Tuesday, November 26, 2013

PALAVER TREE COMMENTARY – Disadvantage of Rigid and Inflexible Curricula (Part 1)



The PALAVER TREE COMMENTARY is being introduced as an ADVOCACY PLATFORM of the naijaGRAPHITTI blog.



In the African oral traditions, the PALAVER TREE represented the traditional roundtable where misunderstandings were resolved and critical community issues were discussed under the direction of the village elders. Villagers explained points of view and together, through group consensus, reached a final decision. But the palaver tree stood for more than group discussions and problem solving: it was the place of the festivals, the harvest celebrations and where the travelling storyteller would set up his camp in the evening to spin the tales of a place & time far off and free from the worries of rural farming.



In this blog, the PALAVER TREE is the title of the platform arguing in favour of concepts, causes, ideas, and / or policies that further the spread of the culture of CREATIVITY and INNOVATION in Nigeria.

Disadvantage of Rigid and Inflexible Curricula (Part 1)

Nigeria has to embrace a broad range and stimulating regime of curricula at all tiers of its educational system in order to promote and engender broad range learning and scholastic relevance / competencies for the 21st Century.



The challenges of the Nigerian academic curricula from primary to the tertiary levels are well documented. The problems are multifarious.

In the editorial of August 06, 2002, the Daily Trust in relation to the objectives of the second National Development Plan describes a curriculum as "the sum total of the various learning experiences which is designed and tailored towards achieving the set developmental needs and objectives of a society. Specifically, a curriculum of education specifies the various subjects and courses that are taught at various levels in the schools. It also specifies the content of each subject or course, and spells out the methodology and procedures to be applied in teaching them."


Scholars and educationists who appraised the country’s curricula conclude that they were, as a whole, rigid and inflexible, focusing on formal education at the expense of technical, vocational and pre-vocational skills. Specifically, the curricula were riddled with problems such as:

  • inflexibility;
  • non-availability of funds for the Nigerian Education Research and Development Council to review education policy and curriculum on regular basis;
  • insufficient manpower and capacity deficits;
  • limited capacity-building for curriculum experts;
  • inability to respond to the changing need of the immediate and wider environment.



The last point is particularly egregious at the tertiary level. In their paper, Deregulation of University Education in Nigeria: Problems and Prospects, Adeogun, Subair and Osifila (2009) stated "Some of the public institutions, most especially universities, are conservative and find it difficult to change or adapt their curriculum to meet global challenges at the international level."

(See FJEAP_Winter-2009_3-1_Adeogun_FINAL)



In a study of primary and secondary schools, Gbenu (2012) asserts that the curriculum being run presently must be readjusted or re-designed to reflect the interests of Nigerians. (See http://www.gjournals.org/GJER/GJER%20PDF/2012/January/GJER1208%20Gbenu.pdf)



In the paper State of Nigerian Secondary Education and the Need for Quality Sustenance, Gbenu (2012) refers to Ogbechie (1999) who asserts "the current curriculum in the nation’s school system is not capable of producing knowledgeable, skilled, creative and globally-competitive pupils that will feed the nation’s university system. We should redesign education to align with the challenges of the 21st century. Therefore, the focus of all levels of government for both the public and private schools should be review of the curriculum with a view to incorporating entrepreneurship, vocational, problem-solving, life and ethical skills in pupils. The creative arts such as music, dance and ICT and computer education should be integrated into the curriculum."




How has all these inadequacies contributed to the situation affecting the Nigerian student, and prospective graduate?



Speaking at the recently held 29th Convocation Ceremony of the University of Ilorin, Ilorin the President lamented the lack of skills of Nigerian graduates. The president declared as intolerable a situation whereby a large number of graduates produced by universities lack relevant skills due to poor training. (See http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/10/jonathan-laments-lack-adequate-skills-among-nigerian-graduates/)



In a lecture entitled "The Role of Science and Technology in Human Resource Management" at a forum organised by the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria, the Vice Chancellor, Federal University of Technology, Akure, Professor Biyi Daramola asserted that Nigerian graduates were unemployable due to the lack of self discipline and commitment to vigorous academic pursuit. He said it was regrettable that many Nigerian graduates could not secure jobs after years of applications and linked the lack of exposure to science and Technology as a major factor responsible for their plight. The Vice Chancellor suggested it was time the country’s education curricula be fashioned in a manner to make mathematics compulsory for all courses at all levels. This, he said, would boost students’ interests in science and technology from their tender ages. Daramola said that the emphasis on science and technology would facilitate the actualisation of the country’s desire to join the comity of developed economies by the year 2020.



