 Creative curriculum. Hashtag with us not for us. That has been the theme for this year's World Down syndrome day that happened on the 21st of March 2023. My daughter has Down syndrome so it tends to be a day not only filled with awareness-raising activities but also a time to reflect and take stock. Am I doing all that I can for her? What can I do to help others in the special needs community? Again I go back to the theme with us not for us. World Down syndrome day.org says the message of with us not for us is key to a human rights based approach to disability. Moving on from the outdated charity model where people with disabilities were treated only as objects of charity deserving of pity and relying on others for support. I must say it has had me really thinking about what that means. Over the past few months I have attended a few panels and meetings on education, technology and the creative industries. Having a daughter who is neurodivergent that is her mind functions in a way not considered typical or normal. Our approach to her education also hasn't been typical and we have relied heavily on a creative curriculum and technology to give her the tools she needs and she's excelling. Her brother who is neuro typical or quote unquote normal has been a beneficiary by default and we have been able to pick up some of his difficulties via creative forms of learning. But wider than this we know that in Nigeria the educational system is flawed, severely outdated and culturally inappropriate for the Nigerian context. It is rigid, rote learning that is more about memorization than critical thinking, reasoning and the imagination. We don't look at an individual's child's needs to see how they learn but force them into a system to which many fall through the cracks for reasons such as poverty, access, neurodiversity, disability, corruption and more. I was shocked to learn from a panel hosted by Happy Lady Bird app that by 2030 Africa will have 1 billion children and 40% of that population will be Nigerian. Looking at the current state of education and employment we are sleepwalking into a full blown crisis in which the result will be dire for the nation. So what does this all have to do with down syndrome or special needs? Well government systems are slow to change but I think we can really learn from the neurodiverse approach to education. An example is chess in slums which is opening up education for marginalized children through chess. Children who have found themselves on the street or parents can't afford to send them to school or those labels as class or lodow and troublemakers are finding empowerment and their value through what many would consider just a game. Outside of agriculture, oil and gas we know that the future of the job market is in technology and the creative industries. We can already see what is happening in the FinTech space as well as our music and movies. If we are not preparing the children and youth for opportunities that lay ahead what are we preparing them for? Edmund Rice College says studies have shown that students need seven survival skills to be prepared for the 21st century for life for work and for citizenship. These are critical thinking and problem-solving, collaboration and leadership, agility and adaptability, initiative and entrepreneurialism, effective oil and written communication, accessing and analyzing information, curiosity and imagination. Creative arts are integral for the development of the identified skills needed for the 21st century and provide the logical conduit through which these capacities and related skills in both the social and emotional domains can be developed. For Nigeria, there are some rays of hope in programs like IDICE, Investment in Digital and Creative Enterprises from the African Development Bank and the Creative Industries Development Bill, that's CIDB, that we all need to be supporting in which access to funding, skills and training from early childhood are core aspects. There's a lot we can learn from the special needs community approach to education that we can apply on a wider scale for all our children. But we must put our ill-conceived notions and prejudices aside and remember, hashtag with us, not for us. It's big. This is a big topic. It is a big topic. You see, first of all, Nigeria has a problem of investing too little in education. That's one of our problems. I was looking at the cost per head, what is spent per head on education in, say, reverse state, one of our registers. I saw it was broken down to about 8,000 Naira per child. I mean, what's that going to do? In Lagos State here, I think the regular budget is about 240 billion or so, between 240 and 270 billion in the budget. But then you go to these schools and you find what is there. They even, the ambience and environment don't indicate it, that this amount is being spent. The quality of instruction, the quality of the teachers, very low. I mean, no lower middle class person can send his child to a Lagos public school. So you start with that. That means that when we talk of education, we talk of private school education in Nigeria now. For everyone, really, is that how you are going to develop? What you are doing is you are developing a small elite class and the masses can go where they want. This is in the south here. This is in the south where education was previously prioritized. You talk of the nuts. In the nuts, I mean, we still live in a world where you do have Quranic schools and there's nothing wrong with them. But are these students being taught Arabic? Are you teaching them physics in Arabic? Are you teaching them chemistry in Arabic? Because I would be okay if that's what you are doing. Or are you teaching them all these subjects in the indigenous language? Or are you just teaching them religion? I think President Jonathan tried to address all these topics and all that. So that's just for the normal child. Then you now come to the child with special needs for public schools. I'm not aware of any provision at all. There are actually provisions. It was actually put into laws about five years ago that the schools, government schools, must be inclusive. So there are provisions. You do have special needs units