions that define Western education were not always dominant at various periods of Western history, as in the Middle Ages, for example. 

Descartes, Newton, Plato,  Kant, Johannes, Kepler, among others, cannot be described purely in terms of those metaphysical and epistemic conceptions, and yet, the educational system to which they have become central is based on those metaphysical and epistemic roots that represent only an attenuated form of their multi-faceted achievement. 

 Geography and Race

One could also describe an educational system that characterises a civilisation, in this case, Westerrn civilisation, in terms of the  geographical locations and races of the figures subsumed within and privileged by that educational system. With reference to Western education, to the best of my knowledge, its seminal figures in terms of ideas about the nature of the cosmos and the character of knowledge are fundamentally European. This tradition has been carried beyond Europe through migration and colonialism, to North America, Australia, Africa, and Asia. I don't know anything about education and scholarship in South America so I can't comment on that sub-continent. 

Developments since the closing years of the twentieth century have introduced North Americans, Asians and Africans into the canon of Western scholarship but I doubt if these new figures have made fundamental changes to the conceptions of the nature of the universe and the character of knowledge established by European thought. I would need to know more about these developments, though, to adequately assess the degree to which this is true, which I think it is.

Exceptions?

Seeming exceptions to this description of the foundations of Western thought and Western education as being in Europe, Europe as it existed before the emergence of  a multicultural concentration of thinkers and writers in European society could be described as reinforcing this argument by demonstrating strategies  of selection and assimilation through which Western scholarship and education has defined itself as a distinct brand.

           St. Augustine of Hippo

Such exceptions would seem to be, for example, St. Augustine of Hippo, the North African scholar and man of religion who occupies a  seminal position in various fields of Western thought where he has been a point of reference since he passed away in the 5th century. No comprehensive survey of  various branches of Christian theology, of aesthetics, metaphysics,  philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, autobiography and the philosophy of history in the Western tradition  is complete without a discussion of Augustine's consistent influence on European scholars and writers, an influence that is reflected in the manner in which these European thinkers  have shaped Western thought. 

Augustine's influence on European thought, the ground of Western thought, was possible because Augustine was thoroughly assimilated to Christian civilisation as it existed within and beyond Europe as propagated by the Roman Empire, of which Augustine was a member in his native Tagaste and Hippo, where he was bishop, a region described as in present day Tunisia. This assimilation involved his being steeped in classical European thought and the dominant  European religion of his time, Christianity, as represented by  classical mythology and philosophy, particularly Neo-Platonism, which he transmuted in contact with the Bible and other fundamentals of Christianity, an assimilation also demonstrated   in what  is described as his magnificent Latin style, Latin being of course the official language of the Roman Empire, an assimilation also evident in his  identification with the European metropolis as a point of reference, as shown by his pilgrimage to see his much admired Bishop Ambrose in Milan.

Augustine may therefore be described as thoroughly Europeanised. In an era before the description of colonised peoples, particularly Africans, as not worthy of learning from by the coloniser, Augustine's Europeanisation enabled his assimilation within European thought from as late as Anselm of Canterbury in the 11th century  to as recent as Martin Heidegger in the mid-twentieth century. 

                Arab Thought

Another seeming exception is the transmission of ancient Greek thought to Europe in the Middle Ages by the Arab scholars. Western scholars assimilated the Arabic contribution but these  Arab scholars did not subsequently play a significant role in Western philosophy. An exception to this blanking out could be Ibn Sīnā,, better known as Avicenna, whose pioneering work in medicine seems to have been subsumed into Western medicine.

          Mathematics

Other seeming exceptions are in mathematics, where insights from various civilisations have been interpreted   by Western science and their sources acknowledged. That acknowledgement, however,  seems to still privilege Western and particularly European scholars  as the foundation of what is known as mathematics in the modern sense. I don't know enough about mathematics to know if this view can be challenged. . There are non-Western mathematicians  in the more recent mathematical canon, like Ramanujan, but they seem few to me.

I am not  informed enough on the sciences to give a thumbnail survey on them in relation to those issues but I suspect that the same point might hold there.

Selectivity in the Development of Western Education

Western valorisng of Western civilisation  through the character of its educational system has been central to the creation of  a body of knowledge and of strategies for disseminating  knowledge that can be correctly  described as Western education.

This process of valorising one's own civilisation by excluding  ideas and achievements from other civilisations  in the process of building one's own educational system emerged for a number of reasons.

