Last night I lost hours of rest studying and bulk-quoting,
or should I rather say cramming of pages of materials in preparation for a
continuous assessment Examination. In the process my mind gently moved into thoughts
of the effects of my actions as putting words after words for the lecture was
becoming annoying. I then found answers to my “why do students cram” questions
and these were:
·
Students cram because some lecturers are
comfortable that way
·
Students cram because some lecturers do not have
adequate understanding of the course they are handling and thus rely strictly
on the materials they copied or downloaded for marking schemes
·
Students cram because some lecturers do give out
test/exams scripts to people with no background knowledge of the course in
question for marking and therefore these “unlearned” people strictly adhere to
the words by words of the marking scheme given to them which is usually the
lecturers materials or notes
·
Students also cram because they have no
understanding of the subject (blind cramming)
·
Finally, students cram because although they
have understanding of the subject, but find it difficult to put it in their own
words
Whichever of these caused me to cram the whole night are
mine and mine alone to keep. It can be argued that although cramming is frowned
at by many quarters, over the years it has proven to be the most effective
means of earning quality marks. Understanding is said to have a long term
advantage over blind cramming, but students and sometimes, or most times
lecturers are usually placing the importance of the short term examinations over
that of a long term understanding and thus students usually tend to always
prepare for exams (short term act) over the application of the knowledge
transferred (long term act).
Sometime, in the country Nigeria, a standard five (5) pupil
was said to be able to communicate as a literate and even assigned some clerical
jobs (no reference), something most SSCE holders in the country cannot do
presently. Industries and other stakeholders in the labor market of the country
have always decried the half baked quality of the graduates produced by higher
institutions in the country. The identification of the root cause of this rot
has been attempted by many so far in an attempt to address the education
sector. Parents, students, teachers and governments have been identified at one
point or the other as the contributory factors to this rot.
However, I intend to attempt a brief evaluation here to
identify the root cause of these. Although all the factors identified above
have a serious impact to this issue, but it is my belief that only one is the
root cause and solving this one problem will go a long way in bringing a
significant solution to this challenge. I will want us to see the schools-student-industry
relationship as analogous to a producer-product-buyer relationship respectively
where the school is the producer, the product being the students and the
industry being the buyer. The use of industry here does not limit the varieties
of “buyers” in the labor market but is used for ease and clarity.
Every buyer is interested in getting good quality product
from his investments or money. Therefore the hunger and thirst of industries
for high quality graduates is understood. High quality students are generally
taken to be those with good CGPAs no matter how that were achieved: merit,
blind cramming or bribery, as far as you succeeded. Therefore to select best
qualities from the flock of the “high quality” CGPA bearing graduates in the
market, most Human Resources of companies conduct careful screening exercises
of oral, written and practical forms. This is where the rot in the system
usually manifests in the products, therefore the need to identify its root.
A look into the teaching profession suggests that only few
of brilliant graduates do accept to give the teaching profession a
consideration by going back to share the knowledge to the students. The major
cause of this according to surveys is usually the unattractive salaries in the
teaching profession: nobody is sure about a teachers reward in heaven anymore.
Thus many crowd at the gates of interested buyers advertising their products or
declare interest in self employments instead of going back to the classroom.
Who then goes to the classroom? I guess you can tell. Most times the lower
qualities en-register for higher studies to qualify them for the teaching
profession. Imagine what this can lead to. So a point is made here. The teachers’
quality has a relationship with the attractiveness of the salary. An increase
in the salary for the teachers can trigger reconsiderations by the brilliant
graduates on the teaching professions. Simply allowing the salary and benefits
of the teachers to compete with the industries’ will do the magic. However,
such investment in the sector needs more strict supervision and assessment or
else it can amount to little or no yield improvement. This can be done through
effective Teachers Assessment Programs.
In this piece, a simple cause of brain drain and thus
subsequent breakdown in upcoming teachers’ qualities has been attributed to
government’s poor funding of the education sector. However the effect of other
factors such as teachers and students personalities, government’s poor
inspection exercises and corruption have
not been underrated, but the identified cause has been suspected to be a
primary and distant root of the rot. This is my very personal and imperfect opinion.
