Dr. Vincent Icheku, Senior Lecturer in ethics and law, London South Bank University, United Kingdom

Introduction: The theme of this lecture is probably not new to you. You may have heard the same many times before. However, this lecture is unique in that it is informed by my own experience of growing up in Ibusa before and during the civil war, in Ibadan after the war and England where I now live and work as university lecturer.

My Teenage Years

I was a teenager living in Ibusa before and during the civil war. I survived the war with nothing and no place to live. Our house was destroyed and Ibusa was a war ravaged town with very limited opportunities for both old and young. Most teenagers at the time faced similar challenges. Our parents who also survived the war were poor and there were no jobs for them. Majority of us could not find schools as most of them were destroyed during the war. Yet, every Ibusa teenager that I knew had big dreams. In the midst of adversity, we all hoped that only the best would happen in our lives. It was a period in our lives when we looked forward to a bright tomorrow believing that nothing is impossible and that we must be successful. However, as we made the transition from teenager to adolescence, it dawned on us that life is more complicated than we thought. We began to understand ourselves, discover our potentials and able to discover our opportunities and threats. It was a turning point in our lives, a time to reinvent ourselves and reorient ourselves to succeed. Family and community played a big role in moulding our character.

Disappearance of traditional Ibusa values

In the traditional Ibusa community, the young people depended on personal relationships with family and the entire community for guidance in developing virtuous personality.

A virtuous person is used in this lecture to describe an individual who is rational and educated so that he or she follows the lead of reason to be of good character (Icheku, 2012).

The necessity of the young forming good character in order to become virtuous leads Ibusa families and community role models at the time to consider teaching, initiation and induction as crucial means of making the young successful adults. Unfortunately, the youths of today are not so lucky. The traditional elderly family members and community role models seem to have relinquished much of their responsibilities of guiding the young towards virtuous path.

Modernization and western influences had both helped to relegate traditional Ibusa values to the background. In other words, the traditional family system of teaching our young has lost ground rapidly; and the indigenous systems of educating our youths have by and large disappeared. Additionally, urbanization and current socioeconomic conditions in Ibusa have accentuated various kinds of challenges. These constitute impediment to the progress of Ibusa youths of today albeit limited educational and employment opportunities, increasing criminalities, gangs and occults membership. The challenges facing Ibusa youths today are in no doubt worse than our experience of growing up in the post war years. However, education has an important role to play in dealing with the root cause of the myriad of problems affecting Ibusa youths of today.

Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) a Greek philosopher wrote in Nicomachean Ethics that “Right education should make us take pleasure in what is good and be pained by what is bad.”

Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894 – 1963) an English writer stated that “Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways, in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.”

Education as the only way forward

In my experience, education happens to be the only path that I know brings in its trail a positive change in any individual or community. It certainly has helped many in my generation that survived the civil war with nothing, except our hopes and dreams, to develop ourselves physically, mentally and socially.

Education is a benefactor of mankind; it creates virtuous human beings and essential to the healthy growth and development of a child’s personality. In other words, producing a virtuous human being out of undeveloped mind lays the importance of education. This is further discussed below:

Making career decisions

The importance of education manifests itself in the need to help youths experience successful transition to mature adult. As youth, you are like any other youth in the world that is in the stage of growing up and moulding your character. It is during this stage that you make career decisions and begin to pursue your goals in life. Education at this stage would help you define your career objectives, decide what you want and enable you to achieve what you desire in life. It would help you decide on the best career option, train to gain sets of skills that you could develop into subject expertise. Skills acquisition opens doors for new opportunities in different fields of human endeavour. You would be able to venture into new fields, explore new areas and pursue your interests and achieve fulfilling goals

Social and self-awareness

Education would provide you with the knowledge of contemporary and awareness of social, economic, political and environmental issues. It would expose you also to even the evils in your environment, the prejudices that shackle it and the superstitions that blind it, the deceitfulness of some of those with power and money. Education would provide you with the tools to navigate difficult situations or deal with them successfully. Sex education, for example, would expose you to the problems of prostitution, unprotected sex, teenage pregnancy and unwanted pregnancy. You would gain the knowledge of sexually transmitted diseases, abortions and other issues of growing concern for the youths of today.

Discernment of truth from falsehood

You would be more analytical and develop independent mind capable of discerning what truth is and what is false. You would no longer be fooled by some of those in power. Education would give you the ability to reject evil and empower you to take decisions and make choices, each time preferring right to wrong. You would have the courage to ask those with power and money to send their own children whenever they ask you to carry out criminal activity in exchange for money.

Epictetus (AD55-135), a Greek sage who was born into slavery and later became a philosopher, once said that it is only the educated that are free. This is true when you consider the fact that education releases us from the confines of our mind and forces us to think and question things. It makes us aware of our rights, grants us the power to be free and never to be enslaved, either by our own thoughts or that of others.

Furthermore, education would give you the courage to reflect on and accept the mistakes that you made, ability to make amend and learn from them. You would gain the ability to rise after every fall and turn every failure or misfortune into success.

Conclusion

The importance of education can never be over emphasized in that it goes beyond the concept of being literate and numerate. It is much deeper, incorporating individual’s way of life and thinking. In today’s world, education is synonymous with being a well-informed, thinking person and fit to succeed in the 21^st century. Thus, government at all levels should be proactive in terms of providing educational opportunities that will equip the youths with productive skills and critical thinking that will engender self-reliant. It is morally imperative that every child has opportunity to get a formal education in relative safety and adequate infrastructures.