ASUU, students and our educational quagmire

T HE current industrial action embarked upon by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has entered its third week, and we all know the drill. Patriotic minds are left again asking what is wrong. We know that there is a dearth of basic instructional materials and infrastructure, poor remuneration of teachers, among other social factors that are facing, in particular, public schools in the country. As a teacher, I have seen countless university students who continue to exhibit shallow knowledge of the subject matter of their respective courses, poor command of the English language, poor knowledge of examination techniques, as well disregard for the correct interpretation of questions before attempting them. I am not an expert in maths, but I see students that lack requisite mathematical and manipulative skills for subjects involving calculations, while the handwriting of some are illegible and their answers scripts are full of spelling errors. Students try to cut corners by engaging in various forms of examination malpractice in order to obtain marks, and this is done with parents and teachers as accomplices.

In 1968, Tai Solarin, writing in the Daily Times under the title, ‘The education we want must have technical bias’ said, “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. Our educational system today only sharpens the head to near pin end quality, but it also makes the possessors 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 2017, 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.

We now send our kids anywhere. As long as 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: “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 and (my apologies) totally useless school leavers, because we do not care about the structure and systems. 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 privileged around him? 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? Today, every graduate desires Shell, Chevron, MTN, GTBank, etc. Please, of what use is the education given in physics to a young girl if, 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 cares less about teachers, infrastructure, curriculum, and the students, it would get what is currently on sale.

We are of the opinion that our education should be one that gives the 3-Rs Reading, ‘Riting 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 Tokunbo 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, clear the bush in readiness for the new year’s planting? How many want to make garri, pound yam or prepare ‘ewedu’ soup? children do not participate in these things, how can they be integrated into the society? If all the values they see are big cars, big mansions, 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 nation’s national songs. Are these children taught to sing or compose songs? folk songs Solarin sang during his time are still being sung without being enriched. In our secondary schools, boys should not only cultivate farms communally, they should own plots during their last years in school which they should run in the modern way of rotation farming, getting dirty at the farm and yet being neat 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. Universities of Agriculture admitmore students into Law than Agricultural Extension courses. The boarding system  is gradually fading out. As ASUU continues its ritual of negotiation, one wonders where the students who should be leading the charge are.Where is NANS? Is the education being given to our children today capable of giving us a newer and nobler Nigeria? Is the killing of our educational systems deliberate? Is any effort being made to change the status quo and do we really care? Or are  politicising the entire structure; whether it is the removal of history or the addition of faith based subjects, or the abysmal reduction of university entry scores. The naked dance continues, but for how long? Only time will tell.

• Dr. Dickson writes in via [email protected]

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