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by Alagie Saidy Barrow
Don’t get me too wrong; I’m grateful for the efforts of my teachers and to some degree, those that put up an education system that was supposed to educate me. But as I get older and reflect back on my time in high school, and even primary school, I realize more and more, how undereducated I am.
I say undereducated because almost everything I was being taught was based on what the Colonialists taught thousands of Africans before me! Told there were nine planets in geography, I memorized all nine and could name them on exams! Told of the different types of soil the colonialists knew of, I never questioned if there were anymore and so I went with what I was told. Told democracy originated from the West, I bought into it hook, line and sinker! Told “term limits” is an ideal of the West, I believed it because no one taught me about Kaabu. Told ancient Egypt was built by Arabs, I was not allowed to dispute this because it was “theory”. My history book was FK Buah and no one taught me how the name Bundung came about or who Edward Francis Small was! My knowledge of Gambia was deficient and so my patriotism was more parochial than wholesome. I admired Shakespeare and didn’t think much about the griot with the kora or halam next door or the poetic flow of my mother or nightly fables we shared by firelight in Bundung.
I look around me and I hear my fellow Africans debating on one ism or another based on Colonial notions of what that ism is about. Even the system we want to adopt that they call “Socialist Democracy” or whatever, is identified with systems in the Global North! We look towards ill-fitting systems of governance and slowly discard our own because the colonialists told us their system is a better way. They rebuilt our political and educational foundations and corrupted our social systems to be more Western. Instead of adapting to our own, we simply copy and paste these foundations and expect to rise. We fail to realize that our systems of yore were just as democratic with all their attendant imperfections. You wonder what Africans have ever contributed to human development besides priding ourselves as the original human beings! Our education is geared towards workers and not inventors. You wonder why everyone wants a job in the government to “serve” the people. The colonialists needed servers to the colonial government and so they encouraged service.
The more technical terms and big words one is able to throw, the smarter one is regarded! I am not sure how to take compliments of “your English is so good” because I wish my Fula, Mandinka, Jola and Wolof were better (all languages I understood at one time or another). Throw some unheard of theory out there and use big words and quote dead colonialists or racist Emanuel Kants and you’re considered a genius of sorts! I’m as guilty as the next one! But I’m unlearning to learn again. I am learning history all over again. The Jalis helping me relearn, the authors that wrote books I am reading, I am grateful to all of you. In the meantime, I want my money back for the under-education! I just don’t know who to ask because no one gave me a receipt!