Knowledge they say is power and education in the best legacy we can give ourselves. The most important aspect of education is to teach responsibility and impart the basic background for each individual to grow and develop him or herself.
In the twenty-first century life is moving at a faster pace than it usually did all because of advancement in technology. This is not news. However, the education of each individual starts and ends with him. We must choose to learn and educate ourselves in the way we want to grow because whether good or bad we are all responsible for our own personal lives. The decision we make and the actions we take are ours alone.
We are so used to shifting blame about the decay in education to the government, society or parents; some even blame the teachers. The blame does not rest solely here. That is a situation of a lazy worker blaming his tools. The responsibility for this should also be shared by the student because the individual input of a person in acquiring knowledge is the foundation to learning. The blame for the decay in the educational system begins at the home. Every home contributes to how each individual is shaped. A parent that lives a responsible and exemplary life lays the foundation of a good beginning for the child. This foundation begins with the head of the home, do you live by example? Most parents are not concerned with the day-day activities of their children; they have allowed work to supersede the responsibility of properly managing the home. A home like the business, which is not properly managed, would go bankrupt. The child as he / she grows needs constant managing, monitoring, mentoring and educating. The education at home would build the child into the kind of student he would be in school.
I remember while I was young, my parents made it their business to monitor my daily activities. This monitoring was in two folds. My dad was in charge of my school activities, he would call all of us (his children) to the family room and ask for our school bags and he would go through all our school books and homework. Let me tell you; if by any chance you failed to do well in any subject it was trouble. After our school and lesson homework, we had to start his own class work, so we went to three schools: the proper school in the mornings, lesson after school and an evening school with dad. He also built in us an excellent reading habit that has stayed with most of us till date. He would come home with books; initially it was short story books, then novels, mostly by African writers. On weekend mornings we took turn at reading the newspaper to him this is where things like pronunciation, reading skills, and figure of speech are put to the test. It was not all work though; we also had play!! Especially when we had done exceptionally well in school and our duties.
During the afternoons before dad got back from work, mum was already home and her own education was more basic. Moral instruction, home management and godliness were her forte. Most times she came to pick us from school or she just took time off work and came to our school. She would have a long chat with our class teachers and get the entire gist about our individual character mostly in relation to our friends and social environment, which is the school. This is usually her basis for her own kind of schooling.
However nowadays, parents seem to overlook the fact that money is not the basic factor in building a home. An absentee parent would never be able to give the child the kind of mentoring that he / she needs. Remember parents should be the first mentor in a child’s life. It is said that we now have parents that are willing to pay their child’s way through examinations. Some even encourage the children to be lazy and corrupt by approving of the child’s immoral behaviours. They pay bribes so the child can pass exams putting his / her mind at rest that all will be well. The funny thing is that all is not well because this behaviour would have a negative lasting effect in the life of the child, mostly at the level of higher learning. Each parent must be responsible enough to teach their child to be responsible.
Let us not forget the saying, “you can take the horse to the river but you cannot force it to drink”. This is a true saying about children and wards. The easiest thing about life is choosing to be irresponsible. It would have been easy for us while our parents were building characters of moral responsibility in us to choose not to abide by it. Actually I can say I tried it but at those times I remembered my mother’s words, “if you read and do well it is for your good and that of your family that you will have someday. I cannot use your certificate to work, it is yours alone”. My parents made us understand this and so we learnt to teach ourselves to be responsible at all times and to value education and learning. This helped a lot when I had to go to the university. I actually had a job I went to while I was studying full time at a university in Lagos. No it was not in the 70’s nor the 80,s, it was just a few years ago. Less than a decade in fact. I knew that been responsible is the major key to my development as an individual and to how much learning I get at school. The success of each student is tied to the amount of effort he /she puts into their studies and the involvement of that student in his / her own education. One of the reasons why we have so much decay in our educational system is the fact we have a lot of irresponsible students who through their collective efforts are able to disrupt the school calendar. For any institution or society, when the people no longer believe in taking control of their lives positively and been responsible for their education this will lead to stagnation and division. No one can make it in life without the proper knowledge required to do so. Even King Solomon, who is acclaimed to be the wisest man, could not have excelled without learning. He learnt the laws of God, the laws of the land and also learnt how to manage the position God had placed him in. Through the knowledge he acquired he was able to build a kingdom that has not existed again after his time. So also we have read about the world inventors and philosophers, they excelled only because they accepted and took up the responsibility to acquire knowledge. It is a mandatory part of life that any person(s) that cannot successfully manage his / her life cannot mange that of others.
Lastly, the society we live in also has a role to play in the education of its citizens. Building Libraries, laboratories, buying books and equipping schools with necessary tools to make learning more conducive and fun is important. However, that is not all. The decay has also been helped by the fact that the society mostly does not have good things to say about its youths. The society encourages corruption, and moral degradation in its youths. Let us also remember that the encouragement of the society for a job well done is required. The society needs to generate confidence in its citizens so that they would be willing to keep learning.
Let us conclude with this, the blame for the decay lies at the feet of the home, society and the individual. But above all the greatest blame is that of the student who has refused to be responsible enough to better improve him / herself by acquiring the knowledge required to succeed. We as Nigerians need to put in more effort to educate ourselves, if we do this the society would stand up and take notice then we would be able to correct the errors made in our homes.
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