These reasons could be described as including  lack of access to information about other civilisations,  difficulties of understanding those civilisations and relating them to the social and individual experiences of Europeans, whose history is at the centre of Western education, as well as efforts to valorise Western civilisation at the expense of other civilisations, along with what seems to be a process of selection from the achievements of seminal figures of Western thought, who could be described as encapsulating a multi-faceted scope of achievement that their descendants  were not able to integrate in its  entirety  but could assimilate only piecemeal into Western education as it developed over the centuries.

The selections eventually arrived at  from the  works of these  seminal figures and emphasised in the educational system  can be described as arrived at through various processes, one being through the outcome of battles for legitimacy between  various cognitive paradigms, paradigms defined in terms of particular metaphysical and epistemic perspectives and their related cognitive histories.

Emerging Changes

Changes might be emerging to these paradigms, as represented, for example, by the presence of Asian thought in various disciplines, as in philosophy of mind and neuroscience.

Examples of these are Self, No Self? : Perspectives from Analytical, Phenomenological  and Indian Traditions, published by Oxford UP( 2010) , The Measure of Things: by David Cooper, which draws on Buddhist and European secular philosophers,  again published by Oxford UP (2002) and  Ornella Corazza's essays and her book Near-Death Experiences: Exploring the Mind-Body Connection published by Routledge (2008)  which draw significantly   on Japanese philosophy. Corazza describes her research as to developing " new strategies to enhance our lifestyle by bridging science and Oriental traditions."

For these initiatives to be described as significantly   affecting Western thought would require not only discussion of them in isolation from European roots of the Western tradition, which might have been the position before the last 50 years or more, to the recent correlative discussion represented  by the two Oxford UP books, to rethinking  the foundational ideas of inherent in this educational system, as Corazza seems to be doing, all the way to creating curricula that reflect such re-evaluations  in terms of  how people are thought to search for and validate knowledge.

An educational system based on  different metaphysical and epistemic conceptions, drawing from a different style of privileging cognitive history, could approach the entire body of global knowledge differently. 

        The Potential of India

Such systems might emerge in India, for example, which is engaged in vigorous publishing of all kinds of books, and republishes under licence books on India published  in the West and sells and exports these books at cheaper  prices  than the Western originals – the West in this instance being  European and North American, particularly US publishing companies.

 Perhaps the Indians will develop a system that correlates their own indigenous  educational systems with the Western system they got through colonisation  by England.

The perspectives expressed in this essay might be simplistic in some ways, but they could be useful for characterising the relevant issues.

17 January 2012

A WORD OF CAUTION TO NIGERIAN ETHNIC SEPARATISTS : THE REAL CHALLENGE FOR NIGERIAN DEVELOPMENT IS A SUCCESSFUL POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SYSTEM, NOT ETHNIC SEPARATION

The ongoing  economic and security crises in Nigeria have inspired aspirations towards the break up of Nigeria into smaller countries. The central argument seems to be that such smaller countries will be easier to manage. A major plank of this hope in  such smaller countries being more successful is the idea that since they would be ethnically homogeneous, the problems emerging from the artificial construction of various ethnicities into the country now known as Nigeria would be significantly reduced or nullified.

As far as I can see, such thoughts are examples of wishful thinking. Will the African in an Oduduwa  Republic, Biafra  or Arewa Republic, for example, be different in personality from the same African in the government of Nigeria? To what degree  has the Nigerian political elite demonstrated an ability to rise above personal interests and focus on either national interests or the genuine developmental needs  of their ethnic constituencies?

And yet, these same politicians  regularly use ethnicity as one of their strongest tools to get into office, appealing to the ethnic sentiments of their eventual victims. 

Ladies and gentlemen,  the central problem is not the amalgamation of Nigeria out of many ethnicities, the problem is the political immaturity of many Africans and African political elites  who see politics as an opportunity to emulate the former colonial  masters and steal from the conquered  populace. 

While the colonial masters stole mostly for their nations, England, France, Belgium or Portugal, the African politicians  and their accomplices among the economic elite steal for themselves, their families and cronies. 

Nigerians right now are united against this culture of corruption and of theft from the people, united against  both direct theft through illegal actions, and indirect, institutionalised theft, theft built into the legal framework of the national system.  

A central example of such indirect, institutionalised theft is the fantastic salaries and allowances of political office holders, salaries and allowances   that  exceed even that of the US President, the President of a country with the second largest, if not the  world's largest economy, compared to a country poor in development and productive capacity  like Nigeria,  a country  dependent  on a raw substance mined from the ground which it does not even significantly process by itself, oil, as different from any productive capacity of its citizens. 

