The Education We Want..A Discuss

Tai Solarin And Prince Charles Dickson

pcdbooks@yahoo.com Nov 5, 2006

Over the last  few weeks the educational sector of the nation has been under heavy scrutiny, despite the wave of political violence, impeachments and the crisis of confidence in the entire system, in our fire brigade approach, the Federal Government is trying a cosmetic facelift on the sector but then of what effect with barely months to go, that is if the present Soldier arrangement of the PDP is ready to go. In the light of this I will be with the late Tai Solarin engaging us in an intellectual and principled stand on the educational system.

Strangely this essay has foundations in 1968 and was in its original form published in the old Daily Times. Writing under the topic 'THE EDUCATION WE WANT MUST HAVE TECHNICAL BIAS' Tai Solarin said "I have been asked to say briefly what I think of our education now and in the future. If I had been asked to name the subject that dominated the year, 1968, in all our newspapers, I should have said it was, as you would say, education".

In agreeing with Solarin, because of the lives lost, the aviation industry probably beat education but then some of the problems in that sector is as a result of poor manpower, the lack of it in some cases and could be traced to our educational value. In 1968 we were still arguing "Should education be free? Should it not? Should it be paid for? Should it not? Those were the epi-centers of the debate for 1968.

Today we still do not know what kind of education we want to run, is it Universal Basic, or Universal Primary, is it Unity Schools owned by government or the Unity schools owned by Businessmen that want to declare profit after each academic calendar year rather than improve the quality of students and teachers and the education dispensed.

In 1968 Solarin wrote "A good many of us spat on the education we had yesterday, and off course what passes for education today. And there is, certainly, a stratum of our society that looks back, nostalgically, at the quality of yesterday's education". How many of us today can argue that this is not the truth, even the generation that had its education in 1980 now looks back with nostalgia. This is the argument for the proponents of privatizing the educational sector. The statistics are there for all to see with 78% of the Education Ministry's Budget devoted to Unity Schools of 1,184,304 candidates that sat for WAEC only 177, 800 were qualified for admission into Universities, meaning only that figure possessed 5 credits and to imagine 806,086 were seeking admission into Higher Institutions.

By and large, however, most of us believed that there was very much missing in the content of our yesterday's education. What we have today, in spite of innovations and the bold attempts to re-orientate it, remains, as it was yesterday, orthodox, slow foot, myopic and this was in 1968, so what can we honestly call the situation now, is it any better, infact in 2006 after the billions committed at a rate incomparable, the system, the sector is more slow foot, myopic and orthodox than then.

Our educational system today only sharpens the head to near pin end quality and this is even rare but it also makes the possessors limb atrophied by long disuse. Our education is money centered. It is an education which goads the possessor asking "what can my country do for me?" not as J.F.Kennedy requests immortally, "what can I do for my country?"

In 2006 we are left to define the quality of education we want for tomorrow when our peers have gone far in Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, neighbouring Ghana has even refused to wait for us. To chart out how to tread to win through we now send our kids anywhere so far it is outside the country the education is better be it Iraq or Zimbabwe.

Solarin had asked that we bring in functionality into our education.. He said that "There is, I think only one significant thing we want in our education for tomorrow-FUNCTION. That we arm our children with functional education" However today the education is not functional, we have unemployable graduates, my words, my apologies totally useless school leavers.

While Tai anchored his stand on State owned schools as an atheist, I advocate government's participation as matter of social contract and responsibility to the people. That way we could boast an education that 'LIVES'.

Do we have an education in which a possessor wants to elevate the less privilege that surge him round, the answer is no. Today what is the value of the education given to a young man who lives or is doing his mandatory service year in a guinea worm infested area and yet is incapable of causing a revolution in the lives of the villagers by transforming their drinking water into healthy supply? Today every graduate desires Shell, Chevron, MTN, GTB and the Ministry that is for those not in politics as educated thugs.

Please what is the use of education given in physics to a young girl when the lights go out, she does not know what to do to get light again. In the Nigerian education, how many graduates can carry aloft an oasis of light, very few because the education is short on quality and is therefore poor. What the Federal Government wants out of the system is what it would get, if it invites stakeholders and shareholders to forums with already predetermined mindset and then the Sultan looses his life primarily because he was attending the so-called forum calls for a re-think.

We are of the opinion that our education should be one that gives the 3-Rs Reading, Writing and 'Rithmetic. During the formative years, our kids should be made to know that they are members of a society to which they owe so much not the present Tokunboh arrangement, they must be initiated into all the faculties of operations carried out by adults only that sadly and unfortunately the operations of this generation is corruption.

Today how many young persons want to go home and at the beginning of the year cut the bush in readiness for the new year's planting; making of garri or pounding the yam or preparing the 'ewedu' soup. If these children do not participate how can they be integrated into the society, if all the values they see are big cars, big mansion, how they integrate should not be surprising.

In an essay on the National anthem I deplored a situation where kids could no longer recite the nations national songs, apart from its antedent ills, are these children taught to sing or compose songs, folk songs Solarin sang during his time are still being sang without being hardly enriched. In our secondary schools boys should not only cultivate farms communally but also individual boys should during their last years in school own plots which they should run in the modern way of rotation farming, getting dirty at the farm and yet appearing clean in the classroom.

The only minus to the above is that today agricultural science is a theoretical subject and schools do not even have farms no more, University of Agriculture take more students for law than Agricultural Extension courses.

The Boarding system in which was the best is gradually fading or negatively modernized, it was were we learnt to queue up, collect our food, sit down at prescribed tables and organize the cleaning of those tables; washing up by all who partook of the food. The words of Tai Solarin should conclude this essay..."the education being given to our children today, will give us a newer and nobler Nigeria." If that today was 1968, suffice to say that there is problem in the land educationally with the kind of education being given. Almighty Allah teach us