Taking time to critically evaluate through difficulties of learning and teaching is most abiding with the right tools and resources for as much as the best practices are well expressed. It becomes worrisome with quacks enabling roles that are specifically outlined for professionals. Interchanging roles shouldn’t be extended to ethical roles that are well stated in the rule-book of education. It is unfair to expect an educational amateur to deliver the best practices in education without biases and nemesis. It is most commonly expected that the travails of the education system are intrusive and may be highly manipulative.
The level of decadence in education is creeping through most phases of learning. It was initially assumed as generic to tertiary levels of learning, however, the ugly situation is almost at the nursery level. Complacency led us to this horrible state. The records show how much competition takes place between states of the federation that the real essence of learning is merely decorative. It becomes so evident that the major occupation of the teachers has been taken over by pseudo-instructors.
As much as it is evident that profit making enables investments, it should be with limits in education. The primary objectives of most interested partners in academics have been surrounded with gains and nothing more. At the expense of these learners, school activities are assumed to be educational but it is far from our imaginations. So many demands from these students have pointed to the personal interest of all that have stakes. You can hardly find situations that are not primarily aimed at demeaning the standard of learning and teaching. The hoax is that we assume that we can help these innocent learners achieve their goal in life with our illegal extra-curricular methods.
The level of examination malpractices, as alleged by the West African Examination Council (WAEC) is almost at its peak in this era and to curb this nefarious act, the collective efforts of both the parents and the school administrators would be extremely necessary. There have been a series of penalties to some erring schools to deter them of further degeneration of our educational standard among other states in West Africa. Classrooms are almost losing the dignity of studying to excel in examinations. They are almost becoming the theatre of negotiation between corruption and uprightness.
Social media are not in any way helpful to stop this menace. Records have shown how much contributions odious sites make to ridicule education. Some frivolous entities have taken the internet as a means of sharing some confidential examination questions to the unsuspecting public to make gains. Students depend so much on these sites to disregard the essence of studying prior to examination. The leakages of some of these valid question papers have not been found worrisome as the peddling persists.
The proportionality of becoming relevant in society after studying so hard to marauding for undefined destinations is sprawling among the young adults that have become vulnerable. A substitution for a better future is sought behind learning a skill. Choosing where to study comes so hard with absurd frameworks infiltrating these institutions. Negligence of skilled learners to dejection of various schemes have shown how much unconcerned the policies of these administrators and lawmakers have been.
In a more recent approach to bringing innovations to learning and teaching, technologies have been introduced but not generally. It has been a selective attempt to bring advanced methodologies that will promote global inclusions among students in remote areas. Since it is partisan, the non-supporters may be deprived. The movement of improvements from urban system to rural areas is very slow as the pace is most determined by loyalty and contributions of the wishers to the ruling party. This is not so good for the development of education and may draw us back far more than we progress.
Some legislators have brought their constituency projects closer to their supporters through education. Their participation has contributed to some shades of progress found in Education. These contributions are not limited to just stationery, but with an advanced introduction to technology through resourceful tools like laptops and academic tablets enabled with free Wi-Fi at some centres. The well-endowed lawmakers build some of these system-house centres at some strategic locations in their constituency for indigent learners to have a feel of western education.
With the recent approach of the present government to enabling students to access loans for studies which may not have been cheap for them to attain, the level of school drop outs will reduce with sincerity of purposes. The pressures on poor parents to improve the standard of living of their wards will reduce by a large proportion with serious exemptions of higher-education school fees. A periodic approach of legacies similar to that of the past generations where learners have access to free but qualitative education will be of great benefits to the coming generations.
Promoting bills and assenting the same will be as relevant as enforcing and enabling the execution. Administrators of various government’s Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) should leverage more on some of these laws that have been in existence which may lack patronage due to sentiments and parochial negligence. The high resistance to some of these rules are mere undeserving carelessness that may drive the progress to a lurking problem.
Olusegun Fashakin, a seasoned educator, writes in via olusegunfashakin@gmail.com