That is the problem.

The problem is the fact that Nigerian politicians of all ethnicities, Igbo, Hausa/ Fulani, Yoruba, ijaw, Edo, Ibibio, Niger Delta etc, are operating a system that in its very nature is a gargantuan effort at theft from Nigerians , a system calculated to NEVER lead to any substantial  development because the material resources for such development are constantly  being swallowed  by greedy politicians and these greedy people have little or no motivation to make the country grow, because the more developed the country is, the less concentration of resources  there will be at the centre of political power, the more enlightened people will  become, leading them to  demand their rights, the less the political figures will  be elevated above the current poverty of the average Nigerian.

So what must go is the corrupt system!

The issue here is not the breaking up of Nigeria into smaller countries that will be manned by people with the same mind set that is described as  at times even infecting the younger generation of teenagers. 

Some of those hoping for an Oduduwa Reuplic are quietly biding their time and hoping for their new country to emerge. Some of those hoping for a new Biafra are particularly vociferous in their cries for Nigeria  to break up and they struggle to instigate a break up.

It is this group that has inspired this response   beceause they don't seem to understand the nature of the wind of change and are actually moving against the  national development consensus  and the tide of contemporary Nigerian history. 

They consistently  project the security situation with Boko Haram terrorists as  an  Igbo problem, a claim  that is an example of straining to paint something with only a little shade of black into complete  black, in defiance of all obvious evidence.

The book Haram terrorists have attacked  all Nigerians and their attacks on Igbos have been an accidental outcome of  attacks on Nigerians. The only times known to me when they might have targeted  specific Igbo  territory was the two attacks in a geographical location described as North Eastern Nigeria. The  majority of their attacks  have been on  Nigerians in general, including Northerners and Muslims, and recently, focusing on  Southerners and Christians.

The larger number of Igbos in the bombing of the Catholic church in Madalla was not due go its being an 'Igbo church' as some  have claimed. There is no 'Igbo church'. The Catholic Church' is not an 'Igbo church'. The term 'Catholic' means 'all embracing'. The large presence of Igbos in the Catholic church does not make it an 'Igbo church'.

The larger number of Igbos affected in the Catholic church bombing was due to the  fact that Igbos constitute a good number of attendees at Catholic churches, perhaps everywhere in Nigeria, not because Igbos specifically were being targeted.

These attacks have come under heavy and unequivocal condemnation by Northern and Muslim leaders. Muslims, Northerners, Christians and Southerners are working together to combat the divisive goals of Boko Haram. This united work at unity by people of various ethnicities and religions has been widely reported in the news. 

it is vital that those who see themselves as pursuing  an Igbo cause in the midst of the current national crises do not alienate others. 

It was such alienation of the sympathy of others that was central to  the failure of Biafra in in 1967 to 1970.

This country has moved beyond the  pre-civil war years of the mid-1960s  and the civil war years of 1967 to 1970. 

It is vital to recognise these new developments so that all ethnicities and the country can move forward as one. 

It is in unity that ethnic politics and corruption  can be defeated.

BOKO HARAM : PART 2 : THE RELIGIOUS IMPERATIVE

One of the best pieces of news to have emerged in the closing days of 2011 and the early days of 2012  is the denunciation by religious and political leaders of Northern Nigeria of the terrorism associated with the violent Islamic sect Boko Haram and of any terrorism associated with Islam in the wake of the particularly horrific Christmas day bombings in Madalla, Jos and Gadaka.

The fact that these leaders have at last summoned the courage to emerge with this solidly united denunciation means that the Boko Haram scourge is at last coming to a close. The closing of this chapter of Nigeria’s ongoing battle with violent Islam emerges at this point beceause it now becomes clear to all that  Boko Haram is a menace to society. It might have enjoyed some sympathy among those who do not identify with what they might  understand as the infidel social system that runs Nigeria, a system expressed in politics, education, commerce and all aspects of national life, preferring instead to live within a system that is  in harmony with Islam as dictated by Sharia, the Islamic system of government that embraces all aspects of life, but, which, even in those states in Nigeria that run Sharia legal systems, is manifest only in legal issues and not in the system of government.

