This intends to paint the picture of what our education in the primary and the secondary school looks like, taking into cognizance the factors highlighted above. The child as the major receiver of knowledge in this analyses is considered to have a little input in what he would grow to become, especially at the abinitio stage of his educational journey.
THE HOME: This is the cradle of a man’s journey in life. Once this factor is unsupportive, harsh and hostile, the journey is planned on faulty foundation and would only take the grace of God almighty to be straightened. I would love to liken the home to a tripod stool or stand. The three legs are expected to be well fixed to make it functional and worthwhile; the child, the father and the mother.
Thus, the child needs the other two to be able to survive the challenges that would come his way in the future either in terms of moral and financial upkeep. What do we have today….broken homes, self sustained child and a few well brought up child from some elite homes.
THE SCHOOL: Here, I would be xraying the impacts of both the public schools and the private schools on the pupils. Mostly, we see students of the private school doing beautifully well in academics than their colleagues in the public schools and we always failed to understand where things went wrong.
a.)Teachers: the teachers in the private schools are usually the very few good products of those in the public schools; thereby deficient in terms of knowledge and experience when compared to those in the public schools.
b.) Students: Yea…the bone of contention is the kind of students in the schools identified above. The students in a private school are usually the children from a very good home background, like mine and yours, while those that are pushed to the public schools are those from a broken or poverty ridden homes. While at age 3, literacy and numeracy has reflected in the learning activities of a child from an elite home and already a pupil in a private school, his counterpart from the other bloc is still a dumb-dull child crying about the corners of the street with thick mucus stock to his nose.
c.) Work Done: The private school teacher add just a little input and the child is already on the fast lane to academic success. In 2012, while I was still teaching the English Language and Literature in English, I carried out this simple experiment and the result would amaze you. I prepared some public schools students for SSCE Lit. in Eng. for 3 good years. 90% of the class could not afford the presscibed texts, I would read mine, explain and make notes for them to copy. Many of them, already in the final class would copy the notes at the back of their English Language notebook. They still could not afford a separate notebook for Literature. I then had a contract to prepare about 13 students in a private school, 2 times in a week for 3 months (evening classes), their Literature in English Language teacher had gone back to Ghana, 3 years before I started preparing the students.
d.)THE RESULTS: Even before the result, with my experience and expertise as a well trained teacher, I felt fulfilled, teaching those set in the private school. This kids formed notes on their own, contributed delightfully in the class, bought and read all the prescribed texts. When the results came out, my students in the public school, even with additional free weekend lessons, managed to present my input with a 50% pass, including a D7 and E8. Those in the private school that I took for just 3 months, twice in a week, gave me a 100% pass with about 9 distinctions out of the 13 that sat for the examination.
Finally, a lot need to be done to ameliorate the problems of performance and desired results in the public school especially, as it affects the less city with dense population of the empty students left for public school teachers.The best thing to happen to a public school education as just been pronounced by Mr. Adegboyega Oyetola’s administrationis is the stoppage of mass promotion in the public school. Let’s stop presenting unqualified candidates for SSCE examination, this position of know child should be left behind should not be in the areas of education alone. If they don’t do well in education, they would excel in other areas of life like vocational work, craftmanship, apprenticeship etc.
Dare Alabi is an education administrator and Publisher of Occasion Magazine.
