This Morning

Hello folks!

Thanks for always taking time to check our posts. Today, I wish to try something different. I will be telling a story and I hope I tell it well and you can also find something to learn from it.

So, enjoy!!

This morning...

For a while, I had 2 Laptops at my disposal, White and Black. Black, an Acer, for the heavy work (Corel Draw, the tiny Photoshop I know, PES Master League…) and White serves for the speedy needs of internet, document review and the very important Social Media.

Well, the above was true until about 2 months ago when the Acer fell and broke its screen and just on cue, a month after, the Gateway NV55C’s hard disk crashed on a beautiful afternoon. Meaning in one clean sweep, I lost both White and Black.

So I did that which was logical, I found an engineer to fix Black. Dare, very friendly he is, but his bill wasn’t. So he held on to Black till White found its way also to his Sango work space. Inseparable bah?

There was I, having all the needs in the world for one computer and yet having two at the engineers’.

Just as I was about to get frustrated from running to Yinka’s office every time (Yinka is particularly awesome btw), Dare came up with the awesome idea of putting Black’s hard disk in White. As quickly, Gray was born!

Gray was the solution to a lot of problems, and also the birth of a few. Principal being the compatibility of the video card with the new hard disk, in short, I couldn’t play game on Gray. So I took it back to him for his revered touch, except that this time all he tried didn’t work. But I had seen that he was trying to rerun the drivers. That was yesterday.

I have always claimed to be quite IT savvy and the shame of having to run after an engineer for weeks rushed in like fried plantain into my mouth. The shame pushed me to Google to find the answers myself and guess what? I DID!!!

I found all the drivers I needed and three hours later, I had solved all of Gray’s issues and was playing PES once again after months of starvation.

Morale? Most of the time, the solutions we seek are not as far as we look.

Being Unemployable...

What needs to be known about work that isn't taught in school?

It is said these days that 80% of Nigerian graduates are unemployable. Each time this demography is quoted, a whole lot of people scream bloody Mary as to HOW it is possible and if so, WHY? Why are we churning out more "unemployable" graduates from our tertiary institutions?

I mean, why should Tunde Lemo say something as nefarious as that to the dearest people of his country? Wouldn't that be the singular most heart-wrenching to be heard after 16 years of slaving for an education?

A lot of other questions might be asked, questions which truly are daunting and worthy of thought, but the only(?) question that will lead to a solution is this;

What is happening in our schools that isn't preparing attendees for work?

Its worthy to note at this point that the workplace of the nows differ remarkably from what they used to be. Effectively, the skills needed to 'do work' now are a lot different from what was needed some twenty, ten or even five years ago.

The Vice Chancellor, Federal University of Technology, Akure, Prof. Biyi Daramola, believes that Nigerian graduates are unemployable due to the lack of self discipline and commitment to vigorous academic pursuit  but I quite disagree with his stand on the matter. He seems to shelve, skilfully, the responsibility of preparing people for work from the institutions which should, and placing them directly on the ones who should be prepared.

A lot is being said already about how the schools one attend do not matter and how soon, a degree may not be needed to secure a good job, and we all need to respond appropriately to this trend which will soon drive our educational system off the world scene altogether.

Where do we go from here?

The new skills needed to work are the so-called higher order skills of the Bloom's Taxonomy and could be listed basically as the ability to EVALUATE, ANALYZE and CREATE.

These skills are not being taught in our institutions and to make one "employable", one must learn how to think higher than the competition to secure the scarce available spaces.

We need to learn to keep LEARNING!

Teaching vs Learning

The Nigerian Educational system is built largely on the precepts of pedagogy; teaching, the art of teaching and the teaching of teaching, with the aim that if done well, students will have learnt what is being taught.

However, Wikipedia’s definition of learning subtly places the responsibility of learning on the students and not the teacher. It’s known that a teacher’s job is to present information/material/knowledge to a class while the responsibility of “acquiring” the knowledge is the students’.

For instance, I’ve been told that leaving comments on this blog is quite the herculean task, and say I choose to teach the lovers of our nascent blog how to post comments, and I go ahead to recommend a video for it, write a whole post on it, and also bullet-point the process as follows;

• Write your comment in the box provided
• In the “Select Profile” field, choose “Name/URL” and wait for a pop-up box
• In the box, input your name and site (Facebook/Twitter/Blog will do) as appropriate
• Click on the “Publish” icon and wait for a recaptcha pop-up
• Fill the recaptcha as appropriate and click on publish
• Wait to see your posted comment

Now, if you are not interested in learning Jack about posting on Google’s Blogspot, Otunba Gadaffi’s shit won’t be your business. In short, I would have taught but no learning would have occurred.

Do not be deceived though, the aim of education is for learning to occur, but in our institutions, “la cram la pour” is what is reinforced as “learning”.

I wish to expound on LEARNING as opposed to TEACHING in the coming weeks with practical examples of how it has worked for me in our swimming lessons, driving curriculum, class training and other Wakose Learning Platforms.

I will also be blogging on how education has changed in different parts of the world to focus not on teaching, but on LEARNING, the amazing results it is producing and ways Nigeria can adapt these innovations in educational advancements.

Thanks so much for your time.

P.S. Do leave your opinion on whether Nigerian Education allows for learning.