The Mayflower School: Nigeria's first and only secular school

[the_future_modernes]

1962 Time Magazine article Education: Free Thought in Nigeria

"The moment we all become gentlemen, this country is dead," says Nigerian Schoolmaster Tai Solarin. As founder of the Mayflower School in Ikenne, Western Nigeria, he is dedicated to destroying the educated Nigerian's British-bred notion that the ideal product of education is a black gentleman in a white collar.

When his first 70 boys arrived five years ago, Solarin told them to start building the school with their own hands. They were startled, but Solarin's infectious enthusiasm got them hewing and hauling. From a one-room hut, Mayflower by last week had grown to 35 white-washed buildings with 400 primary and secondarystudents. *

Headmaster Solarin, who is about 40 (he does not know his exact age), grew up in a family of Methodists. He taught in mission schools, flew as a navigator in the R.A.F. in World War II, earned de grees at the universities of Manchester and London. Soon after he returned home in 1952 with an English wife, Solarin was in trouble. As principal of a boys' secondary school, he was expected to cane boys for failure to attend church. He refused and quit his job.

With the Pilgrims in mind, Solarin hied off to the bush to start Mayflower School. Until the boys finished the first housing, the Solarins slept on the schoolroom floor and the boys on the school porch. Since then each new class has built its own dormitory. Also blossoming is academic quality: Mayflower is one of the few schools in Nigeria that make biology, chemistry and physics compulsory. And now the students include girls—an innovation in Nigeria, where women rarely go beyond primary school.
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Mayflower School was founded by noted Nigerian atheist and human rights activist Tai Solarin, who died in 1994 and his wide Shelia:


Tai Solarin: His Life, Ideas, and Accomplishments (1995)

For nearly forty years, Dr. Solarin has persistently fought for free and compulsory education (from first grade through high school) for all Nigerian children [29]. He established the Mayflower School on January 27, 1956, and seventy students attended that year. By 1992, the attendance at Mayflower had expanded to 1,900, including over 800 girls [30]. The Mayflower Junior School had 1,300 resident students as well as 300 day students by 1992, and both schools are so much in demand that parents petition the Nigerian minister of education to get their children in [31]. Tai chose "Mayflower" as the name for his school after the name of the ship sailed by the Pilgrims in 1620, because it evoked images of escaping persecution for a new life of freedom. "It was to be a school for all children," Tai said, "discriminating against none." [32]

The original Mayflower is a full high school (junior and senior grades) [33]. In Ogun state, there are over five hundred comparable schools, and Mayflower has ranked first among them all for the past fifteen years. Some have suggested that it may be among the top ten high schools in all of Nigeria. The parents of attending students love the school so much that they raised their own funds to build new classrooms and purchase desks and chairs to fill them [34]. American humanist Norm Allen, Jr., in 1995 the Executive Director of African-Americans for Humanism and Public Relations Director for Free Inquiry magazine, visited Tai's school in 1991, and was very impressed with what he saw there. He later wrote of the experience: "I was immediately impressed by the seriousness and dedication of the students. Secular messages stressing the importance of education and self-reliance were posted all over the walls of the school. Everyone seemed inquisitive and eager to learn." [35] MORE

Dude, he actually suggested that English replace all the various other languages of Nigeria? *side-eyes*


Solarin wins N2m in game show

86-year-old Sheila Solarin, wife of renouned late human rights activist and author, Tai Solarin, has dedicated the N2 million she won on popular television quiz game show, ‘Who Deserves to be a Millionaire’, to new laboratory equipment for her school, Mayflower Schools, Ikenne, Ogun State.MORE,/a>

Is it me or does this BBC article act like Sheila did all the work and her husband was just an adjunct? I am sorry she's suffering from Parkinsons though...

Nigerian school's 50-year success

Sheila met her husband while both were in the forces following the World War II.

In 1952 they decided to move to his native Nigeria, and both worked in a high school.

But they disagreed with the politics of the day and religious discrimination in schools, and decided to build their own in a town called Ikenne.

Using breeze blocks made from clay, they constructed two classrooms, each able to accommodate 36 pupils.

Sheila said: "They had their bunks at the back of the class, and the desks at the front.

"We didn't ask anybody what their ethnic background or religion was, we simply wanted to provide an education for all the children in the area."


The school became more popular, and Sheila and her husband were forced to extend, making it one of the biggest in the country.

They even made the furniture on site, much of it using wood from trees Sheila planted herself. MORE