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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 8, No. 9

Publication Date: September 25, 2021

DOI:10.14738/assrj.89.10866. Hussain, T. (2021). Implications of Freire’s Pedagogy for Almajiri Education System in Nigeria. Advances in Social Sciences Research

Journal, 8(9). 194-199.

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

Implications of Freire’s Pedagogy for Almajiri Education System

in Nigeria

Taofik Hussain

Research Fellow, Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Abuja, Nigeria

This paper will review the implication of the banking education model to the Almajirai

Education system in Nigeria. Paulo Freire used the term banking method of education in his

highly influential book Pedagogy of the Oppressed to describe and critique the traditional

education system. The relevance of this concept to the Almajirai education system in Nigeria

will be reviewed, and the paper will be concluded with some brief reflections on establishing

the appropriate learning environment for authentic education.

Education is how society provides its members with certain knowledge, attitudes and skills

through formal systematic training. The relationships in society are mostly determined by the

educational system and the educational system is determined by the economic, social and

cultural relations in human society (UNESCO, 2015). An imperfect society cannot hope to

provide a just educational system.

Paulo Freire’s book, ‘’pedagogy of the oppressed’’ is a stimulating exposition of the

phenomenon of oppression in our education systems. He beamed a broad light on the essence

and process of education in our societies. The book is a product of Paulo Freire’s experience

working with the poor in Brazil and Chile.

Paulo Freire was born into a middle-class family in Recife in Brazil in 1921. He experienced

poverty during the depression of the 1930s. It is believed that this was a formative experience

that led him to believe in the idea of fighting oppression. In 1943 he enrolled in Recife

University, Majoring in Law, but also teaching Portuguese part-time in a local school. When he

finally finished his degree, rather than go into a law career, he instead became a welfare official

in the department of education and culture in the state of Pernambuco (Roberts, 2005).

He was exposed during this time to areas where there were very many poor people. This got

him thinking about how to help people in abject poverty, which eventually led to the

development of a dialogic process within literacy. He became aware of the economic, social and

political domination resulting from paternalism, a method people in authority use to restrict

the freedom and responsibilities of subordinates. A practice which according to freire creates

an emotional bond of control and dependence between the oppressed and the oppressors

(Gorder, 2008). Freire developed and promoted a philosophy of education that centres on

critical consciousness that seeks to expand the capacity for critical thinking by the oppressed

of themselves and promotes people's ability to take actions to change their social realities

(Blackburn, 2000).

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Hussain, T. (2021). Implications of Freire’s Pedagogy for Almajiri Education System in Nigeria. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(9).

194-199.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.89.10866

In the early 1960s, Freire worked for the cultural extension programme of the University of

Recife, where he continued to work with the poor in terms of literacy and helping them to gain

more local power by guiding them to become literates. However, when the Brazilian

government was taken over by a military coup in 1964, the programme was terminated. Freire

was imprisoned and later went into exile in Bolivia, then Chile. In Chile, he wrote what would

become his seminal book, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed’’ (Roberts, 2005).

According to Paulo Freire (2001b), the teacher is knowledgeable and an active participant in

the traditional education system. The teacher's existence is necessitated by the ignorant

student, which means the student is bound to the teacher's narration, which contextualizes and

frames the way the student thinks. The description of reality to the teacher is static and not

dynamic as the teacher teaches what they were taught, which discourages creativity. The

Teacher does not draw from the student’s existential experience nor discuss meaning, and the

student merely memorizes information without contextualization (Freire, 2001b). The student

is the object of the instructor’s narration (Freire, 2001b). The student has to accept his or her

own ignorance, the teacher has knowledge that the student does not have, which does not only

demonstrate the teacher’s proficiency but the student’s ignorance. The student is receptive to

the teacher’s static knowledge and fails to recognize the ability to educate the teacher under

this paradigm. The student becomes passive and the higher the level of passivity the more the

student will learn (Freire, 2001b).

Paulo Freire (2001b)referred to this transfer of static knowledge to the receptacle student as

the act of depositing in what he referred to as the "banking concept of education". What is

banked is content knowledge that comes from the teacher as a gift to a passive student.

Passivity limits student’s creativity and the ability to think critically. Education under this

system embodies a system of adapting students to their roles as dominated, passive recipients.

