The education sector in Nigeria has gone through many things as generations pass through it. There was a time when pupils wrote on slates, my father said, you would have to clean what you wrote to write another. There was only a slate for a pupil, and that is if there was one available. Now, we are in a time where EdTech is gradually making waves to revolutionise the sector. But there is always more to be done!
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However, there are still some underlying factors just beneath the foundation of our education that still need to be replaced rather than patched up. This is such that if we do not take these things to heart, we will only continue to churn out half-baked students as much as they are necessary to keep the fire burning for national development. Soldier goes, soldier comes, they say. Of a truth, nothing is perfect, we can only keep on getting closer to it as time goes by.
Personally, a major building block of the education system is the teachers or lecturers themselves. Now, setting aside remuneration even though it is important, thorough teaching has its role. Teaching might be a natural gift but going through a form of training is necessary - that I will make compulsory if I had my way. In fact, it is possible that you know a subject so well that you may not be able to teach it to others in a way that they will understand. I believe a teacher is a failure if your students do not understand thoroughly (or on average) what you teach. What is the point then?
The Solution
My proposed solution will have a ripple effect. It should be mandatory for anyone interested in teaching to attend a college of education, pass well and get a piece of evidence before even being allowed to vie for a teaching job. Tertiary institution needs to have a criterion like this because there are so many lecturers who have doctorates and they still can’t make an average student a piece of knowledge better than when they met. You would see some that do not even come to class regularly and still set die-hard exams; that is even by the way. Of a truth, I think it is safe to say that some do not even know what they are told to teach. Imagine a lecturer telling the students that they should not bother to understand what he is teaching, rather they should cram like he did during his undergrad days. Can you imagine, no efforts to even change the status quo?
The Ripple Effect
When teachers/lecturers are mandated to go through a training school, the stakeholders and the institution in charge will step up their training facilities. I am sure that the College of Education in Nigeria practically does Teaching Practice (TP) which is graded as a credit unit. Unfortunately, the system in Nigeria presently has somehow relegated colleges of education to the less brilliant or those who could not gain admission to study the so-called big courses or dream schools.
I believe when this cycle is effectively enforced for some years, there will be significant changes in the quality of education in the sector irrespective of other inadequacies like the standard of classrooms, teachers’ remuneration etc.