Resolved: The Absence of Somalis from Higher Ed

by Abdirizak Mohamed
Thursday, August 21, 2008

The comparisons were inevitable. The Chinese. The Indians. Legend has it they excel at education. So it was inevitable that many readers of my last piece cited the golden boys of higher education in North America. Mine was an attempt to harness our own reputation of being the It Girl of Africa. In essence Africa’s Chindians[1]. But I will take the invocation. It suggests all hope is not lost if we’re inspiring to be “like Mike” and not contempt on being the sixth man. Not that there is any thing wrong with being the sixth man. But the top of the cream is better than the whole of the cream. The initial taste, the tinkling, the yearning for more of it. You would agree, wont’cha?

Somalis ought to learn one or two things from these groups, suggested many readers. I couldn’t have agreed with them more. The emphasis on education, the overt pressure on the young to do better, the shoot for the stars attitude. It is all an open secret.  At least word on the street has it that way. It’s the bread-and-butter of their everyday conversation. The ticket out of “refugee” and “immigrant” brand so omnipresent in greater America. The anti-dose of scrapping dirt at that Hampton Inn just off Highway 94.

One reader said, “It’s the environment, stupid![2]” Well said, I thought. Certainly research on student learning backs him up. So is common sense. Think of the Chinese family demanding from their daughter nothing but first-rate academic performance. Such was the case back home before chaos and disorder became the reality of Somali politics. The old days at Baarbe Secondary School! It is so yesterday and yet so far away. I remember them well. My parents did not understand my babblings in the foreign language of my science classes, my audible readings of the process of cell mitosis and division, that hair-pulling all nighter problem on Euler’s formula and exponential functions and my cries over physics problem related to something about how haddii ilays lagu ifiyo muraayad golxo leh xagasha rogaal celintu waxay lid dadban ku tahay isha ileyska. I think we’re supposed to figure out precisely at which angle the light will be reflected or something. This was all yibrish and yada yada.

When it came though to my grades and my ability to finish my laylis, all options were on the table, nuclear or otherwise. My parents did foot my bill to that after school private, the famed Dhakalow near Kasa Bal-balare, while a constant stream of baqshiish from here and there paid the fees to Iqra Institute in Madina. Two afternoons at Iqra. Two afternoons at Dhakalow. Life was good until a dark cloud appeared on the horizon one day while on my way to Dhakalow. The bus made a U-turn at benadir hospital and the howls all over Mogadishu on that night were relentless. But you get the picture of how our parents back home valued education. Mine weren’t unique, just one of the many. In the trenches of western land Somali parents are still committed to education but the rules of the game have changed on them.

For the moment switch your frame of observation to a Somali family setting in an apartment complex at Dixon Road in Etobicoke[3] and tell me what you see. Contempt with going to school? You Betcha. Questions related to agenda for graduating? Not so much. The nature of courses one is taking to ensure graduating? Say Wha! Questions in the mold of whach ya’ gonna do with that degree once you got it? Nonexistent. Here in lies the problem. A cognitive dissonance of sort. Mind you, conversations need not be elaborate, just a quick peek into one’s progress and future goals. As one reader put it, “When students are encouraged and molded to achieve and dream beyond their means, expectations are met and exceeded.” A little probing now and then will go long way in this molding business and raising the bar high.

And so trickled in a litany of diagnosis for our ills, the reasons of our absence from academia too obvious to many. The emerging picture was complex, the issues one too many, all “interrelated,” as one reader put it. But the verdict of why very few of our graduates go beyond the bachelor degrees was unanimous (many thanks to your wonderful input). Here are the highlights of what many told me:

§         Somali students lack role models to look up to when it comes to the higher ed world

§         There is a “lack of support or forethought within Somali families to encourage their young not only to get their BA's and B.S.'s but also to strive for better educational attainment”

§         There is “complacent attitude towards education” even as early as school-age that “continues until these kids grow up and graduate from high school, college and so forth”

§         Our absence from the STEM field (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) is a major handicap of why Somali students do not progress beyond the bachelor degrees. As one reader put it, this is a “deciding factor” and a good indicator of “future opportunities including job prospects and graduate education”. I happen to agree with him boqolkiiba boqol. And I agree with his proposed solution:

                             “A solution to this problem would be to encourage Somali students to challenge themselves when giving the opportunity to attend college by deciding to major in what I call "durable majors" such as engineering, mathematics and the sciences where opportunities for graduate school and research dollars are constantly available.”

