The way the world is evolving on a daily basis, the new global trends in politics, sports, entertainment, etc we would observe that systematically, there is a growing disparity with the leaders of the industries. From the richer to the poorer, the followed and the followers, the table toppers, and the ones the system has relegated to the bottom. As we keep sighting examples of different disparities in class we would also observe that the gap keeps widening.
There is a school of thought that believes that we are all born equal and we are products of our environment. This buttresses the fact that the way the mind is nurtured has a long way in determining a great deal of our final outcome in life. In other words, we have to take a special interest in the quality of education we are exposed to as children, whether formal or informal and also the system in which it is administered.
An ideal form of education should be progressive, we should teach the next generation of scientists, engineers and medical researchers who will improve our quality of life: they will learn more about the world, build better and safer modes of transport, cure diseases and overcome scientific boundaries. Instead, our education is doing more to program us than to educate us.
Our young minds are being told to accept authority as truth instead of truth as authority, and teachers talk at the students instead of with them.
Teachers have become repeaters of information. They are merely repeating everything they once learned from their own teachers and perpetuating the recycling of information; information that has managed to evade analysis for generations. Children are no longer the masters of their own learning, and instead, their minds are being treated as storage containers. The scary part is that our children are no more treated as innocent, organic, creative, investigative minds, but instead as parts in the machine. The education system gradually filtering out their inquisitive nature.
Since the system doesn’t want thinkers. It doesn’t want people to question its methods. It wants a population that can be easily manipulated and controlled so as to relinquish all its power to the elite.
If we’re going to solve the problem of programming in our school system, we have to learn to begin asking questions instead of giving answers.
Real learning is achieved through the investigative process. Children have to be encouraged to search for the answers themselves. It is up to the teachers to provide the tools and resources necessary for the children to conduct these inquiries and make meaningful discoveries. One well-formed question will do more to inspire than any number of answers. In every facet of our educational pursuits, it becomes crucial to begin an open dialogue with our students, to encourage healthy debate and to have them form their own conclusions.
In Nigeria, the importance of teaching history, philosophy and other mind building courses and sharing experiences in our schools, churches, mosques and down to the family unit cannot be underestimated. In a country where most of the citizens are quick to mortgage their conscience and rights to the highest bidder. it is paramount that we re-evaluate our own perspectives from time to time, and look at the big picture.
What teaching mind building courses and sharing experiences does is it gets us thinking, it gets us questioning, and it gets us contemplating. Without these skills, the citizens will continue to function on autopilot, and we will allow those in power to continue to dominate, oppress and enslave us in every way.
About time we prepare the current generations to beat the system and learn HOW TO THINK and NOT WHAT TO THINK!