The Nigerian Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, has on Thursday returned history studies as a stand-alone subject in the country’s basic education curriculum after thirteen years. The federal government also shortlisted 3,700 history teachers for the first round of training for teaching of the subject.
Why it matters
Many are concerned that the absence of history lessons in Nigerian schools could have created a detachment from the country’s past, a fall in patriotism and a depletion of civic values. According to the Minister, “this single act, no doubt, relegated and eroded the knowledge and information that learners could otherwise have been exposed to. It was a monumental mistake.”
The big picture
History lessons help citizens understand how events in the past have translated into the current day they live in. With history lessons in schools, students can not only learn about their heritage and how they came about, but also how to set up today’s societies to avoid the mistakes of the past.