THE OSWALD HANCILES COLUMN ‘Davidson Nicol Triumphs Over Bailor Barrie’ On August 13, 2013, at the British Council hall in Freetown, Sierra Leone, there appeared to be the final round of a forty year old ‘debate’; so intense has this ‘debate’ been that to some it appeared as if it has always been a fierce ‘war’. On one side has been ‘Dr. Davidson Nicol’, an intellectual of international repute, Principal of Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone. In the other corner has been ‘Bailor Barrie’, multi-millionaire dollar businessman. Both have always had fanatical ‘fans’ cheering them on with ferocious gusto.. On that Tuesday morning of the 13th August, 2013, Herbert MacCleod, who was coordinator of the presidential-ordered ‘Conference on Transformation and Development’ in 2011 said that after going round the country to solicit opinion at all tiers of our society, the Number One Priority of the people was for….Education!! Quality Education!! Thus was manifested the triumph of ‘Davidson Nicol’ over ‘Bailor Barrie’ – and rubbishing of that adage that extolled wealth over education: ‘Dem say Bailor Barrie you say Davidson Nicol?’ Prosperity Versus Quality Education A sub-debate ensued on: ‘Prosperity for the masses or quality education for the majority which should come first’. Among the learned group of people at the British Council hall – which included university professors with about 38 years experience each: Dr. Ramadan Dumbuya (Political Science); Dr. George Carew (Philosophy); Dr. Isaac Palmer (Geo-Physics) – was that without quality education in the country there would never be sustainable prosperity. ‘Quality education’ in Sierra Leone? The keynote speaker at the British Council on August 13, Professor Jimmy Kandeh, of the University of Richmond in the United States (He earned his doctorate degree in the University of Wisconsin-Madison, U.S., in Political Science in 1987; a Masters degree from the same university in 1982; and a Bachelor of Arts degree [Division 1] in Philosophy/Political Science from Fourah Bay College [FBC], University of Sierra Leone in 1980) said that FBC today “is in a doldrums”. Eileen Hanciles elaborated on our educational decrepitude: in a workshop for teachers to guide their pupils to read, a Class 4 teacher could not read a Class 2 English book! There followed an avalanche of denigrating comments on the educational standards in Sierra Leone. Cecil Samba, one of the several persons who attended the launching with obvious ‘JC’ accents, was categorical in his comments that “education is at its lowest ebb in Sierra Leone today”; he pointed out to the irony of Gambia topping Sierra Leone in school leaving exams whilst “60% of the teachers in the Gambia are Sierra Leoneans”. Prof. Kandeh said he was sadly bemused at the unabashed plagiarism of some post graduate students he taught at FBC during a Fulbright stint there in 2009. As is normal when people of learning dominate any gathering, a debate was triggered – one between ‘reform’ or ‘transformation’. ‘Reform’ Versus ‘Transformation’ Columbia Blango (who had once been elected mayor of a council in London) was disdainful of the ‘gradualist’ approach which ‘reform’ connotes. The consensus among the learned persons was that because of the educational abyss our country is in …. there would be absolute need for “transformation”. “Transformation” was the name and essence of the 2011 President Ernest Bai Koroma-inspired conference of 2011. Sitting in the audience, I racked my brain to nuance between ‘reform’ and ‘transformation’. The Oxford dictionary says this of ‘reform’: ‘to improve a system, a law, an organization’, etc. And, this of ‘transformation’: ‘a complete change’. There!! Do we need to ‘improve’ on our educational system? Or, do we need to give it a ‘complete change’, a “transformation”? Philosophically, what has been right or wrong about Sierra Leone’s educational system? Have we been learning subjects like Philosophy, Religion, History…only to assimilate facts and regurgitate them on paper to be deemed ‘qualified’ - and not putting our acquired knowledge into practice? How much have engineers trained at tertiary levels in our country been leaders in construction of roads, bridges, buildings, etc.? Isn’t the disgraceful paradox which epitomize Sierra Leone (one of the wealthiest countries in the world in terms of marketable natural resources yoked with about the poorest people on earth) an expose of the inherent nonsensical-ness of our educational system? Wouldn’t a ‘reform’ of such a system be like filling a badly rotten tooth instead of rooting it out? An educational cure?: ‘Teach for Sierra Leone’? Prof. Jimmy Kandeh is versed in Philosophy and History. The August 13 show was centered on him. He has to provide answers to the aforementioned questions even as he launched, and prescribed, his ‘Teach for Sierra Leone’ programme as a potent cure for our chronic educational disease. With almost thirty years experience teaching in one of the top universities in the United States Prof. Jimmy Kandeh said that the ‘Teach for Sierra Leone (TFSL)” is modeled after the one in the US – ‘Teach for America’. TFSL’s ‘Adopt a School’ Programme Among the ideas that TFSL would promote, and, develop as projects, would be ‘Adopt a School’. This will be individuals, or, groups, ‘adopting’ schools in Sierra Leone – especially ‘deprived’ schools attended by rural poor people. Prof. Kandeh will promote these schools all over the world – especially in the U.S. He will encourage people, and/or groups, to ‘adopt’ a school, with, for example, $100. When the money comes in, it will be used to buy books, computers, laboratory