The reports about the stated goals of Boko  Haram, sketchy as they are, suggest a determination for a sweeping implementation of Sharia within the Sharia states of Northern Nigeria and within Nigeria as a  whole. The idea of making Nigeria an Islamic state and pushing for more rigorous Sharia within the Sharia states suggest to me that what Boko Haram is being described as aspiring to is total Islamic government at all levels of social life.

An Attempt to See With the Eyes of Boko Haram

             Sharia and the Divine Imperative of Revealed Religion

                      The Transcendental Character Ascribed to  Revealed  Knowledge

This ambition can be understood in terms of what can describe as the divine imperative of Islam and, of many, if not most religions. Religion is often based on what is understood by its devotees as revelation, an opening of the human mind to a form of knowledge not available by any other source and not accessible purely through human initiative. This is described as a radically transcendental form of knowledge. Gaining access to this knowledge enables  participation in a state of being that is as above  human  knowledge as the heavens are above the earth, to quote the Biblical book of Isaiah,  or as removed from human awareness as the light of a lamp hidden in the deepest rock far from human consciousness, but illuminating the cosmos, to adapt a metaphor from Sura al Nur of the Koran.

The transcendental character of this knowledge is demonstrated in the understanding that it is  revealed  by divine agency, by the sole initiative  of the creator and sustainer of the universe, and not reached by human  effort.

The human being  may prepare themselves  in ways that will dispose divine grace to pour into the aspirant this fantastic knowledge utterly beyond unaided human abilities, as Muhammed is described  as spending a good part of his time  before his revelation within a cave in regular prayer and meditation before the revelation of the Koran through the angel Gabriel and the now iconic command “Read!” from the divine messenger  presented before an awed and terrified  man.   

This was a demand to do what the man  could not ordinarily do,  being illiterate,  eventually unlocking from within that man  the ability to read and write, leading to the composition of one of the most influential books in history, a book at the centre of a movement  that transformed Arabic civilisation at all levels and which swept all over  the world, at one time   leading to the creation  of one the world’s most accomplished civilisations, the positive fruits of which have been assimilated and carried on by other civilisations that rose after Islamic civilisation had emerged.

In the presence of knowledge revealed by the creator of the cosmos, who is the human  being, that creature who knows not where he or she comes from, who has no knowledge of when they will leave this  earth, of where they will go on leaving this earth,  to claim  any superior knowledge?

“The life of this world, begetting and being begotten, is but a sport and a play! If they did but know!” declares the Koran.

                       Divine Revelation and the Question of Social Justice in Ultra-      

                       Conservative   Islamic Thought

What more effective manner to ensure justice, so difficult to arrive at, than to follow divine commands? How may all those evils that plague human society be eradicated if not through the guidance of the One Beyond Being who created  human  beings and all forms of being?

What more effective manner to learn from this ultimate authority than through the words received from  that divine authority through a privileged text, a revelation unique in history, superseding all other revelations, and interpreted by he, the Seal of the Prophets, the culmination of the long line of prophets from Abraham to Muhammed, of the line of those who revealed the One God, supreme above all, who revealed  himself to Abraham but the  unsurpassed  light of whose revelation has been dimmed by those who mixed that glory with their own imaginings, such as idea of the Ultimate One, without father or mother, as having a child, leading to a religion based on that strange  interpretation  of an Existent that is beyond all material forms of existence, talk less ideas of sexuality, no matter how modified to suit their imaginations?

As for all other religions, they are at best grievous mistakes, at worst abominations.

Islamic monotheism is so radical that no images of the divine are allowed, and pure abstraction is emphasised in religious art,  leading to the creation of one of the world’s greatest forms of abstract art, art embodying sublime ideas about ultimate reality as well as related to mathematical insights derived from the presence of this art in Islamic architecture. [1]

Within the context of the divine imperative of revealed religion, of the idea that the human being is  best governed by a divinely revealed system of government, the claims about the demands of Boko Haram can be understood as a determination to align humanity  with its creator.

                  Boko Haram and the Use of Terrorism in Pursuing a Divine

                   Imperative

In the light of the sheer stubbornness of those humans  who will not agree to walk along the divinely ordained path, what is the value of the lives of such people? Are their lives not already forfeit on account of their disobedience of divine commandments? The creator holds all life in his hands and life is valuable only in relation to the creator. The lives of those who do not recognize that creator are therefore of little value.

Even the life of I, a servant of the Most High One, is of little value in relation to His transcendental majesty. That life needs to be sacrificed to the ultimate goal of ensuring the fulfillment of the divine will on earth, even if that sacrifice is the immolation of this transitory  body, the covering of my soul, within the flames with which I incinerate the infidels.

