Column
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Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the World
…Nelson Mandela
THE colossal abuse of norms have long become a culture in our society. It is more pathetic when education is involved in the structures and institutions being bastardized. All over the world, it is the quality of education instituted in a society or country that determines the developmental strides of that society or country. A society that allows the ravaging disaster of corruption to invade its educational structures is a society laid to waste. Qualitative education is the road to a decent society in the same way any noble edifice must stand on a solid foundation. The import of this is that a polluted educational structure produces polluted youths that will plunder and castrate the entire societal mechanism. Our schools are today decaying in geometrical progression. Majority of the teachers in our schools need real teachers to teach them how to teach and the rudiments of qualities expected of a teacher truly called. Majority of the teachers in our schools know best how to corrupt the children they teach and the worst havoc is done when some parents connive and collude with teachers to destroy children created by God and placed under their care to nurture and establish as worthy members of a decent society.
It is no longer news that what many parents have gained expertise in is the art of spoiling their children through various modalities of examination malpractice. From primary school level to secondary and university level, many parents aid their children in examination malpractices. These brand of rotten parents pay various amounts of money to ensure that their children pass examinations. They even pay varied fees to get varied grades for this their wards. Gone are the days when examination bodies were sacred institutions ruled by merit, discipline and excellence. Today, the blight of corruption has invaded these institutions and manipulations of results at various levels have continued to thrive hence, nobody should be surprised at the level of pollution that thrives in the outer society because parents and teachers join hands to teach children how to cheat in order to pass their examinations. and when such when children graduate, the society where they will practice their art needs to be pitied. When a father sends his child to go and steal, such a child will definitely break the door with his legs.
It is, indeed, sad that the examinations conducted by the West African Examinations Council, WAEC, and the National Examinations Council, NECO, lack credibility today. In many of our secondary schools, once students attain the level of Senior Secondary two, SS2, status, they leave the school to register in their so called wonder or miracle centres where they will pass the WAEC or NECO examination with ease and without tears. This is the unfortunate trend and nobody cares much. The ministry of education, and the various examination bodies are not bothered about this ugly trend majorly because nothing is abominable any longer. Once it is time for WAEC or NECO organised examinations, young boys and girls travel to these wonder or miracle centres where examination malpractices is perpetrated. It is known that some young girls have been abused and raped in the process.
The varying degrees of criminal activities which have become a way of life in our society are majorly, the consequence of miseducation that is in practice in our society, today. John F. Kennedy reminds us that a child who is not well educated is a child lost. The sad thing in our Nigeria, is not only that they are lost; they take other decent members of the society as their guinea pigs whom they use to desecrate and dehumanize society. It is John Gadner who said “An important thing to understand about any human institution is that it does not move unless pushed”. If those who have the responsibility officially to reform and transform our educational institutions fail to act accordingly, they will simply be voting for the continued decay of our society. A society where our young boys shamelessly see sagging pants and torn jeans while our young girls see flaunting and flashing their flesh and boobs as modern dressing codes and trends is a society that takes pride in planting time bombs.
By Chibueze Agwagom
— May 6, 2013 @ 01:00 GMT
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