"Culture Education" and the Challenge of Globalization in Modern Nigeria

"Culture Education" and the Challenge of Globalization in Modern Nigeria

Introduction

Let me begin with a quotation from Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth that I find quite apposite to the main thrust of this paper (1967:168):

… the passion with which the native intellectuals defend the existence of their national culture may be a source of amazement, but those who condemn this exaggerated passion are strangely apt to forget that their own psyche and their own selves are conveniently sheltered behind a French or German [or any western] culture which has given full proof of its existence and which is uncontested.

I must also confess that the full import of the above statement by Fanon did not occur to me until I came across the same reference again in Toyin Falola's The Power of African Cultures (2003:49) while in the course of preparing the present article. Fanon's treatise is not only relevant to the present discourse but also directly foregrounds this paper's philosophy.

For the purpose of clarity, let me explain the term "culture education" as it is intended herein. If "education" is the process of knowledge acquisition, "culture education" emphasizes the peculiar means and methods of instruction by which a society imparts its body of values and mores in the pursuance and attainment of the society's collective vision, aspirations, and goals. Thus, anyone who demonstrates a degree of knowledge of his or her societal values and general education is said to be educated. In other words, "culture education," as intended here, presupposes conscious and refined methods of acquisition and/or dissemination of the knowledge of societal values, philosophy, hermeneutics, and so on. "Culture education" is the means by which skills are developed in such areas as language, oral traditions and customs, music, dance, rituals, festivals, traditional medicine, foodways, and architecture, as well as the internalization and socialization of societal values and skills by individuals in a way that engenders cultural adaptability, flexibility, and societal cohesion. Thus, "culture education" ultimately refers to a people's pedagogy of cultural values, the teaching methodologies and means of dissemination, the acquisition of culture for the purpose of socialization, and the promotion of an ideal social order.

The Domains of Culture

Using UNESCO's general definition,¹ domains of culture includes distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual, and emotional features of a society or group, in addition to its art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions, and beliefs. In other words, culture is life; it defines a people and an identity. In discussing identity, Falola (2003:51) opines: "Culture shapes the perception of self and interaction between people and their environment. It [culture] explains habits…[and] defines norms of behavior…boundaries among people…. It is the basis of identity and ultimately of development." Culture is the pulse of a living society. A "living" society, in this sense, is one that implies a transcendence of mere existence. Rather, it is a state of completeness and a consciousness that is holistic. A "living" society is one that is conscious of its beginning, its present location among a comity of societies, and one that progressively and determinedly charts its self-defined purpose and course that ultimately guarantees an ideal future––a future strengthened by meaning.

Culture defines a people's civilization and determines its identity. Marriott (1963:34) puts it more succinctly: "No state, not even an infant one, is willing to appear before the world as a bare political frame. Each would be clothed in a cultural garb symbolic of its aims and ideal being." By implication, while it is generally believed that so-called "modern" Western civilization serves as the apogee of cultures, I must add that a society which handles the affairs of its culture with levity, or unwittingly leaves its culture unprotected in the hands of uncultured politicians, all in the name of some covert globalization, risks cultural denigration (and...