Thoughts and Encounters Uncategorized: Don’t stay in school!

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This week we shall we looking at the topic "Don’t stay in school!"

What does school actually prepare us for?  I often wonder. Yes, it teaches us how to read and write and how to help not get cheated by the trader at the store but other than those which we all had learnt by primary 6, what else does school teach us?

Its supposed to help us get a job but it doesn’t teach us how to get a Job. you can go your whole academic year and never learn how to write your C.V. i had to wait till i graduated before i knew i couldn’t use my immediate family as my reference. If the sole purpose of school is to teach us how to get a Job ,shouldn’t learning about C.V’s, cover notes, references and interviews be a 4 unit university course and a subject in WAEC?

School doesn’t teach us about society, I didn’t learn how to vote in school or how to join a political party. Do we all really have to be a lawyers to know the laws that govern the country we live in?’My school didn’t tell me if i have the right to a lawyer, or the right to fair trial (i hope i do). Is bail free? Do only accountants pay taxes? What is the point of Quadratic formula and Polynomials if i don’t know how the Electricity company charges my bill?

Its great school teaches how many states there are but shouldn’t we all know how many Senators and National assembly Men/Women there are?  How does the country come about this number? So at 18, we are just expected to elect a representative For a system we barely know anything about.
How are the different wave lengths of lights more important than knowing our human rights. Apparently there are 30, do you know them? I don’t! and how exactly is reading “The bottled leopard” more important to our collective future  than knowing about the stock market?

How in heaven’s name does money work?  where does it come from? Who and how do we determine how much of it gets printed? If I’m going to work all my life to get something shouldn’t i at least know how it functions? Why doesn’t the world just give everyone money ? at least it will rid us of poverty. What are the policies that guide it? What are policies and how are they different from laws?
Do we still need to know how to use a log table when we have a calculator or better still a mobile phone? Even now I’m wondering if it wasn’t more important to teach us how to type than to teach us how to write. I recently did a complete year without owning a pen.

How do we know that mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell? yet we can’t perform basic CPR. Why do I have to pray that someone in my family recommends paracetamol for headache and doesn’t take me to  babalawo instead? Is it really more important for me to know how to draw a formless Amoeba. Than to learn basic First Aid? We get unlimited advice on how to use a condom but no one tells me  what to do when we actually want a kid or how much its going to cost us.

I don’t expect Schools to teach us everything I conceded they can’t. However, how do schools prioritise what they decide to teach? If we have to learn some of the most important things from home. What happens to people who have no parents? What happens to people with illiterate or semi-literate parents. 2 out of every 10 children in Nigeria grow up without parents, countless people have parents who can neither read or write. So if the most important things we need to learn to function in the society are left to the home aren’t we letting those people down? Isn’t the education we have now letting most people down?

Author: Ifeolwa Oshio  (https://totsandencounters.wordpress.com/)