Here is an excerpt from a longer article by Nigerian scientist Philip
Emeagwali entitled "The Truth About Globalization." It was his keynote
speech delivered on September 18, 2004, at the Pan-African Conference
on Globalization, Washington DC USA. It is available on emeagwali.com
in PDF format at
http://emeagwali.com/speeches/globalization/the-truth-about-globalization/The-Truth-About-Globalization.pdf
. It is also available at
http://www.modernghana.com/GhanaHome/NewsArchive/news_details.asp?menu_id=1&id=VFZSUk1FNUVaekk9
(seen on the latter site via a Google alert).
...
We accepted the mission schools which were established to enlighten
us, without questioning the unforeseen costs of our socalled education.
These mission schools plundered our children's self-esteem by teaching
them that, as Africans they were inherently "bad people."
Our children grew up not wanting to be citizens of Africa. Instead,
their education fostered the colonial ideal that they would be better
off becoming citizens of the colonizing nations.
I speak of the price Africans have paid for their education and
"enlightenment" from personal experience.
I was born "Chukwurah," but my missionary schoolteachers insisted I
drop my "heathen" name. The prefix "Chukwu" in my name is the Igbo
word for "God." Yet, somehow, the missionaries insisted that
"Chukwurah" was a name befitting a godless pagan.
The Catholic Church renamed me "Philip," and Saint Philip became my
patron and protector, replacing God, after whom I was named.
I have to argue that something more than a name has been lost.
Something central to my heritage has been stripped away.
This denial of our past is the very antithesis of a good education.
Our names represent not only our heritage, but connect us to our
parents and past.
As parents, the names we choose for our children reflect our dreams
for their future and our perceptions of the treasures they represent
to us.
My indoctrination went far deeper than just a name. The missionary
school tried to teach me that saints make better role models than
scientists.
I was taught to write in a new language. As a result, I became
literate in English but remain illiterate in Igbo - my native tongue.
I learned Latin - a dead language I would never use in the modern
world - because it was the official language of the Catholic Church,
which owned the schools I attended.
Today, there are more French speakers in Africa than there are in France.
There are more English speakers in Nigeria than there are in the
United Kingdom.
There are more Portuguese speakers in Mozambique than there are in
Portugal.
The Organization of African Unity never approved an African language
as one of its official languages.
We won the battle of decolonizing our continent, but we lost the war
on decolonizing our minds.
...
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