By Omoyibo Tega
ACCORDING to Longman dictionary, Education is the process by which the human mind develops through learning at schools, colleges or university, the knowledge and skills gain form being taught.
Fafunwa defines education as the aggregate of all the processes by which a child or adult develops the abilities, attitude and other forms of behaviovr which are positive value to the society in which he or she lives that is to say, it is a process of disseminating knowledge either to ensure social control or to guarantee national direction of the society or both.
Education is important for the development of countries. Most of the first world countries are technologically advanced and they owe their great successes and achievement in science and techndogy to their strong and stabilized educational systems
Countries with developed economies such as Japan, China, USA and Germary have their automobile and electrical products in Nigeria and foreign countries, their booming economies are driven by both the implementation of prudent economic policies and technological innovations evolved by the citizens but technological breakthroughs and inventions are achieved by students.
When the issue of Nigeria educational system today is being mentioned, the first sets of thoughts that comes to mind are decline in standard, deterioration of facilities like before other thing.
In Nigeria, some mechanical engineers can’t repair their cars, talk more of manufacturing simple tools. The economy of this nation is solely based on crude oil revenues. The inability of the nation to diversify the economy is linked to the dysfunctional educational system. Now, the question is what are the problems affecting the Nigerian educational system?
Experts in the educational sector have been able to identify examination malpractices with poor preparation of students for examination. Due to the rising cost of school fees, enrolment fees and other, students and parents will not want to be held back by any form of failure in any required subject so they would go any length to ensure success.
According to research, over 50% of secondary school students in Benin City, on yearly basis prefer to enroll and write their final external examination in schools where their success is guaranteed.
Taking a close view at the activities in school has shown that their students are made to suffer undue explotation by school heads at both private and public school under the covering of enrolment fees and assurance of success in their examination. Teachers are not alone in doing this but they also involve ministry officials who were supposed to inspect and monitor activities in schools to ensure standard compliance. This form of explotation does not only take place in secondary schools alone, it also happens in tertiary schools as students are being surcharge all in the name of dues that are not accounted for, false, purchase of reading and other learning materials at exorbitant rates or services of which staffs are being paid for as assigned responsibility and official provision made by the institution.
Another problem affecting education in Nigeria is poor parenting and guardiance, parenting involves caring, protection, guardiace, provision of basic needs for a child’s up keep in order for the challenges of life. But out of desperation most parents have resolved to take their wards through fast lane by paying for examination malpractice for their wards to qualify into higher institution and some even progress on the act through higher instution.
In regard to this conscious effort is needed by all the stakeholders in the educational sector, government at all level, school heads and teachers parents and studients to bring these abnormalities to normalcy as poor pareting cause indiscipline and indiscipline is the bane of Nigeria society today and calls for restoration of a proper academic culture in Nigeria.
Knowledge is supposed to help fight against poverty ignorance and disease but now the reverse is the case as the process of acquiring knowledge has turned into a money making venture for those who are desperately in need of knowledge and skills. This trend has now at across all levels of education from nursery to tertary institution.
This has led to a fall in the standard of education in Nigeria as even graduates from many institutions exhibit ignorance towards societal issues and lack of creativity due to the problems associated with the learning and training process which is observed to be pertly because many of those who offered those services did it in greed.
Government and private sector should put in more efforts and resources towards the development of education by providing vocational and technical education centers, equipping and staffing the few existing ones, providing modern aids such as computers, internet web site facilities over head projectors firms etc should be provided in schools.
Government should take over payment of enrolment fees for both primary and secondary schools external examination and introduce the system of online registration for school enrolment by a national body in order to reduce the explotative teidencies by school heads.
It is also important to educate and re-orient teachers, parents and students on the need to discourage examination malpractices in schools.
A well focused, designed and defined pattern of educational system that would embrace people from all background be it rich or poor should be set and a better educational system will be developed giving every child the kind of education he or she desires and deserve and making Nigeria a globalized nation, whereby we will be able to make our machineries, facilities needed in our country instead of importing from foreign developed Nations
