NIGERIA EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IS HEADING
TOWARDS WATER LOO
Education is said to be the bed
rock on which sustainable and intellectual development of a country is been
built, hence high cognizant is being given to the educational sector of a
nation, most especially for the developing country.
Nigeria being among the third world
country so to say has in no wise embraced this particular tenancy of education
as the basis of the nation’s development. However the effect of the colonial
master’s on the Nigerian society has not helped the situation anyway because as
at the time they were fully with us, we were made to believe that we are in
deep darkness and in a kind of slavery of our own indigenous culture, hence
western education was prescribe as the only sustainable measure to get out of
the acclaimed darkness and slavery. This has in no wise eaten deep into the
subconscious mind of majority of Nigerian citizens. Suffices to say that the
major responsibility that parents believed they owe their children or ward is
education and all other thing is secondary.
The value of education to both individual and the society
cannot but be over emphasized as it helps one to develop both mentally and
physically, it also fosters the provision of sustainable solutions to human
need.
However, education in contemporary
Nigerian society has witness a lot of immense progress which can be said to be
the necessary cause of the level of development that the nation has witnessed
till date. It will be unfair to overlook
some salient occurrence within the educational sector which are affecting the
growth and development of the nation and if proper cautions are not being
taken, our educational fence as a nation will become rubbles. However, I have decided
to run a quick and critical analysis of some of this happening from cradle to
the tertiary level.
First, the primary school education
is believed to form the foundation on which a great future will be built upon,
but just as the Holy Scriptures say, “if the foundation is faulty, what can the
righteous man do”. The high rate of
primary and secondary schools in Nigeria without proper government monitoring
as given the coming generation a very weak foundation to build their career
upon. It is not a gain saying that most private primary and secondary school do
not really allow children to fail even when they fail, they don’t allow their
students to repeat just because they are scared of loosing kids. Government
schools which should serve as a bailout has more crises than one can imagine,
ranging from teachers strike, over population shortage of staffs among other
predicaments. However, any children who is ask to repeat or withdrawn from any
government school receives warm reception by this private school, hence we
create more of a moist foundation for our children than we can imagine, I am
not saying private schools are bad but nevertheless we should be careful of the
private school that we take our children to as we have a lot of private schools
in the nation that are just after making of profit.
Furthermore, both parents, teachers and
schools are creating more career problems for the upcoming generation than they
can imagine, the expose the young kids majorly to big named courses so to say
like medicine, law, accounting, engineering, among other popular courses,
making the mind of this young children to be very narrow-minded and have a very
myopic view about their future, most kids in SS2, SS3, do not know that courses
like early childhood education, education management, German, history and international
relations, philosophy, plant science and bio-technology , among other low name
courses exist in our tertiary institutions because we have held a myopic view that only
those who study those so called big named course can be great or be wealthy in
life, no wonder such courses are always being crowded in terms of number of
people selecting them as preferred choice, hence when this children could not
meet up to the demands of those big name courses or cannot get admitted into
such courses, they get other course reluctantly without proper vision about the
course. The reaper caution is we having a lot of frustrated graduate who just
want to do any job on the street, just because they have never had plans for
the course they end up studying in the school since they were not properly
enlightened from their early days in school to see success in life outside
course of study but passion and determination. If a child has the knowledge of
Yoruba education since the JSS classes and was encourage to study it, such
child would probably have started thinking about how he/she will go about it
after graduating or building a career round it so early, but its unfortunate
that over emphasis on big named course without opening our kids eye to other
courses that they can easily build a career around. If this is not corrected
most young admission seekers will end up becoming like most Nigeria
undergraduate who don’t know why they are studying a course except what their
lecturer tells them. Let them understand their future themselves, do not
persuade them against their wish or force them to study a particular course,
give your children and students very wide options and knowledge to choose from.
Readers they say are leaders, on
the basis of this particular axiom, the only secret to success has been
basically reading, however, without any form of doubt, we have had people who
read and study hard for examination without haven results that collaborate with
the effort they have put in. the reasons are not farfetched, we emphasis
reading but we do not encourage group discussion among students to share ideas
on what they have read. Parents and teachers encourages students to read but
they do not allow or call them to teach what they have read, research has shown
that when you allow someone to teach or talk about what he/she has read, it
becomes difficult for such a person to forget what was taught and it build
confidence in a child as well as making them to understand what have read. Also
you will agree with me that we remember what we hear longer than what we read,
hence, just as reading culture is being encouraged, listening and group
discussion among pupils should be encouraged as well.
Also, the attitude of teachers and
lecturers setting limitation on the score of student before even marking is barbaric, if a work is
over 20, and the markers will have assume nobody can score more than 15 out of
20 without even knowing what a child might right, I ask a fundamental question,
is it a crime for a child to score 19 or 20 out of 20 in a written exam, while
should some teachers believe that some grades cannot be attained in their
subject, all this constitute what I call academic ignorance and intellectual
nuisance.
I will not be shying away from the
very fact that the secret of every invention rest in the indigenous language,
contemporary Nigerian parents do not encourage their child to speak their indigenous
language even at home, no wonder Nigerians are starving in terms of critical
inventions, I believe that students would understand Mathematics, physics,
chemistry among others science subjects if they are being thought in their indigenous
language, for instance, if 2+2 is being thought in Yoruba, Igbo, etc, let’s say
because of the diversity in Nigeria we have to uphold our Lingual-Franca but
parents should encourage their kids to speak indigenous language at home, so
that it can help them mentally, let’s stop intellectual enslavement, let people
teach them and explain to them using their indigenous language at home if the
school will not allow that.
At this junction, before I drop my
pen, I will like to as a fundamental question,” Is it the same physics,
chemistry, mathematics etc that are being thought in the western countries
which enables them to construct airplanes, cars, ship that is being though in Nigeria?” Because I wonder why
Nigerian scientist and engineer are not springing forth with new inventions or
manufacturing of engines and equipment. Parents
who are very much aware of the deficiencies of their ward academically who go
ahead to find short root for them are doing nothing but destroying their life
let our educational system follow the right path.
On a final note, I implore that all this critical aspect
should be look into to avoid our educational system from heading towards
waterloo.
ESAN OLUWATOBI DAVID
LIVING LEGEND
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