Monday, December 13, 2010

THE CRASHING EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

By: Richard Oluseye Anthony

university of Ibadan, Nigeria

“The system is good on paper, but its implementation is bad, is it not the same system that America is using and it is providing efficient results even the constitution we use in Nigeria is been practice by other countries like USA and it is giving a good result contrary to the inefficient”, this were the words of a secondary school teacher in one public school.

The 6-3-3-4 system of education, gives every Nigeria a chance to contribute his worth to the nation’s development at the level commensurable to his mental ability. The seeming unanimous acceptance of the introduction by the highly critical Nigeria public, I assume, resulted from the potentiality of the system to ensure a streamlined admission process while ensuring that every Nigerian is educated according to the dictates of his cognitive, psychomotor and affective ability.

In practice, the system means that the child aged three to five is educated prior to his entering primary school. Primary education is a 6 year affair. Secondary education is also a 6 year period divided into two parts: junior secondary and senior secondary. The junior secondary is made up of JSS1 to JSS 3, while the senior secondary is made up of SSS 1 to SSS 3. The third tier of the system is the tertiary level which is, 4, 5 or 6 year depending on the course of study. At the end of the first six years of elementary school, the candidate or student is expected to enroll in a secondary school of his choice after he must have written and passed the national common entrance examination. The junior secondary certificate examination is taken at the end of three years of junior secondary. It is prescribed that those who passed the examination should proceed to senior secondary at the same institution or an institution of their choice. The senior secondary school examination is written at the end of SSS3. The general certificate of education (GCE) is conducted as a supplement for those students who did not have the required credit from their SSCE. Candidates who are able to have the required credits can proceed to the tertiary school of their choice. one puzzling question that one is forced to ask after looking at the well articulated and laid system of education borrowed from the Americans, Nigerian students in the tertiary school according to Professor Soji Amire, “finds it difficult to understand what they are taught and so become aggressive, ready to intimidate lecturers to extract pass marks from them.” one would further wonder if the fault is inherent in the system of education (6-3-3-4) or its implementation. Again, why is the Nigerian trained professional treated as an outcast internationally while his counterparts from other part of the continent is seen as pure or base? As Adewale Dada puts it in his article: Reinventing Education In Nigeria, “with all the pictures of poverty from India and many of our uniformed perceptions of Asians as lacking the intellectual capacity to compete in the global marketplace, it would do us reasonable justice to know that many Americans are considering the option of studying in India mostly technical courses, because of the reputation their universities have garnered over the years…” when will a Japanese, an American or a British citizen want to come to Nigeria to study a course because of the impression and expertise the course has imbued in the world as a result of how seriously and thoroughly it has been handled in Nigeria by Nigerians?

Sincerely, it will be an understatement for one to claim that the system of education being implemented in Nigeria today has lost the quality of 6-3-3-4, looking at the handful of Nigerians who, through dint of hard work, still reflect the indices of being educated. This discourse aims at unraveling the root-cause of the decay that laid a destructive siege on the system of education in Nigeria.

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