Dan Beaton’s Report on his Critical Thinking Workshops in Nigeria (October 2021)

Delivery of goods

Classroom resources were delivered to James Terungwa, including laminated handouts, pens, and projector for use in delivery of CT workshops in Benue State. Humanist Global t-shirts (sponsored by Contrado) were given to educators to take back to their respective states.

Meeting with Amina 24/10/2021

Discussion of situation with Mubarak Bala. Recommended course of action: as Nigerian authorities and governors are refusing to respond, maybe Humanist International could apply legal pressure on Facebook whose platform, in part, led to his detainment.

CT Workshop 1: 25/10/2021

This workshop took place at a standard comprehensive in Zuba. The class of 35 was a mixed age group school, including primary and secondary students. They undertook the new 13+ curriculum as found here completing lessons 1 (beliefs and justifications) and lesson 2 (questioning superstition).

The superstitious beliefs drawn into question included the belief that a woman lying on the road is likely a witch who has fell from the sky. Also, the belief that money would grow when planted were compared to more probable explanations. Students were shown how easy it is to trick people into believing supernatural claims through manipulation.

Note: The workshops are difficult to deliver if populated by students from too wide an age range. Ideally workshops should be aimed at 13-year-olds and over.

CT workshop 2 (26.10.2021)

The following day we completed an additional CT session on medical interventions (found here). In this lesson, students used ‘object prompts’ recently developed by the London Science Museum giving learners a sense of how concepts of medicine and healing have changed over time -- from highly ineffectual charms to the development of vaccines. By the end of the session students could identify the types of justification which folk treatments relied upon (personal experience and confirmation bias) and authority/testimony ( a folk belief is simply based on from generation to generation without rigorous testing).

After examining a range of historic and alternative prophylactics and remedies (from rabbit’s feet and statues of healing gods/saints) and comparing these to local folk beliefs most students could identify that the best solutions to disease out breaks are those using modern medical interventions such as PPE and vaccination.

The next session was on nutrition. We promoted a return to traditional African diets over Western fast-food diets. Students tasted healthy snack alternatives and made a health pledge. Students were shocked to discover Coca Cola is not a nutritional requirement.

Note: the teachers requested junk food for the students, but I refused to permit this because it went completely against what we were teaching.

Training (28.10.2021)

Due to inability to secure a school in time, James and I spent this day on training, reviewing resources, etc. Discussion points: cultural problems in understanding examples used in slides and how to integrate SDGs into our curriculum.

Sexual health workshop (29.10.2021)

The second school was in Madalla, Abuja. The school staff seemed quite resistant to critical thinking due to concerns it focused on religion and might undermine faith. I was subjected to hostile interrogation by a Muslim teacher. He said he will not tolerate anything that undermines the word of god.’ I replied that I was unclear as to which god he was referring to and that a true religion has nothing to fear from the pursuit of truth. He then claimed that truth is relative and human reason cannot be trusted.

Given the grilling, we instead focused on sexual education. This was a large group of around 70-80 students. We explored the impact of STIs, the concepts of consent and the impact of unplanned pregnancies on parents, the child, and the broader community. All this was done under the caveat that sex is not a shameful act. This class was led by Amina with James Terungwa attending as part of training. The class were highly engaged and could detect myths about sex. There was a prize giving at the end of this session, including clothes and sanitary products.

In my future trips I will make secure schools in advance. We also need a generic description to email or WhatsApp to the schools, so they know exactly what Critical Thinking is in advance.

Future suggestions

• Obtain UN funding if we can segue with SDGs. Overheads quickly spiralled when relying on taxis to get to school. Also when everyone demands to be paid for us teaching.

• Gift giving to all students can cause classroom chaos. I think simply distributing sanitary products and maybe some stationary is better.

• The contact details of Humanist Global Charity are needed on the slides.

P.S I would like to thank the Gardners Trust for the Blind who helped with cost toward my portable ergonomic solution teaching solution, which enabled me to complete my work overseas.