Teach English in Shiheng Zhen - Tai'an Shi

Education is the bedrock for any progressive society. One can then relate with the popular cliche that ‘education is the best legacy to give to a child’. It is important to note that education could be in different forms; formal, informal or semi-formal. This essay is however concerned with the problems facing formal education in Nigeria. According to Oxford Dictionary, education is “the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university, an enlightening experience.” It therefore suffices to posit that education is about the acquisition of knowledge. This could be in the elementary, secondary or tertiary levels. Nigeria is a multi-national country with over 250 different ethnic groups. It is located in the continent of Africa with a population of approximately 180 million people. The country is endowed with several resources of which crude oil takes precedence. It operates a constitutional democratic form of government, made up 36 dependent states and has its capital in Abuja. As important as getting people educated is, several factors militate against its success in Nigeria. While some of these problems are man-made, majority are system based. For the purpose of this essay, I will identify and discuss some of these problems to learners in brief. They include; poor funding, inadequate motivation for teachers/instructors, poor educational infrastructure, over-crowding, attitude of learners, inadequate classrooms and effect of culture and religion the list is endless. POOR FUNDING The issue of inadequate funding of institutions of learning by the government is a major challenge facing learners in my country. This has a direct impact on the quality of education they eventual get. More so, it had led to various school authorities imposing some levies and charges on learners which had indeed kept an appreciable number of these students away from school because their parents and guidance could not keep up with the demands. Recently, associations of the different levels of education; primary, secondary and tertiary took turns to embark on industrial actions. Their major grievances hinged on poor funding. The aftermath is that learners waste valuable times out of schools. We have reported cases where such idle learners get into crime and some end up losing their lives. This is a worrisome trend in Nigeria. INADEQUATE MOTIVATION OF TEACHERS/INSTRUCTORS Once an instructor is not properly motivated by way of good remuneration, clearly defined career path which comes by way of promotion and rewards for hard work, periodic training to update their skills and reasonable welfare packages, it will have a negative effect on their performance. At the end, learners are always at the receiving end. In order to make up for this lack of motivation, teachers tend to engage in other means of economic activities to make extra money. Thus, relegating their core duties, impacting knowledge to learners, to the background. Similarly, without regular upgrade and update by teachers, they only succeed in recycling out of fashion information to learner thereby making them ill informed and prepared for the larger society. This is a major problem. POOR EDUCATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE Learners are commonly faced with situations where their classrooms are not conducive for learning; no seats, stuffiness, no writing desk, no electricity, laboratories are not equipped with necessary instrument for practical, library do not have enough material, in some cases, no classroom at all. These may sound strange to some of you from the developed countries but it is reality in Nigeria. They have been documentaries by international press such as CNN, BBC of learners converging under a tree, flooded classrooms, dilapidated buildings to learn. Learners had been subjected to receiving classes under scotching sun and other unpleasant environments. It only leaves one wondering the kind of learners they will turn out to be. This can also be related to the funding or mismanagement of funds factor. OVERCROWDING We are also faced with instances where you find too many learners in particular learning settings. For instances, in my university days, we had some elective courses where close to 400 hundred students (different departments converging) are in a large hall for lectures at a time. Now, there were days without public address systems in use. Can you imagine what the experience will be like, especially for persons far behind. In addition, without proper ventilation or electricity for cooling, how could people possibly survive such learning experience? LEARNERS’ ATTITUDE Whereas the factors discussed so far are system based problems, individual learners equally have their fair share of the blame. Some learners get caught up by unnecessary distractions and undue peer influence at learning centers. They drift rapidly and get into nefarious activities that eventually makes them nuisance to the academic environment. The quest for learning to this set of learners gets truncated at an unfortunate manner in most cases. EFFECT OF CULTURE AND RELIGION These two are very strong challenges facing learners in Nigeria. Until most recently, the girl child education was culturally impossible in certain part of Nigeria. The overriding belief was that the girl child’s responsibility was at home and in the kitchen. The idea of educating her was considered a waste of time and resources. In fact, some homes today still prefer to send their male children to school over the girls. This had deprived and still inhabiting the learning ambition of some female learners. Similarly, the restriction on the kind of learning that adherents of certain religious bodies face is another problem. The glaring effect is a society that has become myopic and deliberately indoctrinated with skewed mindset. To sum up, my conviction is that the aforementioned and more problems facing learners in Nigeria, with sincere and conscious efforts, can be surmounted. Once affected parties play their roles accordingly these problems will collectively be nipped in the bud or, at most, reduced to the barest minimum.