APQ - APPON PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

The educative process and societal development are often discussed as Siamese twins that must go together for sustainable and meaningful progress to be made by a people both individually and collectively. There is no society devoid of the educative system and process. The African society is not different. Unfortunately, the school and formal education system in African offer very little in her interventions on the continent's development. Nigeria and most of Africa is enmeshed in societal problems, and challenges that a good, adequate and relevant educational system ought to solve. Unfortunately, Africa is searching for solutions from foreigners and the West. African states lack faith in the products of her educational system and seem very proud and enthusiastic 'partners' in western-driven development initiatives; 'aspiring' to be part of the BRICS economic bloc. African States scramble for external 'peer reviews' as espoused by NEPAD. Unfortunately, not even NEPAD could offer anything better than the local African. Using a critical analytic method, this paper critiques the existing school, especially the university, educational system in Africa, especially Nigeria. It aims to chart a path of a progressive system of education. It adopts Francis Bacon's articulation and critique of learning for its conceptual discourse. It argues that the educational enterprise in African of today consists of 'distempers' and 'slavish attachments.' Consequently, the distempers of Bacon - populism, conformism and dogmatism and blind reliance on Western expertise and scholarship - correlate with the African educational system. It identi?es the foundational and conceptual problems as the basis of this dysfunction in education. The university system is almost disconnected from its foundation refusing to interact with its local environment. The paper therefore recommends that the formal system of education should be harmonised with the often derided as informal system education. Its stakeholders should be proactive and creative, rather than been conformist and dogmatic. Local relevance, African culture, locally-generated theories, especially of 'man', 'society', and 'political economy' as well as jettisoning prevailing anti-research and intellectual culture perpetuated by existing authoritarianism and dictatorial culture should be hallmarks for a progressiveAfrican school system.

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