I want to write about the educational mess we are in, but I don't want to sound like i have lost hope because i have not at all. Sadly, it has become a case of when we are not decrying poor student quality, it would be low scholarly ability of the teachers, and we are graduating young and old in their thousands, yet a high percentage largely unprepared in cases and in other situations ill-prepared for life away from the ivory tower. We have not been able to tackle the menace of cultism, that is when the Minister is not bribing for Budget or another Minister is not removed acrimoniously. We have spent time arguing whether government should hands off accommodation or not. The list of misadventure is endless, the hope is...
While no University has attained any real level of autonomy, there is no resource to control. Strikes by the labour units from Primary to tertiary level have been a situation of jungle negotiation with the government at one point or the other reneging on its promises. Weeks back in the papers Sheila Solarin widow of the late educationalist Tai Solarin cried out that pupils entering J.S 1 could neither read nor write English, in her short take she noted the absence of teachers to teach and very few people I am sure noticed the little piece which was tightly squeezed at the letters to editor corner of the Guardian Newspapers.
The bitter truth is that we are reeling out nonsense from our Primary stage to the highest level of education. We are cursed with a leadership that is at loss to what the cure is. We have developed a set of students whose parents bribe up the academic ladder because teacher will teach nonsense after all. Our schools today at best are filled with frustrated persons that are still holding the chalk for lack of what next to do. Every year no one is really taking stock of the number of University manpower leaving the shores of this nation never to return and we just sit and term it brain drain, when in truth it has become a complete DRAIN, brain and belly, soul and spirit.
We are a nation of largely intelligent illiterates so we do not bother about statistics, in most Universities a student goes through a University education without the benefit of experiencing a Professor teach him, or interact with him, the days when students sought admission into schools based on the reputation of some Professors are gone. Instead we have scholars who have built reputation for Rank Xeroxing Philip Kotler's marketing text word for word as handout on a ‘buy and pass basis’, that is when the teacher is not a Mr. Lecturer insisting that Bimbo must go the whole length of her skirt to pass.What actually is Nigeria turning to. (To be continued)