The teacher becomes the oppressor, and the student becomes the oppressed since students are

better if they don’t challenge authority (Freire, 2001b). This system, in essence, serves the

interest of the oppressor as there is no creativity in the system. When there is creativity, then

you have theoretical, logical and rational grounds to challenge the system. According to Freire

(2001b) the banking concept is the indoctrination of the oppressed into the worldview of the

oppressor, turning the students into objects that are malleable and that liberation cannot be

attained through the banking concept of education because it leads to dehumanization which

reinforces oppression.

The shortcomings of this kind of educational system led Freire (2001b) to propose a liberating

method which he called the problem-posing model of education. This is a democratic

relationship between teachers and students, allowing the teachers and students to teach and

learn from each other. This method allows the teacher and students to engage in dialogue and

critical reflection of topics or issues. In this dialogic exchange between teachers and students,

they both learn, reflect, and participate in creating meaning (Freire, 2001b). Knowledge is

shared and both the instructor and students are co-creators and investigators.

The problem-posing model is liberating and beneficial because education becomes the practice

of freedom instead of domination and students are able to attain an ability to perceive their

purpose, existence and role in the world. When teachers implement problem-posing models in

the classroom, they approach students as fellow dialoguers, creating hope, love, humility, and

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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 8, Issue 9, September-2021

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

trust. Authentic education is not carried on by A for B or by A about B but rather by A with B

(Freire, 2001b). In the problem-posing model, students are taught facts and learn along with

the teacher on how to think. This method makes students critical thinkers and stimulates true

reflection and action upon reality (Ekanem, 2014). It is important to note that Paulo Freire’s

educational theory has been criticized by conservatives who are opposed to revolutionary

projects of emancipation, who have condemned him as demagogic. In contrast, feminists have

criticized him for failing to consider the radical differences between forms of oppression and

their complex and contradictory instantiation in subjects (Mclaren and Noah, 2020).

So far, this paper has focused on Freire’s pedagogy. The following section will discuss the

Almajirai education system and the relevance of Freire’s ideology.

The word ‘Almajiri’ is derived from the Arabic word ‘Almuhajirun’, which means migrants. It

refers to a traditional method in Northern Nigeria where young males from the age of five to

early twenties, mainly from rural poor homes are sent out by their parents or guardians to other

villages or towns to attend traditional Quranic boarding schools that are not under the purview

of state regulation (Hoechner, 2011). They undertake Quranic lessons as opposed to western

education and generally do not speak English. It is an educational system that is primarily

Islamic. Due to lack of financial support and poverty, Almajirai in rural areas normally farms

under the guidance of their teacher, while those in urban areas usually beg for food or money

in the streets as a means of survival. According to the United Nations Children's Fund, there are

over nine million Almajiri in the streets of the northern states of Nigeria (Nwanze, 2019).

The children are handed over to teachers (Malams) who are not paid a salary but rely on

community contribution and contributions of students and are not formally certified but are

themselves products of the Almajiri system. The children are made to learn in a sorry state of

learning and live in poor health and malnutrition conditions. The children are thought to

memorize and recite the Quran in Arabic without understanding the meaning of the words and

are continuously flogged by the teacher to instil fear in the minds of the Almajirai (Yusha’u et

al., 2013).

The teacher in this system is viewed as having controlling power over socially distributed

religious knowledge and determines the meanings, norms and values that the education system

preserve and disseminates. No formal qualification is required from a Malam to establish and

manage a Qur’anic school apart from the experience of having attended one himself (Baba,

2010). Once established, the school exists in its own right since the system affords Malam a

considerable level of autonomy in its management and operations. The implication of this

power manifest in the selection of content and prescribed text for the school curricula.

X-raying the Almajiri education system, it falls guilty of oppression as illustrated in the banking

model of education. This monologue that is inflicted upon the students is an essential

asymmetry, and one-sidedness in the teacher taught relationship where the teacher doles out

knowledge to the student who is to be appropriately grateful for this beneficence. Freire

questions this paradigm and suggests a relationship of mutual give-and-take between the

teacher and the student, which, like in most other world education systems, is nonexistent in

the Almajiri system.