₦airaland Forum

wow. 70% of students at the federal millitary school failed WAEC? I thought those schools had better reputations. lol
what percentage of students do you think would have passed the WAEC at the private school you went to? about the same?

are the WAEC exams required for all secondary school students? or can students choose whether or not to take them?

over-intelligent people probably lack social skills
hence successful males go for an easy target - a young girl
& successful females don't have the guts to do likewise

I don't think it has anything to do with male domination, could your basis of judgement be flawed?

food4tot,
what do you mean by "over-intelligent"? there is no such thing as over-intelligent.
Chimamanda Adichie is an example of an intelligent woman. She is married by the way and very successful.
We should be encouraging more girls to be like her. rather than training them on how to buy lace and throw owambe's. Socializing and materialism is not everything.

You don't know for sure whether effeminate men are straight or in the closet, do you?. He could be gay but the circumstances around him will not let him come out of the closet. Coming out may also affect his business.

@aloy-emeka
yea I don't know for sure.
but how come you seem to know for sure?

maybe the girl is more masculine. so the guy's femininity balances hers out. lol
let's blame his mom's womb for exposing his fetus to less testesterone than normal for a boy.

lol. don't mind me. I thought WAEC was for jss3.
so what is the jss3 exam? when did you hear about it as in when did you know you had to take this exam? ie.i'm sure you weren't thinking of waec in primary school or even knew what it stood for.
what is WASSCE?

what school did you attend?

^ congrats!!yay for prioritization.
how did you prepare for the WAEC? are there special books? notes? preparations ? what did your parents think? how did your teachers prepare you? study groups? how were your classmates? what is the fail rate in your school ? when did you first find out about WAEC. etc.

hmmm I see o. definitely a nerd. had to google incredulity too.
I hope u are not killing her with your grammar but she seems like a nerd too. fashion nerd

hmm i guess it's ur call. is she your gf? at least you thought of her privacy. that's nice of u.

ehn? is she really your girlfriend? is she a model or something?

lol so are you going to replace it or what?

^ so why cut the head off? it seems you are displaying a clothing design. even the pose sef na wah. real architectural.
hahhahaha

ok. I lied then
but most christians I know, esp pentecostals, will rather lose their leg than go near traditional titles.  lol

and how did he get away with 5 wives though. or are u joking @eku-bear
@eku-bear, your profile pic, are u gay? or a fashion designer? lol

^ hhahahaha. what church does he attend? cele? lol

see how arik air advertisement took over d whole article.lol
can someone post pics of the lady and the reunion? what a blessing to meet your biological father for the first time in your life as an adult.
reminds me of Obama going back to kenya.

Becoming an oba requires rituals and rites that goes against their christian beliefs.
many christians are not interested in the titles and many more reject the traditional system.

I would be surprised if there are any christians at all among the royal family. If they convert, they would usually leave the family. most are not interested period! they consider it to be devilish.

Katsumoto:
Yesterday it was Lagos governors are Muslims;
today it is Obas that are muslims.
Tomorrow it may be 95% of Babalawo's are Muslims
Thursday, perhaps it will be 92% of ashies that are muslims.

Can you quit with the asinine threads? A majority can tell what your divisive objective is.

lwkmd

Kobojunkie:
I am glad you see what I mean when I say it is not the case that the school system is currently overwhelmed or overburdened but that they have been allowed to decay to the point that it makes no sense to expect quality graduates from these institutions anymore. Honestly, when students are subjected to this low quality of education, it explains so so much of why our graduates do not measure up anymore.

yea we were saying the same thing but in different ways. The existing structures are being overburdened because the govt refuses to expand or repair them. they are being left to decay to a point that they can't support the students in the system anymore.

I guess burden is not a good word choice because it suggests that it's not the govt's fault. but i strongly believe it's the govt's fault.

Maybe increasing the pass rate would make you feel better but it does not in anyway open up more university admission slots which are already oversubscribed.

Yea I understand that not all of the students can go on to University. Many don't even plan on going on and probably don't care about their scores.
Even the US,less than 40% of high school students go on to university.

but the benefit of education for a society can never be underestimated. I think the govt ought to invest more in it.

what we could do is maybe make the WAEC easier to reflect what is being taught in schools. what do you think?

