A DEVELOPED FUTURE

Our current trend in development is something to talk about sitting and writing these  in my home in Port Harcourt i feel there is a need to address this issue to make us understand what is at stake and the question here is what is at stake?, The Answer to this question depends on the selective purview of everyone involved which is the youths and the working force .

You can imagine that few years back when you were asked by friends and well wishers what you wanted to be in future the answers where usually in the tune of Doctor,Engineer,Lawyer,Business man etc. no one thought getting there will be as tedious as it is, first our educational system is like a child's nightmare its so old and archaic that when i see my fellow colleagues flaunt their versatile knowledge elsewhere in the world i become very sad , second you might have seen the game show known as "are you smarter than a fifth grader "? the aim of the game was to team up kids against adults to see who have contemporary knowledge more and the kids usually win ,well the developers keyed into one scientific proven fact that 6 to 8 year olds hold the capacity of universal knowledge meaning that if you train an 8 year old in certain principles he is bound to excel in them as he develops now the question is Who is to Blame?, the already hydra headed problematic dying and corrupt yet stable Government? or the cancerous body of the teacher union ? or yet still the curriculum body of education or even the parents and even the students themselves , to know that lets take each age class one by one:

THE NURSERY: At a young age we are sent to nursery schools to start our early development now while some schools capitalize on building moral attirudes and ingenuity others relax letting the students feel like they own the world leading to lazy yet harmful ways of growing up which is neither checked by the ever busy schedule of the parents or the government because who has time to look into the young childs future anyway?, children like that tend to believe they must have everything they ask for without thinking of working for it which makes them lazy and affect their psyche.

THE PRIMARY: At these stage curriculum development plays a keen role, when outdated teaching methods are used creativity will be kept in check and we all know that going by recent trends that it is creativity that is responsible for development , teachers and curriculum developers fail to think of the future hence they go the traditional part saying "after all we learnt this so they should also" not understanding that what applied then and worked then will not work now and again the parents still let their children roam saying they are just growing up!.

THE JUNIOR SECONDARY: In Nigeria today ,we do the usual 3 years junior secondary school but ask yourself is that adequate? we wonder to ourselves why do other kids develop soundly its  because they learn and mature more instead of keeping their children more in school  parents rush their children through school as if they are in a race with no thought on the future in question and now here i point an accusing finger to the curriculum developers ,there is no stringent guidiance and counselling unit , no research teaching unit not even a teachers development unit and you expect the kids to produce miracles not even the introduction of technology can help a school that has a dead teaching style and the government is largely to blame as both private and public schools record all time lows the thought is that the students dont want to learn rather when the learning shouldnt always be educational alone but rather a cross blend of the two there are things that cannot be taught in the class room .

THE SENIOR SECONDARY: Ha ! we have come to the rebellious teenager age where kids feel they know it all what do we do then? we let them continue on this trend here they are meant to be exposed to the global educational environments, taught both science and arts in a bid to increase their knowledge banks as a famous writer once said :"show me two sides of a coin and i will pick the best " they are meant to be exposed to both sides as a teacher when a student does bad on one side then you must know he can excel in the other because we can learn by variuos passions that we have, the curriculum here should be broad with more lay out of science,technology and pratical arts these develops the student and also creating research groups .


THE TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS: An average Polytechnic/University student in Nigeria today cannot beat his chest to his result not because he is not developed or brilliant but because the system fails him all the way . when we turn on our tv set we hear stuffs like such students inventing things here and there and we ask ourselves are we dfferent? the answer is no but our teaching habits are! the university is meant to develop students in an astronomical way but our educational system here has failed woefully they prefer to go to vice related things where they feel they can benefit from where is the passion,creativity,research  bonus,funding,therapy,infrastructure,technology,future administration,business outlook gone to? well down the drain of course we cannot pin point our development , no tracking is done, the marking scheme is poor ,the way to attribute students/assess them is old ,no mordern input no nothing .We are slowly revolving round sparse resources imagine that in these country we have little as 300 universities and polytechics to cater to a whopping 60 million youths or more leading to miscreants which  conduct fake adulterated schools with no strict enforcement or regulations then look at the poor state of lecture rooms, imagine 1000 students crammed in a small space for two hours with no electricity not funny at all, it develops vices like corrupt lectrers and impoverished student the said dreams of being Doctors,Engineers die at this stage,i ask again Who is to Blame? not the parents this time they try to help in any way they can , definitely not the university whose powers are tied to the pockets of the government, the students?, the developers, the agency of education? are they to blame ? these are questions that will be answered come 5th May in Lagos when youths converge with the movers and shakers of development in Nigeria through a leading international student body known as AIESEC NIGERIA with a platform known as Youth2Business Forum ,as Education is the key to business improvement there is a need to answer these questions to improve our structure in society.

What Next? will we achieve things as we see them ?, what is at stake for a developed future? come and find out more if you dare.

See you in Lagos Eko ni baje!

This article is written by Ekundayo Babatunde Temitope a student and finalist in the Department of Geology in the University of Port Harcourt and also the Virtual Manager Aiesec in Port-harcourt
 A seasoned writer and also a good developer you can contact him on ekundayo.temitope@aiesec.net for more .