Dear Lovers of Education,
1.0 I greet you all in the Name of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. I have been meaning to address you on the above subject matter. While I am excited that I have come round to it, at long last, I will like to prove that this issue of urgent national importance has always been on the front-burner of my mind. Below are two ad hoc excerpts lifted from Facebook. The first is mine. The second is Ey Mensah IV’s. I think Mr. Mensah is a lecturer at University of Calabar.
A. FACEBOOK Is Good, Very Good, But ...
1.0 There's no gainsaying that FACEBOOK, as a social medium, has made unequalled impact. Not even aeroplanes, telephones or computers compare to FACEBOOK in the quest to make this jumbo earth A GLOBAL VILLAGE, and so affordably. FACEBOOK has made finding, and sustaining contact with, long-lost relatives, friends, mates so easy!
2.0 However, as is the wont of most man-made stuffs, FACEBOOK also has a legion of minuses, especially with our youngsters who are easily corrupted during wrong exposures. For one, and this is a positive shame, FACEBOOK has proved that we are boastful for nothing. All our society has is a bunch of ILLITERATE EDUCATED Young People. 25hrs. a day, you find UNDERGRADUATES or GRADUATES flaunting emptiness. Imagine spelling GRATEFUL as Greatful; LOSE as Loose; WHERE as Were& vice versa. Worse, it's not only in spellings, they also fumble and tumble over basic sentence construction: ''I'm BORE, today.'' And I'm tempted to retort: You really are a bore! ''Did you SENT it?'' Pray, am I supposed to thunder back: Yes, I send it? ''She HAVE not come here.'' Hm! Many thanks, FACEBOOK.
3.0 Secondly, I'm also alarmed by how easily our young men and women pick up those voguish linguistic and behavioural tendencies. Check out this list: sup?; xup?; Sire; good a.m.; good p.m.; mawnin; aii, wadup? I'm too tired to continue. However, before I get accused of being old school, let me clarify that I don't agree that our youngsters must not enjoy what their allies enjoy in the global linguistic market! I'm only concerned that we tend to import these fads into formal settings. I can expatiate on that: As we have seen with phone smsing (imagine that!), we tend to pay the price for over-relying on abbreviations by drawing blank over basic spellings in formal writings! This is why I worry for our young people; they import these yuppish lines into conversations with elders! And, it is unacceptable & disrespectful!
4.0 I end with a personal example, to drive home my point. Three of my MOST SENIOR FRIENDS ON FACEBOOK that I chat with, regularly, are ARC. EZEKIEL NYA-ETOK, CEO of Novone Consult, an architectural firm; DR. BARCLAYS AYAKOROMA. Executive Secretary & Chief Executive of National Institute For Cultural Orientation, a Federal Government Agency; and CHIEF WINDY ISONG (WINDY), Transition Chair of Urue Offong/Oruko Local Government of Akwa Ibom State. The threesome are probably in their late forties, or at least one of them is. In spite of being FORTYISH, myself, and being close to them in real life. I HAVE NEVER & SHALL NEVER use wadup? or sup? or xup? or aii in my FACEBOOK or sundry exchanges with them. The morale here is that our young people must know their linguistic community and limits in the application of their faddish words or phrases! *See More*
Fortunately, I got 98% positive response. Most respondents agreed with me, but you still had the inevitable tiny minority who almost-always ignore the substance to pursue chaff. A couple of weeks after, I confirmed I was not alone in feeling that the rot in our education sector is worse or deeper than we all think we know. The next posting was by someone who should know, a University teacher. In fact, Mr. Ey Mensah’s entry is more direct!
B. I watched with dismay and sadness some of the auditions of Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria 2011. We have to declare a state of emergency in our education sector. It is sad to note that most contestants or aspiring beauty queens were asked the Capital of KebbiState, and 5 out of 7 did not know. One said, ‘the answer is KOGI.’ Another said, ‘Douala.’ The girl asked to name the largest city in West Africa, confidently said ‘NIGERIA.’ The other who was asked about her expectation, answered: ‘I am beautiful, fair, and jovial ...’ I also listened to the contestant who was asked what her opinion on foreign aids to Nigeria and Africa is. She said, ‘there are many testing clinics now in Nigeria, so foreign aids will not kill Nigerians again.’ Then one was asked to mention and talk about one current female minister. She said Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala is the current Prime Minister heading Finance matters. And another was asked who the Governor of CBN is. She said, ‘INEC is yet to conduct elections in that State! *(covering my face)* See More!
2.0 Sorry, Mr. Mensah, I can’t read anymore. I can see no more, because like you I am covering my face. This reality check of our learning system is unassailable. An alarming majority of our young people and well, some of our adults, have coconut heads. Is that too harsh? Still, I cannot all pretend that all’s well. All’s not. Our school system is in a shambles. I am not thinking of just the infrastructure, even though, yes, that is a critical element. But what would all those fine buildings come to if the human factors are not well harnessed? As in all the other sectors, there have been many calls for a state of emergency to be declared in education. It is the deafening silence that successive governments at all strata responded with that have left us where we are. And what is coming is more tsunamic, if we don’t eschew our lip service and get down to action.
3.0 Here’s my own easy-to-follow Roadmap. First, we must re-set our structure and curriculum. Let running schools not be a money-for-hand, back-for-ground thing. The process of setting up a school (Nursery to Tertiary) must be strict and tedious. Even then, only well-trained qualified personnel must be allowed in. THERE SHOULD EVEN BE A JAIL TERM FOR SETTING UP A SCHOOL OR BECOMING A TEACHER THROUGH THE BACKDOOR! Again, our current amoebaic curriculum must change and make it possible for the child to know whether to take to Science or Art early enough. Next, we must never tire of TRAINING & RE-TRAINING OUR TEACHERS AND ALL THOSE INVOLVED. We must return teaching to its pride of place. We must pay teachers well, in fact more than any other worker! Yes, the teacher is the most important. Without the teacher, there won’t be government, or doctor, or police, name them. Why do we treat teachers so poorly? Why have we made teaching so unattractive such that only those who themselves are in dire need of being taught now teach? We can get back our best brains into the teaching profession. It is what to do, and now, if we are serious about arresting our free-fall into darkness. Thirdly, we must get rid of our paper-qualification-or-nothing mentality. It is killing us. Not everyone will or must go to university no matter how hard we try. We must encourage people to pursue up to secondary school education and thereafter learn a trade if they know they don’t have ''the head for education.'' And we should create jobs, different levels of jobs; so that everyone can be accommodated. Finally, we must strangle corruption. If it becomes impossible to give money or sex for marks or admission, water would find its level (as our people say) and education will be the better for it. We need it. And now.
4.0 Many thanks, and God bless Nigeria. Jesus is Lord!
Your brother
BUSH
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