Kobojunkie:
Back during my early years, and we are talking a long time ago, the first secondary school I attended had about 15 classrooms back then. Over the years some of the classrooms have been allowed to decay to the extent that they have become unusable.  Now you would expect that there ought to be more classroom blocks decades later considering

a) Population growth
b) It is also the only grammar school in at least 5 miles of that area
c) Increase in enrollment size due to population growth

Guess how many classes are left in an entire secondary school today? about 9 classes(the school hall is now a nest for different kinds of animals, some might even be dangerous).

With the decay that has occurred in the area over the decades, you readily find students not in school, and even those in school, not well educated -- many with a weak grasp of the English language. Some still cannot read and write at secondary levels. This picture is rather common and equally sad considering the number of people the ministry of education has in it's employ.

I totally agree with you!! This is stuff I witness too. 
this is what the typical secondary school in lagos looks like. sad but true. some are even worse. I'm even surprised this one is not overcrowded. You will barely find a teacher in all the classrooms at any point in time so these students aren't really getting much education if any.

articles for reference:
http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Home/5475649-146/%27We_write_on_the_floor%27_.csp
http://www.nigerianbestforum.com/index.php?topic=21641.0;wap2 (I witnessed the construction of this particular millenium school. i think it was in 2001. a project of the IMF millennium development goals program no doubt. I would see Chinese and western construction workers when I passed by and the building was beautiful when it opened )

[img]http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/dt.common.streams.StreamServer.cls?CONTENTTYPE=image/jpeg&STREAMOID=2ycI_HG0YQ$5dEA9vFIswC6SYeqqxXXqBcOgKOfTXxQKL6NHKIZcdknCVQ$tXDZAnW_PgxgftuECOcfJwS6Jtlp$r8Fy$6AAZ9zyPuHJ25T7a9GKDSxsGxtpmxP0VAUyHL6IDcZHtmM2t7xO$FHdJG95dFi6y2Uma3vSsvPpVyo-[/img]

tensor777:
Well you do sound very clever I have to say and you're right I did attend a federal boarding school. However this is not the time to[i] play the blame game [/i] as we just need to focus attention on the non performing schools in the rural areas.
How are these schools able to attract and retain qualified teachers because make no mistake it is the lack of good teachers and facilities that is responsible for the underperformance of these schools.
Maybe there needs to be a program whereby English speaking graduates from the West are encouraged to volunteer their services in such schools for a specified period of time. I know that such schemes operate in schools in countries like Malawi and Uganda and have proved very successful.

there are many non-performing schools in the urban areas too. in fact, I think majority of non-performing schools are in the urban areas since schools are more concentrated there.

to me, there are many English speaking graduates in Nigeria already. Govt just needs to create more jobs to employ their services. They will have to increase the wages at first so they can get the best qualified teachers but as more and more are educated and there is more competition, the wages will drop. Currently as it stands, we don't have proper teachers because salary isn't competitive so anyone gets hired especially for the local schools where majority of students attend. many of our teachers are partial volunteer teachers anyways since sometimes they get NO salary from govt. when this goes on for too long, that's when they go on strike. I'm talking about months without salary.

Also, intensive education should start from cradle. nursery school/ primary school foundation should be very strong and emphasized more to actually prepare the students for secondary school. a foundation is necessary first.

I'm not a huge believer in the peace corps/ western volunteer thing that you talk about to solving our problem. It helps yea but only a little bit but Govt. has to take a bigger stand. That should be supplementary but it is nowhere near the solution.

ARareGem:
Yes, girls are more difficult to train. It's not easy to provide for a girl's needs. But I thnk boys are more prone to mischief (of different kinds) . The thing is, boys can get away with it but for the girls. . . . they are not so lucky.

I agree. we need to train our boys more. They are more prone to mischief because we take girls mischief more seriously and ignore the boys.

I think fathers need to participate and play a role in training their sons too especially after puberty since women may not be comfortable with this.
which is why boys get ignored and are allowed to do whatever they want especially if the dads are not too involved in their lives.

this is especially evident in western society where there are many single mothers among blacks. the boys get ignored a lot after puberty. they have no fathers to train them and they fall to the wayside academically and socially.
in my house, my dad disciplines my brothers more and my mom disciplined me more. that's why I find my dad nicer than my mom, and my brothers think the opposite. they think mom is nicer and dad is stricter.
that's where we get the phrases daddy's girl, mommy's boy. to me, it reflects the role of the parents in disciplining their kids.


one reason girls may be difficult to train is because of their physical needs - hair, clothing, sanitation etc. good for families with enough funds. lol
where as boys are difficult to train because of their gregarious behavior especially when they are very young - good for the father who wants boys. but bad for the mom who has to take care of them. i bet such women are prone to migranes lol
this can depend on personality too though. some girls are mischievous where as we will have boys that are well behaved. gender roles in society eventually come into play and shape the kids more.

most of your points are really some stereotypes established and sustained by a male-dominated society.

