Osun State chairman of the Real Estate Development Association of Nigeria (REDAN), Victor Mark, has attributed the recent failure of students who sat for the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) examinations to the desperation of money and apparent poverty in the country.
He noted, however, that this is not a new phenomenon as it has greatly affected the academic performances of students in the last ten years.
Mark, a serial media manager and entrepreneur stated this on Thursday at a one day workshop organized by Icon Pillars Educational Consult for proprietors of both secondary and primary schools across Ogun State.
Mark who spoke on Building the Ideal Child in the Face of Apparent Economic Collapse, called for a synergy between parents, teachers and religious organisations for the proper upbringing of children, adding that children who lacked proper nurturing at home have school as a second chance of redemption.
He also noted that the upbringing of a child will determine whether he/she will turn out to be a success story or the nemesis of society.
“When parents don’t have a stable source of income to provide for the children, typical of an average Nigerian parent, the good upbringing that they have injected in the children are robbed off them with the desire and desperation to make money, hence the need or burning desire to study and become somebody great wanes off.
“Their greatest desire is to make money and this has led a lot of youths into internet fraud, which is reflective in the declining academic performances of students in the last decade.
“The recently released UTME results in Nigeria further underscores this point. You must have seen online some abysmally poor results being circulated. It may interest you to know that this year, a candidate scored 11 out of 400 marks, the lowest in the history of JAMB since inception.
“On another note the scourge of cultism in schools today can be traced to inappropriate guidance and discipline from teachers and the failure of parents and guardians in their God-given responsibility. How then do you raise a child amidst these chaos?” he queried.
Mark further challenged teachers to provide children with a variety of career options in addition to the over-emphasized options including medicine, law, engineering and teaching.
He also noted that children are impressionable and see teachers as emulatable models, a situation that offers teachers the advantage of steering them in the right paths.
He said: “Watch how students become emotionally attached to some teachers, particularly those with strong characters and attributes. We must therefore exploit these human traits by being good examples to the students in character, conduct, speech and dressing.
“Enough of telling students to be doctors and engineers alone. Schools must provide a very wide array of career choices for students to choose from, apart from the regular career choices.
“Students can now become data scientists, coding experts, nanotechnologists, robotic technicians, information brokers, leisure consultants etc and even work remotely and do a lot more. Schools and teachers must begin to expose students to twenty-first-century ideals. This means that schools and teachers must be exposed first before passing it on to their students.”
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