Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Chapter 18
When I was reading the education in Nigeria, I felt bad for students in Nigeria because of lack of supply, untrained teachers, and limited spaces. Gutek stresses the presence of the high illiteracy and serious AIDS problem. Because the country itself is not yet large and rich enough to educate students, the need for rebuilding the nation is highly urgent. Because Nigeria has multiple tribes, languages are diverse. Therefore, there are many languages that people speak, but English is the official language because of the influence from Britain. Gutek discusses “The Nigerian government identifies education as a key agency in national building, especially in achieving the goals of national integration and economic development…education is seen as an important agency for creating a political culture conducive to economic improvement (422).” I believe that these phrases focus the main point of his point. The educational system is rather weak, even though secondary and higher education were supposed to prepare the technically skilled people who might need for the modernization of the country. The primary school is designed for child development, the parents responsibilities, and training for care to others. Moreover, it is compulsory but free for everyone. However, as the education level goes higher, the enrollment gets fewer. This is because there are few spots for the university, and the admission is highly competitive and selective. In order to improve the quality of the country itself, I believe that students should be educated more, and the education should be more available for Nigerians. In addition, rather than focusing on one individual group or tribe, they should integrate and selectively borrow other nations’ core elements in education.
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I agree that Nigeria could look to other countries and "borrow" educational strategies in order to improve their education with the resources they have. In particular, they should look to other former colonies and see how they have overcome or are overcoming issues related to nation-building.
ReplyDeleteI think there needs to be a more important emphasis on the fact that enrollment rates drop substantially after primary school. This could be due to the lack of free schooling after primary education, although as someone else said, it really isn't "free" when you take into consideration boarding fees and uniform costs. One interesting thing that my Nigerian interviewee said is that a lot of students turn to private schools if they don't get into the public secondary schools of their choosing. So basically private schools in Nigeria are worse than public schools since they receive little funding and can't hire qualified teachers... compare this to private schools in the U.S. which are usually regarded as equal or better.
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