Welcome to the Classroom

So let me ask you…
What does the classroom mean to you. Please don’t go giving me all that teenage Textbooks definition crap about a class room consisting of desks and chair, a blackboard and is where the teacher teaches us, bla, bla, bla…please, please. If that’s all you have as a graduate, then you are a monumental disgrace to your years of schooling.

We are not kindergarten students nor are we primary or secondary students. Since we all agreed that we are adults who knows their left from their right, defining the classroom and its purposes shouldn’t be rocket science, abi? On a more serious note… it’s commonly agreed that the classroom is a daily ritual opulent with the exchanging of knowledge through teaching and learning and it’s the only gathering among our national arrangements that is by a certain degree, bereft of any ethnic preferential treatment. Is a distinct gathering of cross-cultural pollination of ideas that had continued to be graced both by the dead and living scholars, inventors, reformers and leaders of any time or generations.

It is also believe what the classrooms is to the whole institution is what the studio Mike is to the radio station. And no matter how magnificent the structures the schools erects, the classroom still remains the soul of its existence and essence. It’s reckoned as the only direct link between the students and the school’s representatives in form of the lecturers and professors. Both the students and the lecturers make up the classroom, but with given rules and regulation guiding how and what is been taught. So the relationships existing among the students and also between the teachers and the school authority at large shapes and moulds the perception of how we all identify with what we call the classroom.

I ask yet again, what does the classroom really mean to you? What kind of feelings envelopes you each time you step in and when you exit it? I can assure you the classroom, in spite of its undisputed essence and its non-negotiable academic stands, means different things to different people. While some students sees it as a venue of channeling knowledge, others sees it as a rendezvous of sorts and don’t tell me others don’t see it as torture chambers as well. Folks who belong to the latter category would rather avoid classes as much as possible for reasons best known to them. And another thing, you’ll need to put a gun to their head to make them enter a class already in session or jam-packed. For these shy hobbits walking in through the entry door is like stepping on a detected land mine or facing a firing squad.

Let clarify something here. The juicy crux of this piece on the classroom is not about the curriculum, the grades or the teaching contents, no sir. Rather emphasis is place on how to uncloak the attitudes towards aforementioned above. Like I said I’m less concerned about the activities of learning but more concern about the mood of those people who have the reason to be there.

Before I get into the nitty-gritty of what goes on in the classroom, let me be upfront with you in my admission that it is not going to be easy capturing the accurate dealing that resonates in the class…but I will give it a try. So what other activities apart from teaching and learning go on in this unique confinement? Boy-oh-boy. Whalai, a lot. A lot dey happen for inside classroom no be small…

As a graduate of the mother of all discipline, Philosophy, my class is all I have to make a reference of when discussing the classroom. And philosophy been a special course and best among its teeming equals, my classroom, has more push ups to offer because we disagree to agree.

But do we really agree? Do students get along with each other talk less of the teachers. Please examine these comments made by my teachers and see if they by any chance sum up the mood in class.

“You people are not serious! You can go to the saloon and make hair of 3.000 naira, you can buy N1.000 naira phone recharge card and you can go clubbing and buy ticket shows all over Lagos and yet you cannot buy books that will better your academic life…”  Dr. Ndubuisi.

How about this one “I’m sure some of you, as old as you are, your parent nags, force and sometimes flog you to come to school and call me to keep an eye on you if at all you enter classes…”  Dr. Ogbinaka.
Try this one too “…no wonder, you guys don’t think at all. Think, think, use your head”… Dr. Okoro.
I think you will like this one better, is my favorite “if I hear a phone ring in this class again, that will be the end of this lecture, scalawags!” Dr. Anele.

Can you now see the direction I am driving at? If you do, then welcome to the classroom…where its philosophy reads ‘No gut, no glory!’ 

                                          Reality
The classroom is in which ever form or arrangement is laid out, it has a lot going for it as a unique confinement where all sorts of things both official and unofficial happens. At first glance, the classroom looks like a gallery or an exhibition centre where statements are meant to be made and high class accessories are meant to be display like glamorous gathering of Nollywood stars looking all rosy on the red carpet. It’s a colourful arrangement principally decorated by both the ‘bend down select’ and the sliding glass boutiques, for its entrenched we come in looking at our utmost best--our style, our ways, any question? Question on why you see lecturers grinning like kids in a candy store while staring riveted from the pulpit surveying for their favourites. Please don’t ask me what I meant by ‘favourites’ your number 6 is not there for nothing, so use it to decode it……

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What does the classroom mean to you. Please don’t go giving me all that teenage Textbooks definition crap about a class room consisting of desks and chair, a blackboard and is where the teacher teaches us, bla, bla, bla…please, please. If that’s all you have as a graduate, then you are a monumental disgrace to your years of schooling.


nice start. . . pls summarize others.

efiwe as your username implies you are a real geek what person will read that much long text only an efiwe but i'm sorry half of them on here are olodo they no sabi read this

U think say i go read everytin.taaa

I did not follow the lecture to the end. What a classroom indeed! Long, boring lectures that made me slept-off along the line.