Shortchanging The Young Ones In Private Schools - Education - Nairaland
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| Shortchanging The Young Ones In Private Schools by Emperoh(m): 5:38pm On Aug 24, 2012 |
Shortchanging the young ones in private schools FRIDAY, 24 AUGUST 2012 00:00 BY CHINEDU ANARADO FEATURES - YOUTH SPEAK I AM taking a look at schools within my reach and I am wrinkling my face at the damage we are doing to our children in their formative age. Without doubt, the desire for a good education cannot be over-stated. But there is a tendency, albeit misplaced, for one to judge good education based on academic grades and class positions only without taking a careful and comprehensive look at other facets of training. I may not have grown in the days of yore, when my parents went to school and a little later; circa up till the mid-80s. But stories I have been privy to illustrate their education as being all-encompassing; involving the reading and writing aspect, manners and habits, joined with sports and practical illustration of classroom tutorials. With the near absence of private schools back at the time, the government and the missionaries took responsibility of balancing a student’s academic life through provision of quality teaching and also recreational and practical equipment. Hence, if you were endowed academically, you could do sports or even engage in the technical aspect of class work. Being a carpenter, mechanic, plumber or electrician made so much sense with professionalism brought to bear on the practice. This manifested in their output. Something I feel or attribute to the quality of training they received. Taking it a step further, the theory of a sound mind in a sound body made meaning. But I am increasingly getting worried at the unavailability of sporting facilities in our private schools, especially in the primary schools and a good number of post-primary institutions as well. Take a cursory look around you, aside the missionary schools of old, government institutions, and probably a few well-heeled private academies, you will most likely see primary schools or even a secondary school in a block of two to three storey building with space maximization at its optimum. Where is the football pitch, handball court, volleyball court, the track for sprints etc? Does it mean that aside academic classes, there is no opportunity for pupils or students to work out, train themselves and discover innate talents given to them by God? Life must be boring for some of these kids I must say! The liberalization of the academic sector which gave rise to the mushrooming of private schools may be our greatest undoing. But it equally points to the failure of the government to get things right. I would not know who amongst us who would be willing to send his beloved child to a neighbourhood community high school where children do not have the space to exert themselves physically. I will not be so worried if this was all about a space to play, but the fact that we are not setting a platform to discover sporting talents early enough is where my worry lies. We concentrate so much on the academic performances that we fail to see that there could be other talents that need to be discovered at an early age to help for proper development. There is no structured system to encourage the discovery of new talents. It is not as if they are not there but our concentration is mainly on how good the Arithmetic or English grade is. You may say the yearly inter-house sport is a platform, but really, how many schools take it serious or even go the extra mile to develop the talent discovered? What happened to the inter-collegiate competitions we used to experience much earlier? The responsibility in remedying this anomaly lies with parents. I think guardians should begin to pay more attention to the other aspects of their child’s development and in making choices of the schools to which they are sent. Sound academic performance is only a stepping stone to a better use of a child’s skill-set. Nigeria as we know it today is surviving on the skills of the talented ones that were able to discover their gifts early enough and break international frontiers with it. It is equally nauseating to realize that most of our sporting talents who are doing well may have developed their abilities abroad. While this may not be so in all cases, it is an occurrence that we cannot ignore. The sort of money, fame, prominence and development sporting success confers on an individual and a country is such that no well-meaning parent or tutor can ignore. I will advocate early discovery to help us better channel such a child’s energies. The age falsification issue we keep experiencing with our age group football national teams can be directly attributed to late talent discovery yet no one had thought it important to look for the means or solution to such national embarrassments. I also think the youth empowerment groups should see this as a fight in which to indulge. Let schools with inadequate facilities merge with the others. The government should deny approval to institutions that do not provide all round facilities for a child’s development. We cannot keep shortchanging ourselves in the name of profit-making. Everything we do now will have a devastating repercussion in the future if we do not do the right thing. The government also needs to look into the issue of facilities at some of our public institutions—primary and post-primary. NGOs and corporate organisations desiring to help with our education should look for schools where they may provide facilities that will permit for early talent discovery and nurturing. Our public schools have the space but no equipment. Concentrating on just academic quality will be tantamount to half-baked education. Academics, talent and skill-set development must all go together. Training of both the mind and the body is what makes for a rounded education and wholesome development. Sporting facilities should be a standard pre-requisite for a licence to any private institution. Chinedu Anarado, an advertising practitioner, lives in Lagos 1 Like 1 Share |
| Re: Shortchanging The Young Ones In Private Schools by sonety2k(m): 10:00am On Oct 13, 2012 |
BABA Emperph you Said all |
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