To be continued in

Part 3: The Political Dimension of Boko Haram

Part 4: The Educational Imperative and the Challenge of Boko Haram

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[1] As demonstrated, for example, by Peter Lu’s famous recent discoveries in Islamic geometry : http://peterlu.org/

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[1] As demonstrated, for example, by Peter Lu’s famous recent discoveries in Islamic geometry. http://peterlu.org/

BOKO HARAM : PART 1: THE BEGINNING OF THE END FOR BOKO HARAM

The darkest part of the  night comes just before the dawn, is a saying meant to illustrate the idea that the point when  trials are most dire means that they are about to come to an end, perhaps  because the person being tried has been stretched to their limit and has survived.

The seeming current ascendancy of the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram, in which, seemingly  flush with victory on their  successful bombing of three churches on Christmas day, December 25, 2011, they are now reported as on 2nd January, 2012, giving a three day  ultimatum for all Christians and Southerners to leave Northern Nigeria,  and Muslims and Northerners to leave Southern Nigeria for the North, actually signals that the group is well on the way to the total exposure of its   ultimate ineffectuality. 

This is actually the beginning of the end for Boko Haram.

At this point in this essay, I will test myself by making the following predictions:

1. The Christians  and Southerners in Northern Nigeria are going nowhere. Some people  might travel to the South  but there will be no exodus of Christians  from the North to the South. The Boko Haram threat will prove ineffectual to create that kind of chaos and fear.

2. The Muslims and Northerners in Southern Nigeria are going nowhere.  

The Boko Haram threat derives whatever effectiveness it demonstrate from the fear of those it tries to intimidate. Once that fear is not aroused, more than half of their power is gone.

3. The Boko Haram threat will be increasingly demonstrated  as an ultimately marginal security disturbance as far as the security and integrity of Nigeria is concerned.  They will increasingly be revealed to be toothless bulldogs   who only bark without being able to active any strategic goals, any fundamental changes to Nigerian socio-political life.  Yes, they may bomb and kill people,  but being able to bomb and murder  is not identical with achieving  any significant social goals through sheer terror. They will not achieve any of the goals they have been described as aspiring to:

a. Release of their members  from prison.

b. Stricter Sharia in the Sharia states

c. The division of Nigeria into Christian, Southern and Northern, Islamic enclaves.

d. Of course, the goal of Islamicising Nigeria credited to Boko Haram is sheer nonsense, anyway. 

Why will none of these goals be achieved?  

None of these gaol will be achieved  because Boko Haram does not have the grassroots  support or support among the political and  reglious elite of Northern Nigeria to achieve any of these goals. 

Boko Haram will also fail to achieve any of these gaols because they have succeeded in alienating much of whatever sympathy they might have had from some Muslims and Northerners by their earlier bombing of fellow Muslims and Northerners and the Christmas day bombing of the churches.

This latest initiative, calling for separation of the country into Chritian and Muslim blocs is clear case of overkill, that looks most ridiculous  when seen in relation to the complexity of Nigeria. 

One of the best things that happened in 2011 and in 2012 was the open denunciation  of Boko Haram by the Islamic religious leaders in Northern Nigeria. In 2012 came the denunciation of the idea  by Northern Islamic leaders of a Muslim vs Christian war in Nigeria.

So, who does Boko Haram represent? What is the scope of their firepower? Are they able to bomb Nigeria or Northern Nigeria into submission?

They can't.

If they have backers among any Nigerians these failures will become increasingly  embarrassing  to these backers and lead to an appreciation of the self destructive character of the strategy of Boko Haram.

Perhaps Boko Haram  thinks that widespread disaffection with the removal of fuel subsidy will be catalysed by their essentially  inept action into creating widespread  loss of confidence in the government and perhaps precipitating  a coup or some other upheaval, but all that is wishful thinking at best.

On fuel subsidy, Nigerians have been there before, more than once. This so called subsidy is constantly being removed with little to show for the positive value of its removal in terms of the quality of life of the average Nigerian.

On coups, Nigerians have been there before. Right from the January 1966 coup that led the country into a civil war, to the dreadful Abacha years, Nigerians have had it beaten into their heads through repeated, painful disappointments,  that coups are not saviours.

I expect the army knows very well that the years of military  intervention  being welcomed has come to an end. The military are no better than the politicians and everyone knows that.