in public schools and things like that. But obviously they're severely underfunded. They're severely undertrained. And often what happens is that even if you have a teacher who wants to help these children and who is there for the passion of it, they don't have the capability because they're only one or two teachers, two many children. And so to take that time with that child or with those children is difficult. So they're usually in their own unit or they end up being in the back of the class or it's not as it was meant to be. But even with that aside, and we look at the state of things currently, what is being taught? Like if we say, okay, everything's working okay. Let's actually look at what they're actually being taught. Is this really setting them for life? It isn't. You're training them, you're educating them for like the 1980s and 1990s. You're not educating them to compete in a global economy. On a global market, you're going to churn out these students from school, from university who are not going to be able to get jobs. So there's this mass generation who are going to be unemployed. And what will happen? For me, it makes more sense that, okay, I do my best to send my child to whatever school I can. But if I'm bright, I will save money to make sure I have data, I can buy them a tablet, and I use internet and educate my child. There's YouTube. People are earning because they've gone to the university of YouTube. So you're finding these young children, well they're not young adults now, who are in the early 20s, they've gone down to the university. That's if they finished on time. And they can't find a job. But they've said they're on Twitter, right? They're on Instagram. And they're saying, oh, learn this could be a business analyst and earn this. And so they're like, okay, I can try and find where I can do these things for free, educate myself and see if I can get a remote worker, even get a decent job. And that's how I know some of the brighter ones who are realizing that they've just wasted their time in university are finding employment. They're going to educate themselves. So it's not only that, the system is old and poor. It is just irrelevant. So if we're going to have 40% of one billion children, that's people who are under 18, and we're educating them now, because we're in 2023, that's seven years time. We're educating them now in this way. What are we going to be doing with all of them? I would even say it's all irrelevant and regressing. Because the quality of education that I or you or him have, it's actually not the one our kids are having. When my kid was in school, I remember my own love as a child was literature and all that. So I was particular about in class one and two, what literature book we were reading. And then when I took his book up and I read it, it was about someone impregnating another person, and I said, this is completely inappropriate. Don't you have, Nigerians are writing good creative material that can be used for literature at that level in the school and all that. So I went to the vice principal of the school, got into a talk with him and all that. This is the one that the Ministry of Education recommends and all that. And we all know what happens. It's those that lobby them. So it's not only that it's old and irrelevant, it's regressing. It's what the State Ministry of Education wants them to know. Like you are hinting at that. The world is moving faster. You have robotics. You have IT being the first thing that easily a graduate can use to make money. That's why they go to YouTube and all that to develop those skills and all that. I like what you said, YouTube University, you can actually teach yourself how to do IT and all that. Maybe robotics is even a little more difficult because you need to be actually taught. But you can actually teach yourself to do IT. But what are, these are to have been what they were campaigning about in these situations. What are our governors, our local government people doing about, since IT is so lucrative now. What are they doing about incorporating it in school syllabus? But even if you are not doing that, because we have a large army of unemployed people that you use for this nonsense in elections. The President of France the other time, some years ago, I saw him opening a large cafe, a very cavernous place. What were they doing there? They said, okay, we'll bring the youth of the displaced youth of Paris into this place. We teach them IT. We want to match America. That's a dream. You raise a good point because our creative industries is really growing and growing at a rate where we do not have the capacity to fill those roles. And we have young people who are being educated as just not with stuff that's relevant. And we need those, we actually need those skilled workers. We need them. So it makes me happy that I'm seeing this creative industries development bill. I'm seeing the IDICE program. But I wish there was more. And CIDB might not even be passed. We're hoping it gets passed. At least it will set an example. But there needs to be so much more of that, like magnified to a huge scale. You know, I dream of all caves in schools, you know, children from age five were really having a creative curriculum as part of their program. Even if you don't change the school curriculum, because we know that it's hard to change, you can implement things using technology. You can implement things using, you know, the creative arts. You can teach them filmmaking, you can teach them visual arts, you can teach them creative writing, storytelling, storytelling. That is huge. We need to take ownership of our own stories. And we need to let these younger ones know how to find their voice and to find their stories. Because right now we are just absorbing everybody's other, you know, stories. Or they're going to come in and tell our stories for us. You know, that's the strategy that's happening. We can see all these Netflix and Googles and Amazon and I think the Indians are coming to, and which is great because it means, yes, there's more eyes on our creative industries. But at the same time, who's controlling the purse strings? Who's controlling the narrative? It's not us. So