By Muyiwa Olaoye
Imagine yourself in a place without a power supply, no internet connection and to worsen the situation, living in a community with different languages. I know this is the definition of an island. its a piece of land surrounded by water, but what will one define a village, which is a piece of land but surrounded by forest and mountains.
This is the description of my national youth service days, but when you are given a lemon you make lemonade out of it. Despite the boring time, I was able to discover some hidden skills in me like using an existing song to write a new song , I used the situation around me to write something meaningful, Looking at the situation of the school I was posted to ‘serve’ and the schools around, I was able to write (from ’runnin’)
Sincerely, I wanted to leave a mark when I am done.That’s why I am trying to see when there is nothing in sight?
Why am I trying to give when no one gives me a trial ?
Why am I trying to change people not ready for change?
This is the description of most schools today.
Teachers and school owners are at the mercy of their students, the students that should be trained, dictates for their parents and in turn dictates for the schools and teachers.
In real sense teachers and school owners know how to help or train these young ones and are ready to work but they are scared, if they do the right thing the students gets upset and they control their parents to withdraw them out of the school or from the teachers and thereby the school looses customer.
Moreover, the thirst for money among young people is totally appalling. It makes them look down on teachers (and what so ever they teach) these students even make jest of their teachers.
Truth be told, some of these kids have personal money than their teachers.And as kids they front it to keep teachers in their place. The more affecting part of it, is when students have gone wrong and are scolded by teachers, they either use their parents’wealth or personal money to deal with the teacher.And when it comes to spending money to show superiority, the teachers get helpless and have to take the blame, the teacher starts begging.
A situation has occurred before where the teacher was instructed to write an apology letter to the student..
Imagine what happened? …… The students gain more power and expect more, and when such incidence occurred again the students wanted another apology from the teacher.Luckily, its not the same teacher and he refused, so the school owner was put under pressure ..
The teacher was eventually penalized, but he stood on his ground .A lot of teachers entered the teaching line with the mindset of leaving a mark and making a difference but when all these thorns choked them they changed their ways of teaching. Education is the key to nation building, looking at the state of education today in this country, you cannot but wonder what would become of this nation in a few years to come.