I agree.

dayokanu:
We have even some women who dread having girls, I have never seen a man who doesnt want male children

something funny is that in the US, the past three presidents have girls only.
clinton has one daughter
bush has two daughters
obama has two daughters

no sons!!
I can't imagine that for a nigerian "big man" to be ok with girls only. so I think it has to do with culture and society.

[quote author=mitchell_a link=topic=582709.msg7520551#msg7520551 date=1294897749]I personally do not blame the students, but i blame the education system of the country, i wrote the same waec examinations this year, and i did well, i had only one credit and the rest fell in the category of B's and A's but, we realize that most people who wrote this exam did not have a private school experience in their secondary schools and public schools always have irrelevant breaks due to their strike actions. also, most of the people were from the public schools, and a huge number of them are too poor to afford blackberries and dstv, so i go against the school of thought that such are the distractions to blame because in the more civilized countries, they have this things but do not complain of woeful results. Furthermore, the economy of the country is such that when most of this students are done with school everyday, they have to go and help out in bringing funds to the family, hence they hawk items and do other menial jobs. by the time they are done with this, they normally have no time to study, or they are too tired to, so these i believe are the issues and not the narrow minded comments i have been seeing on this thread.[/quote]glad to find someone else who understands.
I think many of those posters are just out of touch with the reality whether because they lived in secluded, privileged communities or they just don't care to consider the average poor nigerian.

Kobojunkie:
Yes, there has been an increase in population, but like I said, our public schools are not operating at capacity, not even the Federal and State universities are near capacity. Most of them are operating today at half capacity -- this was revealed only recently in the news.


I was able to dig up the following to help us gain a clearer picture of what the problem most stems from.

http://www.krepublishers.com/02-Journals/JSS/JSS-09-0-000-000-2004-Web/JSS-09-2-075-148-2004-Abst-PDF/JSS-09-2-105-110-2004-Omotor-D/JSS-09-2-105-110-2004-Omotor-D-G.pdf

http://siteresources.worldbank.org/AFRICAEXT/Resources/no_29.pdf

http://www.saga.cornell.edu/saga/educconf/ajetomobi.pdf

http://ozelacademy.com/EJES_v1n1_4.pdf

wow. thanx for the links they were very insightful.
what do you mean by capacity? enrollment size?

IloveFred:
Is it about me? I have a brain. But I have a soul.

Am I wrong? This forum is of Nigerians and Friends of Nigeria?

I think we have given you enough advice.
it's all up to you now. besides, I thought you decided to go ahead and bring him over. why are you still confused?

come back and give us updates after he has arrived in poland jare.
and I hope you are feeling better from your illness. don't stress urself too much madame.

Anyway the way things are the private sector will continue to set the standards for primary and secondary education in Nigeria. That is the reality that the strictly limited state funding of public schools will not reverse.

the other reality is that majority of nigerian students attend these poorer public schools rather than the standard setting elite schools.
so who do you blame? I think the govt. because education is an important investment and it should be prioritized more.

i'm not expecting pass rate to increase over 50%. as long as we remain a third world country, that probably will not happen. but we should be able to do better than this and compete with our neighboring countries (esp. ghana) at least.

However, when we consider the increase in urbanization over the last decade, as well as increase in population, we find that it is not really the case that enrollment has also increased.

I was considering urbanization and population growth. those are huge factors actually.
also MDG and international body programs which may play more of a role in rural areas.

Below is a link to help you note how the number of children out of school has steady increased over the last decade. We have about 8.5 million kids out of school today alone, and that number does not seem to be decreasing.
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.PRM.UNER.MA/countries

that to me is due to population growth because as far as i'm concerned, public schools are becoming ever overcrowded not deserted.
shouldn't public school classes become more sparse if more kids were dropping out or going to private schools?

IMO total number of students in public schools have probably even risen within the last decade alone. private schooling doesn't really decrease any burden. at most, it just helps to keep the burden from growing to a breaking point rather than removing existing burdens.

govt needs to build more schools and maintain existing ones + pay good salaries to teachers. to me, there is no such thing as free education. someone has to be paying for it. in this case, the govt (whether through collecting taxes and using it efficiently or other means). the govt isn't doing that.

