LAGOS, NIGERIA — A professor has warned against the growing argument that some university courses are dead and should be scrapped. He said the problem is not the courses but the curricula.
Professor Rasaki Ojo Bakare made the argument in a piece published on Friday. He said the idea that courses like History, Philosophy, Classics, and Languages are useless is intellectually lazy and harmful to national development.
The Argument
Bakare said a fashionable but dangerous argument is spreading in Nigeria. He said some people claim that courses such as History, Philosophy, Classics, Religious Studies, Languages, and Sociology are useless. They say the courses should give way to ICT, Artificial Intelligence, and Data Science.
He rejected this position. He said knowledge is elastic and monumentally wide. He said it is also dynamic, making curricula obsolete within a short period.
“But no knowledge is useless. No course is dead. What can die is the way we teach it. What should keep evolving is the curriculum,” Bakare stated.
Lessons from Other Nations
Bakare cited the examples of the United States and China. He said whenever America is in a war situation, it deploys not only soldiers and guns. It also deploys its historians, sociologists, musicians, linguists, and language experts.
He said America did not abandon Philosophy to build Silicon Valley. He said Silicon Valley was built by philosophers who learned to code. He added that China did not scrap History to lead in AI. He said China uses History to define its national purpose for AI.
“A nation without History has no memory, without Philosophy has no compass, without Classics has no depth, without Languages has no identity,” he said.
The Danger of Shallow Education
Bakare warned that producing a generation that can code but cannot think is dangerous. He said building robots without understanding the complexities of the citizenry is building tools without purpose.
He said the problem is not the courses but the curriculum. He said Nigeria inherited curricula designed to produce colonial clerks. He said the curricula were not designed to produce African problem-solvers.
He argued that the courses should be reformed to answer Africa’s socio-political and economic questions today. He said the courses should not be killed.
A Personal Experience
Bakare recounted an experience at a conference in 2017. He said he charged his listeners to focus on finding solutions to Nigeria’s problems. He said an elderly Professor of Pharmacy disagreed. He said the professor argued that his job was to teach and publish papers.
He said three years later, COVID-19 struck. He said the papers the professor published in Scopus could not retard the spread of the virus. He said their impact factors had no real impact on the sick and the dying.
He said this kind of mentality is what should change.
Reforming the Curricula
Bakare outlined how the courses should be reformed. He said History must move from memorising dates of the Berlin Conference to interrogating why institutions fail. He said Philosophy must move from abstract Western idealism to African ethics, governance, and the philosophy of Omoluabi.
He said Theatre Arts must directly solve the problems of Nollywood and impact the content industry. He said Languages must become translation technology, cultural diplomacy, and yield creative economy jobs.
The Need for Skills
Bakare acknowledged the need to skill students in ICT, AI, and entrepreneurship. He said this is non-negotiable. But he said the skill becomes powerful only when it stands on deep human understanding.
He said Nigeria needs AI engineers who understand the Yoruba worldview to build voice assistants for market women. He said the country needs coders who studied Sociology to design fintech that the poor will trust.
Conclusion
Bakare warned that scrapping so-called dead courses will not make Nigeria modern. He said it will make the country shallow and easily colonised again, this time digitally.
“There are no dead courses. There are only dead curricula. What we need is reform, not removal,” he concluded.
