INTRODUCTION
Sierra Leone is bounded on the north-west, north and north-east by the Republic Guinea, on the south-east by the Republic of Liberia and on south-west by the Atlantic Ocean. It has an area of 27,925 sq. miles. The colony of Sierra Leone originated in the sale and cession in 1787 by native chiefs to English settlers of a piece of land intended as a house for African settlers who have been waifs in London and afterwards it was made use of as a settlement for freed African slaves. The hinterland was declared a British Protectorate on 21st August, 1896. Sierra Leone attained independence on 27th April, 1961 and turned a Republic in 1971. Schooling is supplied by the two non-public and state-sponsored schools. The present procedure of instruction is 6-3-4-4 (that is 6 years Principal faculty, three many years Junior Secondary University, four many years Senior Secondary School and 4 decades tertiary/larger education. This process is complemented by non- official education.
Strategy OF Education
Instruction is frequently used in the sense of instruction in the classroom, laboratory, workshop or domestic science area and is made up principally in the imparting by the teacher, and the acquisition by pupils, of data and mental as nicely as handbook capabilities. A wider this means than instruction is that of schooling. That is to say all that goes on in just the school as component of the pupil’s daily life there. It features, amongst other issues, connection amongst pupils and teachers, pupils and pupils both in and outside the house the school. J. S. Mill (1931) opined that whatever will help to condition the human remaining to make the particular person what he is or hinder him from becoming what he is not is section of his education. Implicitly education and learning is lifelong and ubiquitous it is the sum overall of all influences which go to make a individual what he is, from beginning to demise. It incorporates the household, our neighbors, and the road amid many others.
Instruction is to some extent a deliberate prepared approach devised and done by the educator with the objective of imbuing the learner with specified information and facts, expertise, of mind and physique as effectively as modes of habits viewed as attractive. In aspect it is the learner’s personal reaction to the environment in which he life. Education and learning has 3 focal details: the person/individual upon whom the educator’s influences are introduced to bear the modern society or community to which he belongs and the whole context of reality in just which the unique and culture participate in their component. Guy is a social creature he grows as a person by the affect of temperament on identity and even for his primary bodily wants he is dependent on the help and cooperation of his fellow gentlemen and girls. Devoid of modern society and the mutual support and enrichment of ordeals which it supplies civilization is extremely hard and the lifestyle of person, in Hobbes’ text, is “solitary, weak, nasty, brutish and limited.”
1 of the elementary specifics of human existence is the rigidity among the pull of the previous and the forward urge into the long run, in between security and transform, custom and innovation. For productive living,gentleman requirements a circle of stability, an location of founded patterns and romantic relationship which sorts trusted associations. This is also correct of society. For its successful working there must be an underlying continuity of traditions and outlook which preserves its identification as a modern society and safeguards it versus the disruptive consequences of change. Improve should be for daily life and not static but this change in convert ought to be controlled by the fundamental traditions of culture. It is tradition which offers a country its character and distinctiveness as a modern society. The conservation of tradition for that reason is of course crucial.
It has been identified from time immemorial that the conservation of regular education has a very important element to perform in the progress of the kid. The youngsters of currently are the older people of tomorrow they will have to be educated as a result, to inherit and perpetuate the beliefs and modes of daily life peculiar to the unique modern society to which they belong. For each individual culture has the want to preserve alone not only bodily but as group consciously sharing specified aims, beliefs and designs of behavior. This style of education and learning is not essentially official in colleges by indicates of classroom instruction but that effected indirectly through the family members and by means of the effect on the specific of social influences and customs which the kid are not able to evade. In Sierra Leone this social education and learning involved elaborate ceremonies of initiation involving feats of endurance in which young adult men and gals have to prove them selves deserving of the community. The greatest purpose was to generate an unique who was straightforward, respectful, experienced, cooperative, and who could conform to the social get of the day. As Aristotle as soon as stated “the structure of a state will go through if training is neglected. The citizens of a state must usually be educated to accommodate the constitution of the point out. The type of character suitable to a structure is the electric power which proceeds to maintain it as it is also the condition pressure which originally designed it” (p. I).
Conventional Instruction IN Society
Standard schooling has equally a resourceful and conservation perform in culture it is a powerful indicates of preserving a society’s customs, if not culture. In the earlier the mother nature and desires of modern society performed a very important element in determining the nature of education and learning. Professor M.V.C. Jeffreys (1950) as soon as wrote in his ebook, Glaucon, that “in a tranquil culture the academic system will are likely to replicate the social pattern, although social uneasiness and instability generate opportunity for working with instruction as an instrument of social improve”(p.7). A identical view was shared by John Dewey (1897) who opined that by way of education culture can formulate its own applications, can arrange its personal implies and resources and therefore save alone with definiteness and economic climate in the way in which it needs to move. Education and learning looks both of those to the earlier and the foreseeable future inevitably it reflects the traditions and character of culture. Regular schooling can be employed to prepare for modifications in modern society and foresee and reduce variations or the outcomes of modifications in culture.
