[color=#006600][/color]
This exciting article "Save our children; train their teachers" on profoduo..com highlights very topical issues
1. Why would a well meaning govt scrap the Teachers' Training College?
2. Are teachers from colleges of Education and faculties of Education in universities adequately trained to become good teachers?
3. Using NYSC to teach in primary and secondary schools, a good or bad idea?
4. What makes a good teacher
Please find out from the link and you will be glad you did.

The link is profoduo..co.ke/2016/05/save-our-children-train-their-teachers.html?m=1

SAVE OUR CHILDREN; TRAIN THEIR TEACHERS
No matter the position you are today, a teacher played a key role in your success story. The influence of a teacher in the life of a student cannot be over-emphasized. It's disheartening to see the poor quality of teachers we are turning out in recent years which translates to the many half-baked graduates we have today and one of my teachers rightly called them 'educated illiterates'. I have had opportunity myself to teach though not for the money but for the joy of imparting a life. I have taught children in nursery, primary, secondary, and a few folks in the university and I can tell you categorically that the hardest people to teach are those in Nursery and Primary schools. The reason for this is that they're still in the formative period of their lives. The kind of teacher a child is exposed to at this stage affects his academic foundation throughout life. I'll always be grateful to one teacher who stands head and shoulders above all in my academic journey-Mr Sunday George Olatunji, GOD bless you wherever you are.
I was at a friend's place few days back for his mother's birthday. She happens to be a teacher-a thorough and dedicated one at that. We got talking and she said a lot of things which made me feel sorry for my dear country. How could a government that has education at the top of its priority scrap the Teachers' Training College, an establishment that has continually churned out quality teachers for the country over the years. According to her, Faculties of Education in the University and Colleges of Education are not doing enough in terms of producing quality teachers especially for the Nursery and Primary levels. A teacher at that level is supposed to be a Nurse, a Counsellor, a Mother, a Father, a Sister, a Brother, a Lawyer, etc for his/her pupils up until closing time. She explained that the children are from various backgrounds and therefore are in need of someone to be everything they aren't getting at home. Though job it is!
She went on to explain how she left the private school all because of a student who the school and his parents refused to repeat a class after failing. She quit her job for the public school saying it's against the ethics of her profession. She also encountered a similar case in the public school when the guardian of one of her pupils threatened to shoot her because she had refused to promote his nephew who had repeated a class. This time, she didn't have to quit her job as her director was in support of her. The boy eventually repeated that class and became a brighter pupil. Years later, that same boy saw her and was very grateful to her for that tough but painful decision she took years back. She also told me of several other students who their guardians wanted to send to the north for marriage after completing only Primary six. With the help of her director, she was able to get these girls and other boys to continue their education.
She questioned the rationale behind bringing in youth corpers to teach at primary and secondary school level. I totally agree with her because I remembered a particular corper back in my secondary school, an Engineer by training, who took almost a month to teach my colleagues and I, "difference of two squares", in mathematics. What aspects of Elementary Science will an Electrical Electronic Engineer teach? What's the correlation between the two? The lecture notes that some lecturers used in teaching in the 80's are still been used till tomorrow. Students are taught to copy and paste and not to think. We need to do more than just learning to read and write, we need to teach our students to think and solve problems, which is the idea behind education. We need policy makers who are knowledgeable about all these technicalities at the helm of affairs.
If you want a teacher that is thoroughly furnished in and out, send that person to a Teachers' Training College before or after his University or College of Education program. As I left her place after the discussion, the message was crystal clear- "if you're close to any of our Governors or if by tomorrow you become one yourself, BUILD A TEACHERS' TRAINING COLLEGE.