@tensor,
lol. I don't know what to say because I don't know where to start.  What secondary school did you attend?
the typical public secondary school in naija is a local govt school not a federal boarding school. the latter to me are some of the more elite schools.

to me sometimes i feel that many posters here that are blaming the students come from privileged backgrounds and do not know the reality of the poor education system we have.

fstranger1:
^^^^

The article was spot on, you need to read up on how the Whites squashed the use of Yoruba language as the medium of instruction in schools in the SW. It was an eye opener.

I won't be surprised. can you post the link to the artucle?
that's a method for colonial powers to keep their colonies dependent.
the germans used it against the poles. austrians used it against the serbs etc etc. colonized people were killed for speaking their native languages in public in the early 1900s europe can you believe.
I wonder how the situation was in french african colonies that had direct rule. I'm kinda curious. a partial difference is that many africans actually believed that we were inferior so we probably embraced many of these measures, whereas it helped to cause world wars in europe.

Kobojunkie:
Just to be clear on the one, the free education system was never done away with, so nothing stops poorer individuals from attending the free schools in their communities to date.  However, as you have clearly stated, quality is and has been the problem for the longest, and will continue to remain the problem until we actual deal with/tackle it.

what I mean is that in the beginning, maybe less poor people attended school than now. Even though it was free, i'm sure there were parents who didnt send their kids to school because they wanted them to work at home or in the farm or something. Education is now being promoted to all due to MDG programs and just general and more widespread appreciation for education. also, there is increased rapid urbanization meaning more kids are going to school now compared to the past and this can help pull down quality esp. if govt doesn't step up to increase funding to accomodate the increasing demand. I may be wrong though.

education being free doesn't mean everyone took advantage of it back then compared to now.maybe that's a partial reason why the quality may have been better. the system wasn't as over crowded.
I'm sure there are other reasons too.

ex. the way my parents talked about the free education system back then seemed to me like they were privileged. but today, we take it for granted that everyone has access to schooling. that's why I say that even though it was free, maybe not everyone had the opportunity to attend and the ones who did were probably more successful.

I think personality comes into play there. I know many women that I cannot picture being submissive. And I know many guys that I cannot picture being effective leaders either.
what is best is for a Type A personality male to be with a Type B female and vice versa. It shouldn't be based on gender.

but if culture comes into play, the couple can always switch role when they go to public outings to save face or hide the fact that the wife wears the pant in the house. I know many couples like that and the husband are totally fine with it. You can even tell from interacting with them and knowing their personalities who has what role or makes the decisions in the house.

to answer the question, I am definitely for feminism. but there are different kinds of feminists out there with the worst being the radical and extremist types.

Orikinla your posts suggest that your wife/girlfriend or whatever has fully chained and bound you forever with her love potion and nothing can free you*. wow this is great. more answers plzz.
I have a theory that some people fall in love easier than others. do you agree?

*not that you want to be fred anyways  .

fstranger,
such an unrealistic argument. we should start importing british teachers. really. are you ok?  
even if we do that, wouldn't it require increased investment in the education system? which goes back to the basis of Ajanlekoko's point.

I don't know about the military vs civilian govt side but what I know is that with less state control (maybe due to IMF policies or increased capitalist ideas or just plain indolence on the part of our leaders),  there is less investment in education and other public infrastructure. whereas there is usually more state control under military govts.
but that aside and even if there isn't a difference, the fact is that govt has neglected the education system.

I was glad Ajanlekoko mentioned the free education system. i'm sure it was of better quality at its inception. but then if you introduce free education, more kids will go to school including those who come from poorer backgrounds and therefore need more support. now if the quality of this free education system deteriorates or fail to keep up with the demand, this just greatly maximizes the problem and public secondary schools become an alternative to the streets rather than an educational institution.

Omolola1:
yaaaay! how u take know dat one na? anyway, am veri sure ds isnt about e-love, its d real syd, ryt?

it was a joke.
but it is all over nairaland. u be celebrity for hia 

@topic,
so far, the girls are in love. the guys are not. hmmm more answers plz.

^ una don come again.
aren't you 190's e-girlfriend abi na e-ex-girlfriend? I lost track.
anyways congrats. i'm just pulling ur leg

Meklex:
initially I loved her anyways she aint my wifey so why the condolences lol Life must go on!

my apologies then. why do you call her "your girl" then? she's your ex right?