materials; pay teachers, etc. It is not only the poor deprived schools that will be adopted. High performing schools like the Sierra Leone Grammar School – whose standards were expressly praised by Prof. Jimmy Kandeh –will also received sponsorship to be globally competitive. Another novelty of Prof. Jimmy Kandeh’s TFSL will be this: it would encourage high-performing Sierra Leonean graduates to give their free time, or, ‘low pay time’, to rural schools where students would come from poor homes. This will be for two years. At the end of the two years, these graduates would be eligible for post graduate scholarships in top universities in the world – especially in the United States. High quality brains like Prof. Kandeh who work in the US and UK will also be lured to give their free time teaching in educational institutions in Sierra Leone. Jimmy Kandeh’s JSTOR Plan for our universities FBC chemistry lecturer, Dr. Tom Nyoma, said he was “excited” by the programme thrust of Prof. Jimmy Kandeh. What got me animated was when Prof. Jimmy Kandeh said his TFSL programme would enable university students and researchers to gain access to famous ‘global cyber libraries’ like ‘JSTOR’. An inveterate cyber-user like my humble self would almost always fail to tap into JSTOR archives. Why? The internet system in Sierra Leone – as Prof Kandeh pointed out on August 13 – is too slow. Should I qualify that: ‘was too slow’? On Friday, August 23, 2013, I went to the fibre optic company at Lumley Beach in Freetown that touts ‘fast speed internet service for Sierra Leone’. It is called ‘SALCAB’. I spoke with the Manager in SALCAB, a Sierra Leonean educated as an engineer in FBC some 35 years ago, Claudius John. He told me assuredly that these companies that can provide high speed internet services are now being serviced by SALCAB: Sierratel, Airtel, Africel, Limeline, Iptel, Teltac, Commium, Afcom, Next Generation.... Re-read this technical information and get delighted, if you are a constant internet user. Before the laying of the Europe-to-Africa ‘under-ocean’ cable, internet services would be provided by satellite. This has been very slow. And, it is a reason why most often internet users in Sierra Leone cannot access especially video posted on sites like YouTube. The speed used to be 2 megabits per second – with the submarine cable SALCAB is hooked up to, the speed has increased from 2 megabits per second to 155 megabits per second. It is like a man who used to use a canoe from Bonthe to Freetown and taking two weeks to make the journey suddenly using a jet plane. The submarine cable that connects France....with Morocco, Senegal....Sierra Leone...Liberia...Nigeria....Congo....etc. has allocated to Sierra Leone ‘internet space’ of 4,000 megabits per second – as of now, only 155 megabits per second is being utilized by all the nine companies that are hooked up the SALCAB’s system. Are we going to see internet-connected computers and mobile phones in the hand of every student or researcher in our country? Almost next door to SALCAB’s location on Lumley Beach in Freetown is one of the nine companies hooked up to it: AFCOM. One of their managers told me that the internet speed used to be 60mbps – today, it is 465 mpbs. That means we would be watching ‘video stream’ in Sierra Leone that are watched by people all over the world. Exciting!! Wait!! To watch video stream via internet in Sierra Leone, for now, could be afforded only by the very rich. Subscription costs could go as high as $4,000 a month. For Sierra Leone to make the quantum leap in educational standards that are globally competitive, it must tap into the global libraries like Nafhan, Khan Academy, Schooltube, Royal Society of Arts, and JSTOR, etc. JSTORs founder was William G. Bowen, the president of Princeton University - among the top five top universities in the world - from 1972 to 1988. JSTOR has become almost a panacea to a festering problem faced by libraries, especially tertiary level ones. There were millions of academic journals in existence. JSTOR digitized these journals - and has made access egalitarian at global level. Let me this in context. Sierra Leone’s universities are NOT among the top 4,000 in the world – and not even among the top 100 in Africa. Our university libraries are virtually empty. The science labs in our universities are a disgrace – worse than some of the worst primary school labs in the U.S., for example. Prof. Jimmy Kandeh’s programme would stimulate a radical turn around in information for our universities. Students in Sierra Leone will be able to access print and video information that are available to the top schools in the West. Prof. Jimmy Kandeh with his impeccable academic laurels, and World Bank ‘stamp’ (He has done consultancy studies for the World Bank that includes, ‘The Political Economy of Liberia’ [2013]; ‘Political Economy of Natural Resource Management in Sierra Leone’ [2013]) and USAID papers, the alumni of the Albert Academy (where he was Head Boy in 1977) is an exemplar of what the Diaspora should be doing – and taking advantage of the ‘transformation’ ethos of the President Ernest Bai Koroma government. No doubt, ‘Bailor Barrie’ now being trounced by ‘Davidson Nicol’ is in his death throes - being pummeled by the likes of Prof. Jimmy Kandeh. President Koroma’s vision of sustainable prosperity will become concrete reality sooner than later - with such initiatives by the likes of Prof. Jimmy Kandeh.https://facebook/TheTrumpetNewspaper/posts/171700546346557
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 13:29:18 +0000
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