Uh, the “truthiness” of the diagnosis and the invisibility of Somali talents! Right on folks. Couldn’t have said it better. See, we got the talent, the brain. But something is amiss. The grim stats still stare at us with disdain at ninety-degree angel. The stats. Those too dribbled in like snowflakes. The good, the bad, and the ugly. We as Somalis sometimes focus too much on the bad and the ugly and not so much on the good. So, for a change, lets start with the good. One reader informed me how at his flagship university located in northeastern town of about 8000 people with a single Somali family there are twenty-five Somali students! Right, in a small American town with a single Somali family, there are twenty-five Somali students enrolled in a flagship university. More excitedly, drop out is negligible and the university churns out a minimum of two grads per year! Way to go.

And then there were the magic moments, like the reader who reminded me how just few years back a valedictorian from Ohio State University was none other than a broad Somali sister with biochem degree at hand. Bravo. Another student informed me that he always knew he’d pursue PhD studies in biochemistry, period. Perhaps I was too pessimistic about the dried pipeline to higher ed[4]. A cynic, one might say. There is hope after all. Sadly at the other end of the spectrum laid the ugly and the bad. One reader reminded me “[when it comes to] the percentage of high school graduates that enrolled in post secondary education - Somalis ranked last in Toronto.” Others reminded me how my arguments hold water not only in North America but also in Europe and elsewhere where Somalis resettled. Not a good feeling.

Some respondents chided me for demanding more post-baccalaureate Somali students. One suggested there are already enough of these folks roaming around the world. We got the Samatars, the Gedis, the Galeydhs and the Ibrows. Problem is many of these folks are old generation. Like baby boomer generation old. So, at the risk of being preachy, self-obsessed guru, let me say “time for baby boomer generation to move aside.” Move on. Gen Y, this is our time. This, our moment. Why aren’t you SOYG (scholar of your generation)? If the Samatars and the Galeydhs’ of Somalia are scholars of their generation, why aren’t we scholars of our generation? Out with the old, in with the new. Lets turn the page. Shall we? I know, I know. I should’ve text messaged you via blueberry but I heard some “white-haired” dudes read HOL! So why not kill two birds with the same stone. You got me? All I am sayin’ is we got the talent, the brains … so, lets freshen up our roaster.

Besides, our problems are multifaceted and demand fresh minds. The old guard will always look our problems through the prism of their world. Ours is a different world. The problems of malaria, tuberculosis[5] and cholera are still with us. The medicines to treat them? The same old tired line from a half-century-old. I heard autism is becoming an issue among Somalis, but at least that is one problem we can hope some western dude to figure out a cure for or how to deal with it since it is not only a disease of the poor and the poverty-stricken. For tuberculosis, cholera, parasite-caused diseases? It is all in our hands. The old guard hasn’t solved them for us and their solution awaits us.

It is still a puzzle to me why we have so many students and yet so few graduates with bachelor degrees and a negligible number in higher education. This picture needs to change and we ought to start the process of re-engineering how we obtain education. Encouragement from family members, whether parents or older brothers and sisters, would go a looong, loong way. It did in my case. Without the encouragement of my older brothers, without their constant probing, without the watchful eyes of my sisters … without my family support and their trust in me, I would have been nobody. So, Somalis, drop the complacent attitude and start encouraging our “young not only to get their BA's and B.S.'s but also to strive for better educational attainment.”

Thanks for reading.

Abdirizak Mohamed
E-mail: [email protected]