What hope for saving education?

A few years back, my friend recounted how she visited a top Northern university with her 8 year old son, and a lecturer there told her that a level 300 student could not speak the quality of English her 8 year old spoke. I in turn recounted the same story to a top level stakeholder […]

A few years back, my friend recounted how she visited a top Northern university with her 8 year old son, and a lecturer there told her that a level 300 student could not speak the quality of English her 8 year old spoke. I in turn recounted the same story to a top level stakeholder in the education sector who calmly added “this is nothing, when we go to conferences, there are some professors that when they speak you will swear they have never been to school”.  Last year the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, Professor Julius Okojie, put it all into perspective when he announced that universities could not access research grants simply because the proposals were poorly written.
The diagnosis of education in Nigeria as far back as 1997 was cited in the Vision 2010 blueprint as “experiencing a deep crisis” .So yes it sounds about right, twenty four years ago education was in deep crisis, in the present day it is a tragedy. For all I know our parents who were educated in this country spoke impeccable “Queens English” and we also emerged equally speaking English of the highest standards learnt in schools in this country.  I remember the routine at my school “Corona Trust”  in primary one, of everyone taking turns everyday to go and sit next to the teacher  to read a compulsory quota of English passages , then  complete further lessons of  English comprehensions , writing compositions, quizzes and spelling tests.  Much of the rest of the day would then be spent on Mathematics, except on certain days when we would go out to observe nature as part of science studies. It was core literacy and numeracy lessons every day, an over dose of English and mathematics, and  you came out of primary school speaking impeccable English with a solid foundation in  Arithmetic . This is the kind of programme all public primary schools in Nigeria should be having.
 I strongly believe what our educational system lacks is sufficient focus on the business of teaching our children to be literate. Quite simply put, our educational system does not teach our children how to read and write. No one born anytime before the year 1968  reading this, can tell me that when they were in primary  one they were studying  12 textbooks, or that when they were in class three they studied 12 subjects or that in class four they were taught about sex education. At which point did the madness begin? And who decided that our 8, 9 year old primary school children must  learn agricultural techniques, trade embargoes, international trade, economics, how to pass a bill, election laws, HIV infections referendums , plant cells, pit latrine toilets, United Nations, different worms,  geographical landscapes, French, Hausa,  sex education ,dysentery  electric circuits, computer systems, types of marriage, balance of payments deficits, the constitution, definition of adultery and all the other irrelevant information ( yes please check the texts books it is there for primary four curriculum, the section on  adultery) .
 In my opinion the advent of the 6-3-3-4 system somehow fuelled the madness which started the era of teaching many irrelevant subjects in primary schools.   The colonial curriculum in primary school   up to the early 1970’s was purely Mathematics and English, some religious and practical science studies and that was it. You were taught to be literate which is the main aim of formal schooling, but the current  mess we are in now is a system where  numerous subjects are taught , leaving no time for the  valuable  English and Mathematics lessons which are solely what  primary students really need.  The British government in 2013 made it mandatory that those who failed to get credits in English and Mathematics in secondary school continue learning those subjects until they were 18 years of age . According to a recent report by United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation, UNESCO, Nigeria is one of the countries wasting time on education because many of the children in school are not learning.
We have succeeded in devising a crazy confused educational system where we want our children to learn law, agriculture, economics, medical science, international relations, politics, science, technology all at once in primary school. The result is that we are churning out a unique breed of children who are school leaving illiterates, in that they have the experience of going to school for 5 years yet they can’t read, write or speak English or calculate simple arithmetic. This is a tragedy, saddled with their illiteracy they are aided to cheat and pass the school leaving exams, and again engage in exam malpractices all through secondary and tertiary education to end up the semi illiterate graduates that we have.
 Looking at the curriculum of Western world powers, such as Britain and the United States it is easy to see we have simply got it all wrong. In these countries, where English is the first language, English and Numeracy , constitute the formal programme .The British primary school curriculum maintains “all local authority-maintained schools in /England must teach pupils in years 2 to 6 the programmes of study in English Mathematics and Science” . So the British  teach only English ,Mathematics and Science in their  primary schools  , and  if they are doing this and they are a superpower, with some of the best universities in the world, what is a country like Nigeria doing  ignoring Numeracy and English ?  The US Education secretary Arne Duncan reiterating a message to Americans said “Adults who have trouble reading, doing math, solving problems ….. will find the doors of the 21st century workforce closed to them.” .
Indeed in 2011 former President Goodluck Jonathan’s  Transformation Agenda was dismissed by some critics on the grounds that Nigeria simply did not have the educated workforce needed for that kind of transformation to happen. Most job adverts, now often state “good writing skills and ability to speak fluent English” as perquisites.
Nigeria has the potential to be an industrialised, even super power nation but certainly only if we scrap the current educational system.  A crisis looms, because the few who are privileged to attend good schools form the minority, the majority who form the countries potential workforce are illiterate or semi illiterate graduates.
Our youths form 80 per cent of our total population, and they are the driving force without which this country will unlikely shift from its status as  one of the poorest countries. There must be a radical change our in educational policy for Nigeria to move forward.

Amina Waziri Ibrahim is a freelance journalist and writes from Kano   [email protected]