One of the great things about being at the University is that there are knowledgeable people in almost every area of inquiry you could think of within a 1 mile radius, and there doors are almost always open.
Today I met Dr. Shittu R. Akinola, who is visiting IU as part of the Workshop for Political Theory. He's from Obafemi Awolowo University, in Ile-Ife, Nigeria, and Nigeria is one of the pilot countries for the OLPC. He is very knowledgeable about Education in Nigeria, and we had a great conversation. Here's what I learned from him, with some bits and pieces I found on the web sprinked in:
The Education system in Nigeria suffered some serious upheval in the 80s. Because of the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP), which were a set of policies recommended by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) aimed at "poverty reduction", much of Nigeria's infrastructure collapsed. It was difficult for the government to pay salaries, which meant that many teachers in public schools went unpaid. Because the country was being controlled by a military regime, corrupt officials embezzled money from the educational coffers.
In order to survive, teachers began teaching private lessons and evening classes. Unemployed people with degrees saw these teachers' success and also started teaching to make money. Because of this and the fact that public schools are not free, there was been an increasing trend towards privitization of education in Nigeria since the mid 1980s. The goverment is trying to reverse this trend by offering good salaries and benefits to teachers and making public education free again, but private schools are still very prevalent.
Today, there are many kinds of private schools in Nigeria: expensive schools for the rich, more affordable schools for the middle class, and cheap private schools that might be run out of someone's house or some rented rooms. According to research done at the University of Newcastle, in three of the poorest districts they look at, "an estimated 75 percent of schoolchildren were enrolled in private schools."
There is a very large muslim population in Nigeria, particularly in the north, and among these people there is some distrust of western education. As a result, muslims in Nigeria tend to have much less education, although there are some private islamic schools. Additionally, some muslims believe that sending a girl to school will make her a less appealing bride, so many girls are not allowed to go to school. This is reflected in the literacy rates in the country: 72.5% for men, and 48.2% for women. In the north west, 55.7% of men are literate and only 20.9% of women. These are up-to-date numbers provided to me by Dr. Akinola today.
According to Cynthia Sunal at the University of Alabama:
"There have been concerns in families that primary schooling conflicts with traditional practices, reducing a female's ability to pass on her culture to her children (Mohammed 1984; Sunal, Osa, Gaba, & Saleemi 1989). Mohammed found that 58 percent of the one hundred rural Muslim parents she interviewed in northern Nigeria were concerned with their daughters' marriageability (Mohammed 1984). These parents favored marrying girls at an early age, from 12 to 14, if there was a good prospect for a husband. In 1994 the average age of marriage in Nigeria, as reported by UNESCO, was 18. Although parents who favor the tradition of early marriage do not represent the average Nigerian, they do constitute a large group in the society."
(from Perceptions of Unequal Access to Primary and Secondary Education: Findings from Nigeria
Education is much less prevalent in the northern part of Nigeria, partly because of the larger muslim population. The problem is not the quality of schools, but rather the lack of support for education in general, particularly western education.
School starts at 8am and lasts until 1:30 or 2pm, Monday through Thursday. On Friday school ends at 1pm so that kids can go to the mosque. Some students might travel by bus or motorbike or just trek to school, but poorer students tend to just go to the school closest to them, so they might not have to travel far. Typically classes have 35-40 students, although there are sometimes less. In the 80s there might've been 50 in a class, sharing desks, but this is less common today. Public schools have utilities and toilets and playgrounds, but this is not necessarily the case in private schools, which might be a group of small rented rooms each big enough for 10 students.
After school, some students go to additional lessons, if their parents can afford it, others just play out and about, or go to after school programs. Some have to go sell goods for their parents. They might carry oranges or bananas on their heads to market where they can try to earn some money to support their families.
The standard for teachers in public schools is that they have a certificate in education, but this isn't necessarily the case in private schools. Because private schools don't always pay good salaries, offer poor job security, and no benefits, turnover is high. But after the crisis in the 80s, there is still fear of nonpayment of salary in public schools.