An impossible lecturee – the user unfriendly type – in a university in the Northeast went abroad for advanced study. His Thesis supervisor was a decent, upright woman – the opposite type of the supervisee. She read her supervisee and set determined to change him. Each time he submits a chapter for approval, she would look at it, correct and, on handing it out to him, she tells, “ensure you hold the trust for me.”
The man keeps the wonders what she means by that phrase. The recurring use of the words stick to his mind and on any deep thoughts, he keeps asking himself the same question, even after he finished his studies in time and returned home. Back home, it dawned on him that the only thing possible about that trust is the need to treat others same way the woman treated her supervisee: to be patient with every weakness of students, to help them improve and never to be bad to them.
She wanted the man to understand that he had limitations but she only corrected and helped him to understand the subject better, be upright and to do right – be humane, kind, fair, just and respectful to the primary stakes, their behavior no matter. This is the most important gap in our education we need to reduce because character is everything we need to give those we educate.
Have we ever asked whether or not the poor enrollment, disdain to education among both groups of parents and pupils/students has something to do with the lack of good character among the educated? Is there any research on the issue? Why? Well, the man is changed now, an opposite of his former type of character. That was all his supervisor meant and wished.
The World marked Education Day (WED) penultimate Friday. I remember the news media painted a hearttouching reality of the state of education in Nigeria and bleakness of the over ten million children out of school and onto the street. The BBC’s story about little pure water hawker Mohammed still sticks. The Minister of Education, MalamAdamuAdamu lamented the problem months earlier with a heavy heart. Everything about education on that day only compounds the opposition’s song that the Malamand his teacher Buharidid nothing about Education in Nigeria.
Why? On the WED, we talked about out of school and the immense other challenges. But we talk only about the meaner ones. We ignore the fundamentals, gravest problems. We talk about those out of school. We are silent about those in school and what happens to, or what we do to, them. We talk about the need to go to school but not about the type, nature of education and who gives it in school, not to even say the impact such education has on life after school.
Character is necessary drug for Nigeria’s currency and only education of character not education of persons Nigeria needs. One of the first lessons I received in life and out of school – because our school system does not teach such – is the idea that lack of education is not as dangerous as the dispense of half, or wrong education: drink deep or touch not, the western spring. Nigeria’s most dangerous educational challenge is what happens in our schools – all schools private, public, at all levels, in all the places of society. So yours faithfully is the problem of education in Nigeria.
Because I choose to see the head of the system as the sold culprit and spare the processes in the body and the legs that carry the head itself. The enemy of Education is not the Minister or the President. It is me. I work under the President and the Minister in the top-bottom chain of direct and equal responsibility. I talk and write much about the magnitude of all the problems of the system and the need to address them but will never do anything at my own level to change them.
This is because what I do at my own level in the hierarchy has same impact on the same equal to what the President and the Minister each does. Iknow that to change the problems I need to change how I think and act or inact. I need to change. I need to be selfless and sacrifice much to the system. But I refused to change, hated those who remind me about the need for change and sabotage, undermine and fought every good policy or sincere programme the President, the Minister and other good persons in the system try to put in place.
I am a supposed academic, purported intellectual, learned colleague whose only duty to the system is to tell the bad or the inadequate others do but I am always silent on my own disservices to my students, to my colleagues, to my seniors, to my leaders and to the system. I can only write and speak that the Government ‘is responsible’; government ‘has failed’and the President and his party ‘have failed’ the country. Sure. They can fail. They are human, afterall.
But what is it that I do wrong that harms the system? I am silent.The tragedy of education is surely human and, unfortunately, I am the individual who sustains the menace in the system. Right now, MalamAdamuAdamu and MuhammaduBuhari are not with me. They do not see what I do or refuse to do that makes their work difficult. I am not even thinking along their line of reasoning and expectations.So it is huge evidence in methat the problems of education are those beyond enrollment – my own inadequacies and how they affect stakeholders.
I am the evil that spoils the system and hijack it deep into what I often say about it. Deliberate, conscious, individual fuels of evil demand deliberate, conscious, individual fuels of denial, outcast, disown, cut in ties and tag of evil against names in contacts. The system cannot do it because it has been taken over by yours faithfully in collaboration with persons united for corruption, evil and cruelty to humanity – Pusechum. The association needs a stronger and even march – persons united against corruption, evil, cruelty and the encouragement of selfless, good services for all – Pucecregosal.
Before I got this job of teaching, I was humbled by the weight of my needs – cool, calm, kind to everyone I met. I know I am not good to teach and let the idea that I am good rest. Whoever gives me the job, it must be the kindest of favours. First thing I got it, I assumed a new position to par my new status. I become arrogant and pompous without reason. I stood on my weaknesses and, in the stead of working on them to improve my skills for the job, I ignored myself, I ignored any good advice and ignore even the warnings of the custodians of this good system that was better before I joined.
I see myself above everyone but everyone sees glaring defects in what I say, teach and how. Even students mock and laugh at me in behind. Once I got sensitive to it, I turned a monster: intimidating, harassing and failing students who sign to know my open secrets. I am a selfish, greedy person. I do not use my salary to keep my person and self in good form. I am shabby and rough. And I do not look into the mirror for anything. I cannot see myself. And I do not know all others see me naked.
I smell from the sweat of my hardwork to the system. Yet I want to marry the best wife, to date the most beautiful girl in my class. I have readymade ideas to deal with her if she refuses. I hate and fight any colleague who dares to look at he. God saves them if the look better than me. I use every devilish way to make them unpopular, blackmail and implicate them in to huge job-risking scandal from any small matter. I report such to my group of bad likeminds who gag evil against good in the system.
I am first to flaunt school rules for my personal interest and to get personal favours from stakers. I hate those who make them. I have no respect to the management of the school. I appear loyal to them but I am always first to undermine their efforts. I am always late to class. I often miss my classes. I always find a lie to tell my Head when he notices, because no one dares to report me. I do not entertain questions about my lectures. No student dares to ask. I make it clear. I do not accept rubbish.
I sell my handouts in style, through the class rep, in a way that no one notices and no student can report to anyone. I always mislead them with false, manipulated information about the “I too sabis”. I sell marks for money and sex. I call my academic-poorgirl friends to my office after exams and give them their exams script with notes to write more. I do such for a boy only when they pay me money or can run my errands and talk to girls to see me in my office. I help girls I like to cheat in exams just as I implicate those who do not cooperate.
I do worse things I cannot say all here. My type have made the school systems worse than LGA and state ministry systems today. I am ashamed of myself and the profession I proclaim. How can government deliver on its promises with my type of character? I used to say I will have nothing to do with any educated person who knows or should know the problems of the system but is living in ways that encourage spoil or undermine the system. I am the enemy of education in Nigeria.
I ended up as worse. I turned as the evil himself. It is terrible. When I see my opposite character, I wage angry and madden into making them my enemies. I always find or cook something bad to say about them. And people believe. I hate them but it is just out of envy because I think I cannot be like them. But I know I am wrong. I can be like them if not more. I can improve myself in everything I envy in other colleagues, friend tells me but I never listened. He talks to me every time I meet him. I now hate to meet him. But with time. One day I will do it.
IShould learn from their character and work on my poor type, to overcome my inherent weaknesses and to increase my capacity to improve in doing good things in order to re-earn my lost respect.Present myself as guilty of all and more than the above. Admission of guilt is the first sign of strong need of change. I now want to. God help me to change.
Hassan Alhaji Hassan can be contacted on 08032829772/08050551220 (text only with full names and address)a[email protected]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect WikkiTimes’ editorial stance.
