The idea of developing a nation
without education is surrealism.For any community to be transformed, education
must be considered a basic necessity.Education possesses the trans-formative
power to spread across the whole hog of any nation and for a country like ours;
it can offer the much sought development. This grain of truth is consolidated
by Nelson Mandela’s words, “education is the most powerful tool which can be
used to change the world”.Nigerian writer, Ujunwa Atueyigave a hint on
the potency of education, prescribing it as the antidote to the challenges in all
the constituent sectors of the country.With
this knowledge, the thought of the slipshod state of our educational system becomes
perplexing.The question of ‘why education is considered dispensable’ remains a
myth. The closest thing to an answer is the hypothesis that the dilution of the
educational quality in Nigeria is a ploy to limit the level of exposure of the
naively educated.
Education,
the repressed transformation tool, is continually drained of its potency by acts
of botchery and self-interest. An evidence is the fact that the field of the
nation is grassed by a multitude of ‘government approved’ institutions of
knowledge, yet the signs of education are missing. This conundrum raises ashes
of questions such as; what we call education, is it really educating or just a
paper religion?According to Malcolm X, our pose object is no guarantee of
education. He opined that “because you have colleges and universities does not
mean you have education”. Ralph Waldo Emerson gave a near definition of our
schooling system. He said “we are students of words, we are shut up in schools
and college-and recitation rooms for ten to fifteen years, and come out at last
with a bag of wind, a memory of words and do not know a thing.”
The
major problem of our educational sector is that it is consistently victimized
and robbed of its essence by an array of adverse occurrences.In our educational
sector, the outcry of poor facilities grows louder, while the redundancy of our
curriculum grows to gather noise of its own. Our schools have become regular
venue for strike actions. Corruption, malpractices and scandals have all added
to the cacophony in the system. The state of the system has denigrated to the
point that a cloud of doubt readily hangs over the future of Nigerian
graduates. To survive the wind outside school walls, graduates need to get
educated elsewhere. For the mass of graduates that cannot afford educational
tourism, the other available education is given by the streets. Some have
considered this a more effective and useful learning process to schooling.
However,this is not a case of options but a portent for Nigeria as a nation.The
quiz for our educators is; how valid are our units of measuring educational
quality? Some ministries grade the competence of teachers solely on the
performance of their students in external examinations. Then, all the teacher
has to do is to ensure the students pass the examination regardless of the
method. This has led some teachers to provide answers for students during
examinations and to indulge in other forms of malpractices to scale high on the
ministries’ record.
The
defect in the educational system deepens with the high level of career
misplacement suffered by our graduates. The foundation of this problem is at the
point of course selection, which is usually nomadic. For a lot of Nigerian
students, it is not uncommon to crowd certain "big" courses such as
Law, Medicine, Engineering. The myopic way of glorifying some courses and
considering some others as less important can be put forward as the major cause
of career misplacement. This product of illusion shares the blame with the harsh
economic conditions to put the unemployment rate at its current scary level.One
way to correct this menace is to create an atmosphere of course equality that
does not restrict students to considering course prospects only. Interest and
suitability should also be factored in. This way, a better pattern of career
choices making can be registered. This would cure the problems of course
crowding since course diversity would mean more opportunity spacing in the
society.
Conclusively,
the bad face of our educational system should not be cosmetic but thoroughly
treated. Not treatment as regards the bombardment of students with theories and
laws but the use of essential elements of education to concentrate the quality
of our education. Most importantly, the roles of mentorship and tutelage should
not be undermined in the process of knowledge impartation. Then,education can
truly manifest in our country. For what it is worth, true education is the
latent energy of liberation.Therefore, the itinerary to our promise land lies
in the atlas of thorough education.While some believe that the answers are somewhere in the political arena and
others have propounded theories of religious intervention, the genuine cure is
patently at the formative level, at the factory of education. A native adage
says a house thrives only because the trouble child has not grown. Even if the
nation's Moses appears on the political scene and successfully leads us to the
promise land, the deficiencies in the education of our youths is bound to lead
us back to Egypt. Nigeria should take this cueto understand that the atmosphere
in the county is in dire need of a diffusion of educational panacea.It is the
responsibility of all party - students, parents and educators to pursue this
redemption course, to
bring the much sort utopic development to our dear nation, Nigeria.
Twitter:@ibironketweets
E-mail:
ibironkeoluwatobi@gmail.com
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