Traditional education and learning conserves and fingers on the customs and techniques of existence which constitute the character of a culture and maintains its unity. It also aids modern society to interpret its features in new strategies to satisfy the challenges of improve, looking for methods or lines of improvement which are consistent with the traditions and customs and will at the very same time elevate modern society to a far more full fulfillment of itself.
Standard Educational Institutions IN SIERRA LEONE
Background reveals that there had been no formal educational facilities in which children have been educated in Pre-colonial Sierra Leone. The Poro and Bondo/Sande Mystery Societies were being seemed upon as institutions to teach children. They had been bush universities. And the instruction these bush educational facilities offered was informal. Youngsters who went through these solution societies were being thought of capable of carrying out their civic obligations. They grew to become grown ups and can marry and get started everyday living. They considered by themselves as a single household. In other words and phrases both of those Magic formula Societies developed a sense of comradeship and unity among members irrespective of family, clan or ethnic affiliation. It was for that reason regarded as that youngsters who experienced not long gone via these solution societies ended up not fully matured.
The Poro Magic formula Culture is for boys. The religious head of the Poro Society is Pa Gbonu, observed only by the older graduates or associates. The actual physical heads are the Pa Sama Yorgbors and Pa Somanos. They immediate the actions of the institution. The senior instructors are the Pa Kashis, who generally teach and give recommendations to other initiators. The Pa Manchiyas serve as instructors to the initiates when the Kachemas are the scaring spirits. They scare the ladies and young children alike with each other with the new initiates. The Rakas are the errand boys carrying messages about. The Yambas are the head boys. The Bomos are the senior prefects whilst the Sayboms are the prefects and the screens are the Gbanaboms. Informal classes are held in the Key Poro Bush. The topics taught consist of Innovative Functional Arts, Performing Arts, Sensible Agriculture, Medicine i.e. use of neighborhood herbs for the therapy of distinct illnesses), warfare and other skills. In Innovative Useful Arts initiates are taught how to make fishing nets, baskets, mats, and carving wood and cleaning soap stones into various objects this sort of as animals and human beings in Undertaking Arts initiates are taught singing, dancing and the use of Poro musical devices. In Simple Agriculture initiates practice farming. Boys are taught to bear hardship without criticism and develop accustomed to it. As a result they are taken to the farms of their teachers and elders to perform on professional bono foundation. Nevertheless for the duration of the harvest season initiates could go via these farms taking whatsoever they require and consume devoid of remaining questioned by farm house owners. Initiates are taught to respect elders and use of guns to kill animals. In a very similar vein initiates are taught how to use guns in battling in protection of their communities. Other abilities initiates are taught include things like earning fish traps, fishing and hunting net, and basketry. In the use of herbs initiates pay dollars (some freely given) for healing different sicknesses as very well as for protection from enemies, evil spirits and snake bites. Initiates who want to lead to hurt to some others working with herbs could ‘redeem’ the herb/medicine worried. In excess of all initiates are taught a new Language spoken only by customers named Ke Sornor. For case in point fonka trika which means I am chatting to you fonka bonomi indicating Chat to me. The use of this new Language makes graduates really proud and sense distinct from non-initiates. Graduates arrive out with new names this kind of as Lamp, Langba and Kolerr. A graduation ceremony climaxes the event.
Mothers and fathers make large preparations including stitching dresses for the graduates. To mark the graduation ceremony there is feasting, consuming, dancing and singing praise songs for the graduates and their mothers and fathers. These certified for initiation will have to have been circumcised and developed to age of puberty. They have to are living on their very own in the course of the time period of instruction which ranges from just one to 7 many years. Graduates are fully admitted to the standard Poro society via one more ceremony termed Enkorie, which lasts for four days.
The Bondo/Sande Society is the establishment where by girls are skilled for womanhood. Its non secular head is Na Bondigba. The Na Gboyamas and Na Wulus are the bodily heads. These have religious powers utilized to foretell the future and capture witches. They are the senior teachers. The Na Sokos are the assistance instructors. They can initiate women even up to the highly developed phase of the Culture. The Digbas are the common academics and remain shut to the initiates. The Sampas are the skillful dancers and errand girls/girls. They make bulletins about the development and pursuits or programs during the graduation ceremony.
