mojatu .com
42 Education & Career
EDUCATION- THE NEED
TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM
By Ogo E Onovo
Education, it says is the
development of the abilities of the
mind (learning to know): a liberal
education. Training is practical
education (learning to do) or
practice, usually under supervision,
in some art, trade, or profession:
training in art
Education is very important to
the society and BME communities
in particular. In Africa it is often
used as a measure of success
and failure. Children are often
classified “as good for nothing”
just on the basis that they are
not academically gifted. In my
native language, they are called
derogatory names like “iti”,”
itiboribo”. These children have
their self-esteem destroyed very
early in life, they make them
believe that they are failures in
life before they have even begun.
This attitude is borne out of what
in my opinion is an erroneous
education culture. Education in our
community is often taken in the
narrowest context, but Education
as defined by dictionary.com is
1. The act or process of imparting
or acquiring general knowledge,
developing the powers of
reasoning and judgment, and
generally of preparing oneself or
others intellectually for mature life.
2. The act or process of imparting
or acquiring particular
knowledge or skills as for a
profession.
3. A degree level, or kind of
schooling: a university
education.
4. The result produced by
instruction, training, or study: to
show one’s education.
5. The science or art of teaching;
pedagogics.
Someone may not be so academically
gifted but a genius in some other skill.
There is a saying in my community
that says, “A fish may appear dead on
dry land, but when placed in water
it does its magic”. That child that is
seen as “Itiboribo” can be the next
sports, music, or acting superstar,
an inventor, entrepreneur etc. Every
child has a talent or gift, Education
Culture should therefore be about
finding and developing that special
talent.
Smith (2015) said that, “when
talking about education people
often confuse it with schooling.
Many thinks of places like schools
or colleges when seeing or hearing
the word. They might also look
to particular jobs like teacher or
tutor. The problem with this is
that while looking to help people
learn, the way a lot of schools and
teachers operate is not necessarily
something we can properly call
education. They have chosen
or fallen or been pushed into
‘schooling’ – trying to drill learning
into people according to some
plan often drawn up by others.
Paulo Freire (1973) famously called
this banking – making deposits
of knowledge. Such ‘schooling’
quickly descends into treating
learners like objects, things to be
acted upon rather than people to
be related to”.
This narrow view of education is
robbing our society especially our
BME communities the benefits we
should be enjoying because we are
not harnessing the profound and
rich talents and gifts that abound
in our children. Also, this could in
part explain the disillusionment of
some of our youths who are forced
into following a path that they
neither gifted at nor interested in,
hence making them vulnerable to
join gangs and crime.
Lieberman (2013: 282), noted that,
“Teachers are losing the education
war because our adolescents are
distracted by the social world.
Naturally, the students do not see
it that way. It was not their choice
to get endless instruction on
topics that do not seem relevant
to them. They desperately want to
learn, but what they want to learn
about is their social world—how
it works and how they can secure
a place in it that will maximize
their social rewards and minimize
the social pain they feel. Their
brains are built to feel these strong
social motivations and to use
the mentalizing system to help
them along. Evolutionarily, the
social interest of adolescents is no
distraction. Rather, it is the most
important thing they can learn
well”.
As Parents, we cannot leave the
education duty to teachers alone,
we should endeavour to help
our children in identifying their
talents and calling, support them
in working towards achieving their
goals- be it academic or otherwise.
We can do this by exposing to
different curricular and extra-
curricular activities. By helping
them to explore different activities
like sports, performing acts (Music,
Drama, Dance etc), STEM (Science,
Technology,
Engineering
and
Maths) clubs etc, they will be able to
discover where their passion lies and
be able to make informed decision
quite early in life. It is said that if the
only tool one has is a hammer, one
tends to force or to treat everything
as if it were a nail.