Ma'aji Caleb Zonkwa

Children are doomed to fail without enough academically able and professionally competent teachers

Thursday, January 7, 2010 10:45:28 AM

Without good teachers, Schools/Universities are doomed to fail. Yet politicians in Nigeria seem determined to destroy the standards of the profession to international standard.

Meanwhile, thanks to the interference of officialdom like Nigeria Union of Teachers and the Association Staff Union of Universities (NUT/ASUU), teaching is barely a profession: the teacher must follow the strategies, frameworks and tasks devised by semi-educated officials for careerist politicians. The salary scale rewards managerial skills, not excellent teaching. The upshot is that the able avoid the profession or flee it. The entry standards are questionable and poorly appropriated for meeting the challenge of life-thanks to the university commission who is now putting the teacher curriculum on a sound footing; this to reduce mediocrity/attrition rates; our profession (Education) is the most over-managed, demoralized and unhappy.

To help matter, it is better to raise entry standards for all teachers, primary and secondary. Nigeria should require all primary teacher candidates to have high-grades in the subjects of the primary curriculum; and instead of taking an education degree, they should follow a subject course to degree level in some of the subjects they will teach at school (as happens in other countries). This would allow and developed a competent specialist as well as generalist primary teachers to see that their pupils had sufficient foundation before moving on to secondary school. At that stage, the expectation should be for teachers to have taken the subjects they teach to degree level. Meanwhile training, as distinct to subject mastery, should take place in the schools, or in specially designated university practice schools, under the guidance of experienced teachers and training funds devolved so that schools can choose the training model best suited to their needs thus,the teacher qualifying to teach in a senior secondary .
Teachers would be the winners, if only harder entry, which is more competitive, would help restore a sense of pride to the profession. In addition, the benefit to pupils would be immense.
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Comments

Ma'aji Caleb ZonkwaDrM172 # Sunday, January 31, 2010 12:04:36 PM

We live in a society that is continually evolving and yet, somehow, it has become generally accepted that schooling should not change. Many still hold an expectation that what “used to work” remains appropriate.The world is different. Does one refuse to wear new cloths when the old ones' outgrown its time? It doesn’t mean the old cloths are bad, they just don’t serve their purpose any longer in the new generation subjected with environtmental changes and new technology. Critical Theory and Critical teaching are based on the premise of continual change. Perhaps Critical teaching and cretivity will help us to prepare the Nigerian young citizens of tomorrow for the inevitable changes they must meet.