Don't Blame The System! Nigerian University Students Planned Their Own Failure
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| Source: guardian.ng |
With the growing need for sensible and understandable reasons for their failure, the educational system has become the prime target of most Nigerian students.
When the
unconscious desire for failure is ingrained in a student, and its root buried
deep in the core of his heart, and its fruits have become manifest, then his
mind prepares for him an alibi(s) in case he eventually eats the forbidden
fruit. And if you ask such what his alibi is, he would probably tell you, with
utmost conviction, that it is the poor educational system of the country.
Without
doubt, the educational system of Nigeria has its own setbacks. I remember that
I discussed it sparingly in THIS ARTICLE. However, we cannot ALWAYS call the system to cover
for students’ failures. And as much as I would love to deny it, students are
the TRUE banes of their own successes.
Here are my reasons:
1. The people who designed the system are not fools
Nigerian students are known to compare
the educational system in Nigeria with that of western countries like the USA.
Often, they ignorantly place this comparison at the higher level of education.
They discuss among themselves the speed with which students complete their
university education in these countries and conclude that the system here in
Nigeria is thrash. But they never really consider what the lower levels in
these countries were all about, what they have had to put in place at these
levels to achieve the feat at the higher level. No doubt, the systems in these
western countries are better. But that does not make the Nigerian system bad ̶
only that ours is cloaked with improper
management and thus we view it in the light of this illusion. To make my
points clear I’d like to take this stance, even though some may argue that the
management cannot be separated from the system.
As a result of the distorted notions of
good and bad, Nigerian students blame the system for introducing courses they
deem irrelevant to their own field of study, and attribute their failures in
these courses and in their essential courses to the irrelevance of the borrowed
courses and the high workload resulting from their inclusion in the syllabus.
They often attribute the years they spend in the university and their low level
of expertise to these irrelevancies. But in reality these courses are of utmost
relevance. In fact, more than 70% of Nigerian students will be as dumb as the
man wearing sun glasses in the night if these courses are removed and the
number of years reduced.
A friend of mine told me sometimes ago
that he met a fashion designer who designed clothes using constructions like
the ones we were taught in MEE101 (Engineering drawing), an irrelevant course, and he was able to interpret her designs because
he had a prior knowledge of it. Also, I remember that I couldn’t reference my
final project properly without help because I considered GNS101 (Use of
English), a course which explained how, irrelevant in my first year at the
university. In his book, THINK BIG,
Ben Carson narrated how music, a subject which was irrelevant to his line of
work, had helped him in his interview to become one of the two interns accepted
into the neurosurgery residency program. I’ll stop here because I don’t want to
bore you with instances. But you never know what you will be doing in the next
ten years, and you may find that understanding that irrelevant course will open
a door for you that might otherwise never be opened. Then you will understand
that those who designed the system are nothing but farsighted. Who knows? You might
have made a decision that is to your own disadvantage already.
2. The people in charge of managing the system are well aware of their flaws
Yes, the people managing the system
are very much aware of their flaws. They know they cannot give students all
what they need to live the kind of life they want. They know that education
does not necessarily give the job, even though they portray it that way. For
these reasons and more, the system hints at diversification, but we fail to see
this because of the grudge we hold against it. How best do you explain the
inclusion of entrepreneurship management (EMT), agricultural science practical
(CSP) and so on in all the curricula? If you ask me, they are trying to tell
students that they do not expect them to rely solely on education, that
education would not always give them the job they dream of (but it definitely gives
them an opportunity to stand out), that education is a starting point (not a
destination)…But because we perceive things differently we may be oblivious to
all these. However, no student can deny the fact that he does not know that
education cannot give him everything. No student can say categorically that the
system promised him his dream job, because this is something we came up with in
our minds. How then is it appropriate for him to blame the system for getting
caught in the trap that he was aware of?
PS
This is but a tip of the iceberg. Click THIS LINK to learn more. Don’t just
read and be gone! Please share and let me know what you think in the comments
section.
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