Why Studying History in Schools is Important – History Teacher, Caroline Ogbaji

Mrs Caroline Ogbaji is the Deputy Head Teacher of Senior School and History teacher at Holy Child College Ikoyi. She has been in the school since 2001. She has a BSc in History and an MSc in Education Leadership and Financial Management.

She is a dedicated educator with a passion for self-development and also committed to empowering students and fostering growth in humanitarian and social work experience which she thrives in as a Rotarian.

A few days back, City People Journalist, Benprince Ezeh (08068599879) had a chat with her at the College’s 2024 Funfair and she explained why studying History in schools is important. Below are the excerpts from the chat.

Tell us a little story about the Holy Child College

Okay. Holy Child College is an all-girls school and it was founded in 1945 by the Society of Holy Child Jesus. It is an all-girls school that believes in the totality of a child, ensuring that the girl child is given the education she needs, and not just the education, but treating the child as a child that will help society in the future. So the philosophy of the Holy Child entails the fact that we believe in the totality of the child, (ensuring that the talents, the intellectuals, and affections of the child are molded and are harnessed so that the child or the girl child becomes a useful member of the society in the future and contributes to our quota. And this has been on since 1945. Like I said, by next year, we’ll be 80 years old and we are celebrating it in style. So that’s basically what Holy Child is about. And to the great glory of God, the school has produced a lot of prominent names in society. You know, we have the first federal permanent secretary in the federal government, the late Francesca Emanuel, she was an old girl from Holy Child College. We have distinguished and renowned actors like Joke Silva, who’s also a part of Holy Child. We have Ibidun Allison, former Amebo of our Village Headmaster, and Sisi Clara, all these are people who passed through this school. And we have the recent ones. We have Jemima Osunde. She’s also an artist who also passed through this school. And we have the women of substance who are doing well in the engineering sector, in commerce, and you name it, you know. And I’m proud to be part of this great family and I’ve been on it since 2001. This will be my 24th year in the school. I’m so honoured to have trained over 2,000 students who have passed through me. And if you go to my Facebook page, I have about 1,500 of them. I follow up on what they are doing and they are all excelling in their various life endeavours. So I’m very happy that I’m part of this great family.

Just like what you just said, being here for 24 years is not a day thing. So which position exactly are you holding in the school?

I started as a teacher here in 2001, but by the grace of God, I’ve risen to the height of the Deputy Head Teacher Senior School of this great institution. And I started with teaching history. Because I love the classroom, I’m still teaching history. Even though I’m now a member of the management staff, I’m still teaching this because I believe in imparting knowledge to the students.

This brings us back to the history thing. There was a time, or should I say two years back, when the federal government banned the teaching of history, then, what were you teaching the students?

The beautiful thing about Holy Child College is that we know the importance of history. So in as much as the government didn’t take it important to know our history, we as a college believe in the fact that a society without history is as good as dead. And so we always, in fact, there was a time we made history compulsory for all the SS1 students, then when you get to SS2, you can change to other subjects. So even as much as history was not relevant in other areas when the government prohibited it, we had always taught history in Holy Child College. And so it has always been part of us. And I’m glad that the government has seen it important to introduce it now to the junior secondary schools and even the primary schools. And so now the junior secondary schools, GS1 to 3, all offer history. In senior secondary schools, they take it as an elective. But the students, even though history is an elective, a lot of them still want to study history or take it as an elective. I even have science students in my class who are also doing history.

What advice would you give to a person who wants to study history and become a historian?

Yes, the good thing about history is that it improves the critical thinking of a child, their ability to reason, and to determine what is good and bad. And again, with the teaching of history, they have come to realize that Nigeria also had a past. The kind of mentality a lot of people have about history or the history of Nigeria was when the Europeans came in the 15th century, but there was a civilization before the 15th century. We had the great Norse civilization, the Ife arts, and the Benin culture. These are civilizations; we have the Sefawa dynasty of the Kanem-Bornu empire. These are empires that existed 1,000 years ago, even before the Europeans knew where Africa was. And these were places where they even had streetlights at that time. The famous Benin Empire had a streetlight as far back as the 13th century. And yet the Europeans will come and tell us we don’t have history or that we are barbaric. But with the study of history and with what we have taught our students, they have come to realize that Nigeria also participated in the early Stone Age. They had a civilization and they advanced from one stage to another. For instance, the early man in Nigeria started as a hunter and a gatherer of fruits. From there he emerged as a farmer, a storekeeper, and he started taking care of his environment. But the Europeans want us to believe that Nigerians in those days were cavemen, they were barbarians. But with the study of history, our students have come to realize that the stories that were told by the Europeans were distorted. And so these have been corrected by our teachers of history. And so I’m happy again, as I said, that history has been introduced back to the schools.

