Yesterday’s formula for success is often today’s recipe for failure, our education system is archaic!

Having spent over two decades facing ups and downs in the quest for knowledge, it seems like a bird flying in the sky with no destination, but the voyage makes more meaning when the bird discovered that the sky is no longer its limit, and as a result of this, the voyage turns into an act that drives out the genius spirit in individuals, stimulates their brains, helping them to build their minds positively and their minds rule the world. So the voyage is neither a hoax nor a historical simulation, but it is an act called EDUCATION.

Education as an act is universal. Being a universal act, education is defined in many ways but I will adopt the Collins English dictionary definition, which defined “education as the act or process of acquiring knowledge, especially systematically during childhood and adolescence”. Education is divided into formal education and informal education and these two forms of education are complementary.

I often ask myself these questions,

• Who brought us here? God.
• What brought us here? Our minds!

It is obvious that the power of our minds cannot be underestimated and a major way of developing our minds is through education. These show that education is the sine qua non for a nation’s development. Many wise men voiced the importance of education in the development of a nation and a fact about all their statements is that, they never underestimate the power of education.

Nigeria, a country hitherto referred to as Giant of Africa, faces many problems in the education sectors, but it is obvious that all these problems arose due to the outdated education system we are using. This made me coined a statement “changing our minds, the way forward”, because we want to grow but we resist change.

THE CURRENT EDUCATION SYSTEM

Nigeria is using the 6-3-3-4 system of education which was introduced some decades ago. The recipient of the education would spend six years in primary school, three years in junior secondary school, three years in senior secondary school and four years in tertiary institution but the importance of vocational education was neglected in the blueprint for this system and this caused many problems in the education sector namely,

• Made our graduates unemployable.
• Resulted in little practical experience.
• Made learning daunting for many students.

Having mentioned some of the problems caused by our outdated education system, many people still believe that education problems are caused by low budget allotted to the education sector but this assumption is not valid because “greatness start from being great in simple things”, a wise man said. We have to be able to manage small budget before dealing with huge ones.

THE PROPOSED EDUCATION SYSTEM

The questions are “if there was one thing you could change to improve education in your country, what would it be? And why?

Definitely, the answers to the questions is to change the education system of Nigeria and the reason is because our archaic education neglects the importance of vocational education, which is one of the main forces of building our minds through education and building a strong nation.

That being said, the introduction of 6-3-3-2-4 new system of education in Nigeria, the recipient of the education would spend six years in primary school, three years in junior secondary school, three years in senior secondary school, two years in vocational school and four years in tertiary institution. As a result of this, our education would be more practical-oriented, which is needed for the development of Nigeria.

Having said all these, the main purpose of this write up is to put this idea in the subconscious minds of our leaders, leaving them with a statement “we will do something”.