Educational institutions are expected to be agents of national transformation right from the primary down to the tertiary level. But this is not necessarily so especially in African Countries. Most teachers are not well informed and students are consequently deprived of quality knowledge, data and information. Don’t forget that children left untutored, untrained and uneducated will grow up with deadly, harmful and destructive capabilities strong enough to crush down the homes that refused to train them. Education is a sine qua non.
Also, most countries in Africa do not have their educational curriculum geared towards the subject of development. The research and development institutes in most universities hardly come up with new discoveries especially on natural resources not yet explored. meanwhile part of the change we have been longing to see in our economy lies within our educational system. We wouldn’t have been this impoverished had we taken maximum advantage of the relevance of our educational system.
Simply put, the way out is for us (government and civil society alike) to revisit our schools with an holistic and well thought-out transformation agenda. This transformation must necessarily take advantage of technology to clearly show the connection between sustainable development and each course of study in all our institutions. If truly the primary aim of bringing up the education system is development, it automatically means that all programmes and subjects taught in schools and various institutions of learning are fundamental elements of socio-economic development in themselves. If any subject or course is discovered to have no bearing whatsoever on development, such subject is worthy of undebatable removal from the list of programmes of study. The day a nation discovers and realizes the relevance of Biology, Chemistry, Economics, Physics, Engineering, Management, Arts, etc on the subject of development, is the day the country begins her historic and remarkable towards development. You know why? each country has numerous citizens who have cutting edge knowledge in those discipline. the problem ha just always been inability to realize, discover and appropriate those knowledge treasure.
There must also be a system of check and balances put in place to redress deviations from standard.
1 comment
olusesan fajimi
Education should be directed towards national development. To achieve this, the educators must as a matter of compulsion be trained and retrained. The subjects or courses should be created and developed in line with the needs of the society; they should be developed to solve problem when applied not just theories, they should not just be thought for the children to read and pass exams for the sake of certification alone, there should be application of the knowledge acquired as a result of studying those subjects/courses. I think is high time we changed our perspective about education and nation develop. No proper education no societal development. Education that develops is the one that is planned for that purpose. Educators and educationist should wake up to this…