The Na Fets, as the identify implies do not know all the secrecy of the institution. They carry the institutional implements and regalia. The Karr Ayeamus are the ‘waiters’ to be initiated into the bigger standing of the institution. Ladies admitted to the Bondo/Sande Culture are educated informally. Lessons are held at Kantha or sacred residence. The academics are largely anxious with the transmission to these adolescent girls the competencies and expertise which adult women of all ages are expected to possess in get to perform effectively and intelligently in their community. The subjects ladies are taught contain Cooking, Accomplishing Arts, Fishing, Partner and Baby Treatment, and House Administration. In Cooking girls are taught how to get ready food items through observation and participation in the preparing of a variety of dishes and are afterwards allowed to have a go with little or no supervision. Those people who could not prepare dinner thoroughly are authorized to repeat. In Carrying out Arts girls are taught how to compose and sing tunes and how to beat the Bondo/Sande drums (sambories). Alongside singing ladies are taught how to dance and those who dance perfectly could join the hierarchy of the Sampas. Women are also taught how to fishing, make fishing nets, fishing baskets, sleeping mats from bamboo and palm leaves. Additional women are taught how to assist their potential husbands and how to consider care of kids primarily individuals of senior members. Like the Poro Society graduation ceremonies are marked by large preparations. Equally moms and dads and future husbands would get new dresses, slippers, perfumes, powder, and beads to make neck laces. On the working day of the graduation ceremony the new initiates are arrayed in white with coronets. They appear out with new names this kind of as Burah, Yeanor, Rukor and Yainkain. This demonstrates a indicator of maturity. Initiating ladies into Bondo/Sande modern society lasts amongst a few months and three many years.
Problems
If training has the essential operate of perpetuating the traditions and values of culture, of adapting them to a changing environment, and of raising them to richer and a lot more fruitful expression then both of those the Poro and Bondo/Sande Magic formula Societies, as common agents of this course of action should really enjoy a place of the greatest esteem. By way of these top secret societies the nation’s society flows from a person generation to the other and the aspirations of modern society are concentrated with personal and telling persuasion on the youthful. They stand at a level wherever the energies of young children are produced into new and creative opportunities. By these secret societies kids bear in mind the previous pursuits of their predecessors. They help in behavioral instruction designs of modern society. These societies are establishments of inspiration and both equally politicians and chiefs use them to gain. That is to possibly attain or maintain electrical power. Significant and binding decisions are taken in the Poro Bush of which only associates are authorized to show up at and acquire section. The Poro Secret Society functions as a check out from the abuse of energy. In crisis ridden predicaments main decision are taken in the Poro Bush. The Poro culture even acts as arbitrator in chiefdom disputes and could promulgate typical guidelines and regulate investing techniques. It is also concerned in the burial of chiefs and other crucial regional officers (Alie, 1990).
Western instruction has existed in the state for extended and is now so integral section of the civilized everyday living that there is a inclination to think that it is the key or sole implies of imparting expertise, expertise and social values in little ones. This is not the situation in Sierra Leone. The great importance of the Poro and Bondo conventional key societies are not able to be about-sighted mainly because of their enormous potentiality in educating kids for life in modern society. Basic is that respect for individuals as persons is the basis of regular society. Joined with this is courtesy, sensitivity to the demands of other people, cooperativeness, self-willpower, moral and physical bravery, tough function and higher specifications of achievement. These are passed on to small children in the atmosphere in which they are aspect of their day by day ordeals. Notwithstanding, these common institutions as brokers of training are currently faced with a lot of worries there-by forcing their demise. The apply of woman genital circumcision is of intercontinental problem and in Sierra Leone individuals are agitating for its overall ban. At present ladies are allowed to be circumcised at age eighteen during which time a child is perceived to be matured adequate to choose no matter whether or not to be initiated into the Bondo/Sande key culture. In addition the period of initiation is perceived too very long and is being challenged. Apart from kids these times no for a longer period have to be initiated into these societies to be taught how to be thoroughly clean, cook, rear youngsters, exercise agriculture, and inculcate morals and virtues to cite a number of examples. All these could be learnt possibly in or exterior formal education through studying. What is much more Faith, especially Christianity and Islam, western daily life, as nicely as rural-urban migration are forcing these top secret societies to obliteration.
Moreover the pursuits and perform of these traditional societies are not in curriculum kind and documented. Neither also is the use of herbs documented. Therefore by discontinuing these regular top secret societies Sierra Leoneans stand to lose their cultural heritage. If even so, training has the important purpose of perpetuating the traditions and values of culture, of adapting them to a switching setting, and of raising them to a richer and additional fruitful expression then these classic top secret societies, as brokers of this approach must appreciate a place of the optimum esteem. By way of these societies the nationwide tradition flows from one generation to yet another and the aspirations of culture are targeted with personal and telling persuasion upon the younger. These solution societies stand at the place where by the energies of young children are launched into new and resourceful choices.