all this starts from education. From the very beginning of our education, when we send our children out to school, what are we teaching them? What are we telling them? What are the values? And then this spills into, it all comes from, or spills into is the chicken and egg thing in terms of the political environment. Right? Our educational system is a result of this political environment and corruption. But it's coming to a point where it's going to tip over, we can't come back. It's a big problem. I hear you when you say we make laws and all that. I'm a lawyer. So the thing that I say is code letters of law. Don't do anything for you. You can make the law, but if you are not implemented, even if you didn't make the law, you can still do what you are doing. Laws don't come and do it for you. So it would probably be more effective if you sit down and say, oh, we have how many, what's the population on the streets in Sayyaba? Okay. So what can we do for them? What are they doing? Okay, let's gather them together, give them a stipend, portray them in computer technology. Instead of the kind of thing they do now, give them rights and go and fight on the streets. But it's not only that. You look at people who are already working in that space, doing work in that space, right? So they're all these hubs, hubs that are working with literacy with children and storytelling with children, hubs that are impact hubs, creative hubs. And you give them what they need to grow. Exactly. I tell you, the people in this industry, the creative industry, the computer industry, the all these people, many people, they are willing to give their time. You should create the environment. If you say, oh, come once a week, we have this program. Can you fit in? Can you take? Oh, I mean, they will be excited. But there's no, we are not there thinking about these things. We are thinking about other things. Oh, I built a road. I provided water. I mean, in the 21st century, I'm a governor. I did road. I mean, I wouldn't name a governor. One of the richest is not, let me not name him. All he does is to take along with him a standing choir. He's opening a new road. He says he's bringing development. Is the road development? Is it not the people that are going to, if you keep, if you build London in Lagos and put on prepared people there, they will bring it down to the level of Lagos? You know, you haven't said much. You've been suspiciously quiet. Yeah, I'm part of the people with this right now. But, you know, I mean, there's not, there's not so much to say, because I believe it figures back to our value system, which will value. Why do these people who also try to keep Nigeria stripped and Nigeria impoverished, they send their kids to where they will get the creative curriculum, where they will get the kind of education that, you know, they are able to pretty much generate massive returns on investment? Why do we need to have all these ad hoc, you know, schools, tech schools and all those kind of things? Why shouldn't I learn about real entrepreneurship, right, in school? Why do I, you know, when they brought that to my school? I mean, luckily when I was living in school, and what would they call it entrepreneurship was just a sham. They just sent us to go and learn soap and a baba. And I'm just saying, it's not, it's wrong, but that wasn't really entrepreneurship. There's nothing creative about learning all of those things, right? You know, and we came back worse than we were we waited about, you know, a whole semester, you know, going to stay with his sewing dress or making soap or making liquid soap. Is that how we're going to compete? When they stand on the global stage, are you going to compete with that? Is that what we're talking about at, at, you know, age five? It's also going to be about artificial intelligence, robotics, you know, and big stuff, big data. Yeah. And then we're talking about soap making. Is that what we're talking about? So that just tells you the decadence, right? And for me, I think it brings us back to the value system. What do we truly value as a nation? You know, I believe that we have the resources to really transform education. I must give it to Mr. Peter Ruby, you know, who had done some really incredible work when I was a governor. But I know that there's still a lot of work to do with education and even come into a special needs student. We've not even been able to figure out our education on a normal level. So how do we even really think about, when you're saying these things like, you're, you're speaking like an alien. What are you saying? Are you in this country? Right? I think when we come back to the drawing board and really decide what education is in the grand scheme of things in our nation, then we can truly begin to fund because where your treasure is, that's where your heart is going to be. So the things that we fund determines our value system. We don't fund. There isn't a value put on education at all. Like it's, and I think it's deliberate so that people can remain impoverished. So they can't think beyond a certain level. So they don't rise up, you know, to the opposition or rise up. Because once real education is, you know, being liberated from the things that hold you back. And once we can rise above it, and that's why in Nigeria lives to another country, and they are smashing, they're doing great things. So I think it's not really about being a Nigerian. If it's about being a Nigerian, we're going to be failing on the global level. It's really about that enabling environment, enabling system, driving policies, and truly determining where do we put education on a global scale, on a pendulum, where is education. And if we don't, if we don't have that simple conversation, all of these big words mean nothing. It means nothing. So we need to really decide where do we put education, and that will determine where the funding go and where the attention go to. We'll come back to that. Mr. Comeback, I can say we've come back. All right. That's the much we can take on creative curriculum. That was a very great one by Tonya. So Stephen is going to be joining us after the break to talk about the Goban interior elections. Please stay with us.