Pupils seated for an examination
Excuse Me! Why are we putting the cart before the horse?
Oh Lordy! Our issues have nothing to do with testing and testing. Our
issues have a lot to do with lack of being creative enough to creative
jobs down the road for our unemployed college graduates.
With that in mind, we should get rid of measuring students prowess only through
exams. There is a need to teach entrepreneurship, superb customer service and time- management skills, integrity, credibility and other business enhancing skills in our school system; to prepare our students for the new world socioeconomic order, instead of putting primary four students into unnecessary stress to massage our own inflated ego.
The truth must be told .A nation that depends religiously on natural
resources and religious economy shouldn't gamble with the future of
its human resources.
A quick quiz for our 'book-worms' out there. What is the main export of
Saudi Arabia and Dubai? If you answered 'oil' you're totally wrong. The
fact of the matter is that they both depend religiously on 'tourism'. The
revenue generated from an annual pilgrimage alone is more than the
oil revenue. Dubai ,with the population of three million people had
twelve million visitors in 2019.
The essence of these statistics is to highlight on the importance of
tourism as an alternative to natural resources. And, the need to train
our students to focus on that aspect of the economy.
One more fact that is impacting on our students negatively is the
auctioning off our airwaves to the highest bidders. Turn on your
television right now and the chances are, you will see the televangelists,
one-man church pastors, Sika- Gari practitioners and lottery
forecasters. Imagine if 1/3 of these channels is used to broadcast very
educative and business -friendly materials to prepare our students to
face the real new economic order.
What about our local information centers? Tweaaaa, don't even go
there! With the pretence to sell their sun-tanned and herbal medicine
with expired dates ,they broadcast sexually -explicit materials to
assault the eardrums of our teenagers during odd hours. Now we
wonder why there were so many teenage pregnant candidates at the
recent BECE exam centers across the nation.
The chicken are indeed coming home to roost. And, no one seems to
care. With all our gold-plated degrees and PHDs behind our names
can't we give our future leaders a secured future of their own and a
reason to be optimistic? What is our defining moment?