Why primary education should be made compulsory – Pro Chancellor
Why do you believe in making primary education compulsory?Well, education certainly is a topical issue now, world over, and you can rarely provide education without classrooms, books and or teachers. Once the teacher quality is guaranteed, education will progress. Personally, I still believe we can make primary education compulsory, I believe the day we have […]
Why do you believe in making primary education compulsory?
Well, education certainly is a topical issue now, world over, and you can rarely provide education without classrooms, books and or teachers. Once the teacher quality is guaranteed, education will progress. Personally, I still believe we can make primary education compulsory, I believe the day we have the courage to say primary education is compulsory from that day the revolution in education will start. You see, by making such declaration you will also force yourself to make innovations to take care of the teeming millions that will acquire education. If you don’t make it compulsory, are you saying that those who are not going to school do not need to, or deserve it, or what? You see, we have no alternative but to make it compulsory. I believe we have the resources and the manpower to do it.
As I said earlier, the world is full of these teeming millions, the communication technology has made it possible for a well trained teacher to reach millions, interact with them. We are lucky because we don’t have to build many classrooms for everybody in order to reach hundreds. So we have no alternative but to cater for everybody. I believe the day we declare primary education compulsory that’s when the revolution in education sector will start.
How do you think we can improve education at the primary level?
Well certainly the teachers have to be improved. Just pop into one primary school you will be shocked. Teachers were employed to teach simply because they were relations of a councillor or chairmen. We have people running primary education who do not know its value. So we just have to increase the inspectorate, if you go to some of these primary schools you will find nobody there, the children will just be there playing, when you enquire they will tell you that he (teacher) just comes once in a week and nobody cares. So I think the local leadership, district, village and ward heads should be involved because they know where the shoe pinches. The community also must have to be involved, I think the local people are also worried, I asked in one of the primary schools I visited sometimes ago and the locals told me that the teachers don’t come regularly; they said they only come when it’s time for salaries. So the quality of teachers needs to be improved.
Do you think it is proper to leave primary education for local governments?
You see there is no alternative to that. It should be so. It’s so huge that if the state government takes it up it will be too much for it.
They will not have the means to do that but the state government can supervise through an inspectorate. I can recall in our days when ever the inspector of education was coming to a school, that day everyone will be on his toes and they did come quite often. You have heard of Alhaji Ahmadu Coomassie, he started as a primary school inspector and he used to visit every school almost every day on his bicycle. I don’t think it happens these days, you don’t even hear them nowadays. So we need more of late Ahmau Coomassies today to take care of our primary schools. We need more inspectors because inspectors, too, are teachers, when they go round and discover that there was no teachers in a school, they took over the work of teachers and do it. So as I said, nowadays you don’t need to have a teacher for every class. With one teacher with a TV screen you can cover a whole district and by the time you cost it, it will be cheaper than what it is now. And need no supervision, so let’s take advantage of modern technology. Some other countries have done it and succeeded, why won’t Nigeria do it? Mexico has done it and reached hundred percent literacy, almost all teachers are freelance teachers, you get a group of thirty students, you come and examine them on literacy, if they pass they pay you and within five years, teachers left the classroom to become freelancers, five years they reach hundred percent literacy level, it’s just a question of commitment, we cannot continue to do things in the old way. There is always a new way, when you are bedevilled with a problem, you are forced to think and find a way out. We have to, unless we do something to these fifty percent of school children who are not at school, they will kill us, they will grow up and take over, they need to survive by all means.
How can you relate the decline of education at the primary level and the type of products we are now producing at our tertiary institutions?
It will have to do with corruption, which seems to permeate all aspects of our life, once you bring in corruption into education and this is the lowest level, you are even teaching the young ones. Hardly do people face their work now, a remote primary school in a village with no one supervising it depends on the commitment of the teachers to go and teach there, if there is no supervision, they don’t, so it’s a question of commitment. As I said the whole community has to be involved, they have to realise that this is been done for them and if it works, it is good for them and if it doesn’t, they bear the repercussion. So we should always try to do things in a proper way.
Are you now blaming the parents?
I think the parents, too, will have to take some of the blame, especially those of us who have been to school. I don’t see, for example, why I cannot start a class in my hamlet, what will it cost?
Probably I should do it and maybe start encouraging others to do it. Everybody is a potential teacher. They did it in Indonesia, they recruited all retired civil servants, all the retired journalists, gave them six months and send them to teach in rural areas, if you go you will not only offer literacy but experience of life and the students will see you as somebody who has been there. But most of the teachers in the primary school are hardly older than their pupils and the students may not even respect them. I recall of somebody here in Katsina, late Alhaji Isa, he wanted to go and teach in primary school after he served in government. He has reached the level of secretary to state government, he went to the local authority and offered himself to be employed as a primary school teacher, but they told him he has no teaching qualification. However, all they could have said was, okay these are teaching lessons and books, go and familiarise yourself and after few weeks when you are ready, come and teach. You see he was willing to teach but he lost interest along the way.