Literature and National Security: The Almajeri Education in Nigeria

Abstract

In the twenty-first century, the study of literature must reflect the dynamics of society. In other words, there has to be a way in which literature, in refining our faculties and heightening our sensibility, must be functional –that is, the knowledge of the scholar of literature must not only be concrete and practical, but also applicable. Training in engineering and technology-based subject is geared towards producing graduates who will eventually engage in practical things, using tools and skills. Quite unlike training in engineering and technology, training in literary education demands also practical engagement, but not with tools but instead with knowledge: Years of preoccupation with texts mean being exposed to information –what might be termed here to be macro information on cultural types, political, religious, historical, sociological, philosophical and human psychological types. The objective of this paper is to examine how literature could be concrete and practical and how its information types could be transformed into knowledge and how the knowledge could be applied in life’s various situations, especially how it could be useful in the awakening of the consciousness of the Almajiri in Northern Nigeria and make them partners in driving of social change in Nigeria. John Dewey’s philosophical theory of Instrumentalism is required to make this possible. John Dewey had theorised that human thoughts could be channelled into focused power and directed specifically at identifying problems and providing solutions. The methodological approach is inductive, deductive, interpretive and scientific in the sense of closely observing texts and initiating an interactive process between the texts and the mind so that John Dewey’s philosophical theory of Instrumentalism