Academic Success : An obstacle To Personal Achievement by Azeezat Okunlola

You might have heard of students who stay back home and probably never got the opportunity to get into a higher institution, majorly because they either couldn’t get a good grade in mathematics,supposedly needed for courses like Mass communication,African religious studies and even European languages or because they had the wrong “jamb combination”,so to speak,which begs the question,”What secondary school subjects correlate with learning a new language or a course like anthropology which delves into the prehistoric culture of man and how he survived in respect to ages and weather conditions?” It shouldn’t come as a surprise that over 50% of secondary school graduates in Nigeria fall into this category annually.

Even more traumatic is the mental condition of a student in the university who one way or the other struggles to overcome the everlasting long hours in class,battling with assignments and a 65 paged project,preparing for classroom test whilst struggling to build up a career at a young age,hoping that perhaps,three hours a day would lend a great smile to creativity, but then doesn’t the General studies material say the body needs 6-8 hours of sleep a day to function properly? At what point does nutrition come into play again? That,i’m afraid is the sound of goals,hopes and dreams of the Nigerian child,being shipped away.

You might want to term this other set of students as even more pitiable for they no longer remember words like “purpose” and “fulfillment”,save for the first class honours gradually swimming into their transcripts. The pressure from parents and society is just about enough to want to book an apartment in space,only a journey like that would probably cause a fortune, which reminds me of a student who only last year forced a good quantity of poison down her throat. She left a letter though;it said to not weep over her. She mentioned that she had felt embarrassed and did not want to wait to hear what new words her parents had added to their book of diction on the event of their finding out that her Cumulative Grade Point Average had dropped by a point five. It’s obvious a student like that worked day and night to build a CGPA that at the end of the day would not result in anything satisfactory,at least not for her.

The question is, “Why do we school? Why spend so many years of one’s life in school?” Perhaps just to attain a certificate,or perhaps to be called a graduate. Schooling is supposed to be a thing of leisure,just as the word school has its etymology from Greek “schole”, which means “leisure”. The idea of schooling is to attain education, even the word education has got its etymology in latin “educatus” which literary means “to draw out”,”to pull from within”,”to be refined”. What exactly is to be refined? The concept of education is aimed at pulling out one’s dreams,and refining one’s talent and inbuilt gifts. Education is not about spending 18 hours a day stuck to some chalkboard and a teacher who goes on and on about the history of Nigeria.For how long do we read about great men and fill our brains with achievements that run all the way back to the 3rd century and yet, give no room for creative imagination and actualization of dreams and goals? It is high time the mentality of the average Nigerian is changed.The end product of education should not be a certificate,but rather, a satisfied,fulfilled and active individual.

Why do you school?

http://mouthpiece.com.ng/academic-success-an-obstacle-to-personal-achievements/

CC: Seun, Lalasticlala, Mynd44 consider for front page. Thank you

For the following reasons.
1. To please my parents and please myself
2. Not to be called illiterate
3. To change my world as we know it
4. To be a great man in the future

WinningEleven:
For the following reasons. 1. To please my parents and please myself 2. Not to be called illiterate 3. To change my world as we know it 4. To be a great man in the future

you are simply 10much.

frankosivue:
you are simply 10much.

thank you