Can you tell us about the activity going on in the school now…funfair? When we were in secondary school, we didn’t do things like this, what we celebrated in schools then was graduations or end-of-the-year parties, but this one I’m seeing, I think this is a little bit over that. Tell us about it.

Funfair in Holy Child College has been like a tradition, this was introduced in the college when I started teaching here in 2001 after the government handed back the school to the mission schools. We introduced the funfair. And what is the purpose of this funfair? I think it’s a time when the students are allowed to enjoy themselves, to bond with their families, like a family picnic. So we allow parents, like this school is more of a boarding school, so this is the time when parents come with their siblings.

Does it have day?

Boarding and day students. But we have more boarders because a lot of parents, the school run, the traffic and everything, prefer their children to be in the boarding house. Yes, like I was saying about the funfair. So this funfair enables students and parents to bond and they can enjoy themselves after one year of stress from January to December. So it’s kind of a period of unwinding, bonding, and enjoying each other and the season of Christmas also. So we always do it the first week of December or the second week of December to also usher in Christmas. it’s a great event in the college that we always look forward to. And this year’s one is special because it’s geared towards the 80th anniversary of the school. So a lot of students are very privileged and happy to be part of the event.

Something I noticed again is that students are meant not to hold cash. They changed it to voucher, what led to that decision?

Yes, we decided to use vouchers to prevent one, their tickets, and their money from being stolen, accountability because we have different vendors who come in here to sell things. So we preferred they collect the vouchers after which we’ll be the ones to give them their cash to encourage their uniformity among themselves and to also control what is sold and what is not sold.

As a parent wanting to start school for their daughter, what are the benefits Holy Child would give her?

In Holy Child College, the academy is very important, your child must be sound, but we are not the type of school that requires the child to be 80% in our admission. Our pass mark is 60%. But we believe that Intellectual or academic is not enough to move a child in this 21st century. So in Holy Child College, we harness the totality of that child. We talk about the academics, we talk about their psychomotor and their affective motor. We unleashed the talent in that child. We see that every child is unique. If the child is not too strong in academics, she might be good in sports, she might be good in music. So whatever the child is good at, we bring it out. So that by the time the child leaves the Holy Child, six years or three years after staying in the Holy Child, you are useful to yourself. You don’t say that after going to university, you’re out of university, you don’t have a job. You can provide a job for yourself because you have been equipped with what it takes to be a Holy Child student. And that is why a lot of our students are doing very well out there. And we expose them to various conferences. We go to conferences like the Model UN Conference in Abuja, in the UK, in Switzerland, in France. Right now, we are planning a conference for Switzerland and France next year, in April. And we are going to take a lot of students there. So we expose them to these things so that at the end of the day, they are complete and they can finish so well, especially in this 21st century, when everyone has to be a global citizen. If you want to survive here, you need your critical thinking skills. You have to be digitally literate. You have to be a critical thinker. And you have to be able to be a problem solver. And these are the things we imbibe in our students.

For non-Christians, like Muslims, can they practice their religion or would they be of this particular religion?

This a catholic mission school. In admission, we ask the parents, what do you want from the college? they will say, we want a morally upgraded child, a child that has the fear of God. And we say, okay, you are a Muslim, so what do you want? This is a Christian school. How do you want to encourage your child to be a Muslim as well if she is in a Catholic school? The truth is that we do everything the Catholic way here. Alright. We don’t enforce our Catholicism on any child. When it’s time for mass, every child goes for mass. When it’s time for procession, every child goes for that. We do everything. But we don’t force the child to change to a Catholic or a Christian. Alright. By the time the child is going through all these things we are seeing in school, and the child says, hey, I would like to be a Catholic, we don’t even accept. We need to call the parents. We tell the parents; that their child has shown interest and that she wants to do this. Do you want her to go ahead? Some parents will say yes. Some parents will say no. And so we stay by it. We don’t force any child. But the thing is that this school is channeled towards the Catholic doctrine and our philosophy. And that’s what we follow. We have a lot of Muslims here; they don’t mind the philosophy we give them. But the thing is that we don’t change their religion. Alright. They can be what they want to be once they leave the walls of the school, they go home, they practice their Islam, they practice their Protestantism, whatever they are engaged in. We have a lot of Protestants here, Anglicans, Catholics. So we don’t discriminate. But it’s just that we do our things in a Catholic way. Because it’s our school, that’s the way we run it.