Personally, I discovered how low we had sunk when I met and interacted with a graduate of French Language who could not speak French!



What kind of curricula is required?



In a paper titled "How to Transform the Educational System in Nigeria for the Immediate Benefit of the Nation" presented at the 2011 National Youth Summit, held at International Conference Centre, Abuja, Professor Peter Nwangwu, a professor of Pharmacology, Toxicology and Clinical Pharmacy, opined "A good and well though-out curriculum will enable the education system to contribute significantly to the full personal development of each student and to the moral, social, cultural, political, and economic development of the nation at large, including the advancement of democracy, human rights and rule of law. Issues of human rights, tolerance, social justice and inclusivity should be infused throughout the curriculum in a student-centred teaching and learning experience. Arts and culture education empower young people by giving them practical means to express themselves creatively, through music, drama, dance and visual arts, in a manner that spoken language alone cannot." (See http://www.nigerianbestforum.com/blog/how-to-transform-nigerias-education-system-1/)



In 2007, the Federal Government launched a new curriculum known as the new basic education curriculum (Universal Basic Education) for primary and junior secondary schools. The new curriculum was said to address amongst other things, issues of value re-orientation, poverty eradication, critical thinking, entrepreneurship and life skills. The Universal Basic Education vision aims at righting the wrongs of the unfulfilled curriculum dream. The old curriculum turned out graduates who were not self-reliant, and only fit for white-collar jobs. Life-skills and coping skills were ignored. Technical and pre-vocational skills were relegated to second place behind Western education, which further promoted white-collar jobs. Emphasis was also placed on formal education at the expense of the non-formal.



Universal Basic Education emerged as a consequence to the Jomtien Declaration on Education for All (1990) and was reaffirmed by the Dakar Declaration (2000), directly premised on Universal Declaration of Human Rights which asserts that "everyone has a right to education". Prior to this, there had been a global concern that educational policies in many parts of the world, especially Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, ignored early childhood care and pre-school education and restricted the goals of primary education. In Nigeria, the goals of primary education did not include life-skills.



However, there are deep concerns about the potency as well as adequacy of the current Universal Basic Education drive. Of course, the administration of the curriculum so far leaves much to be desired.



How are other countries thinking and faring?



Nigeria must take cognizance of the fact that there is a growing global educational reform movement commonly known as 21st Century Learning which aims to promote creativity across the curriculum. In general, it advocates teaching lifelong skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration and communication for core academic subjects including Science, Technology, Engineering and Math as well as the arts.



Nigeria cannot afford to be left behind since various experts, bodies and governments argue that "Globalization is a process of interaction and integration among the people, companies, and governments of different nations and its effects can be seen everywhere. It is a process driven by international trade and investment and aided by information technology and is changing the world in which we live. It is forcing people to be able to communicate and live with one another. It is helping unite our interests together and forcing us to think about how it impacts our daily lives" (The Levin Institute, 2013).



 Using the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Education at a Glance 2012 report which calculated the proportion of residents with a college or college equivalent degree in the group’s 34 member nations and other major economies, 24/7 Wall St. compiled a list of the 10 countries with the highest proportion of college-educated adults. The top 10 most-educated countries were determined to be: 1st position is Canada; 2nd position is Israel; 3rd position is Japan; 4th position is the United States; 5th position is New Zealand; 6th position is South Korea; 7th position is the United Kingdom; 8th position is Finland; 9th position is Australia; and in 10th position is Ireland. (For original article see http://247wallst.com/special-report/2012/09/21/the-most-educated-countries-in-the-world/; for entire OECD report: http://www.oecd.org/edu/EAG%202012_e-book_EN_200912.pdf)



All of the countries listed above have moved much further beyond Universal Basic Education drive, as available evidence firmly establish. Several of these countries had a number of common threads.

TO BE CONTINUED

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