By Afe Babalola
EDUCATION serves as a means through which the knowledge, understanding and skills of a society or group of people are passed from generation to generation. History tells us that every generation prior to the evolution of writing system passed on its stock of values, traditions, methods and skills to the next generations orally. Oral traditions were central in all societies when there was no writing.
The “oriki”, “ijala” and the quatrains of the ifa corpus or odu ifa in Yoruba land are classical examples of a rich oral tradition and mode of worship. In this part of the world, for instance, education started from the parents through moon light tales where morals were taught and passed from one generation to another.
The elders also, educated the younger ones by telling them the events of the past which were passed on from children to children. Starting in about 3,500 BC, various writing systems developed in ancient civilizations around the world which included Egypt known for its hieroglyphs, the Phoenicians writing system, Greek, the Etruscan and Latin alphabets, the Cyrillic, Aramaic and the Hebrew scripts and the Arabic.
It was not until the 18th Century that most of West, Central and part of Eastern Europe began to provide elementary education in reading, writing and arithmetic because politicians believed that education was needed for orderly, prescribed behavior. In the 20th Century, most of secondary education was open only to those who could afford it. At the end of World War 1, major nations had to give further attention to secondary education.
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