NIGERIAN TEACHERS AND THE PROBLEMS OF LEARNING IN NIGERIA. By KEMKA S. IBEJI

Interestingly, we have always come in contact with a lot from our teachers in Nigeria at various levels of education.

Beyond being people to learn from, teachers are supposed to be molders of character. Sometimes, we wonder if the teachers we have come across in our days of learning are really qualified to be called teachers.

Yes, teaching profession is a calling (in the parlance of recent Christendom). Teaching is not an all comers thing. But unfortunately in our country, there are no jobs and wrapped in the rate of corruption, people who have nothing to do around the institutions of learning are seen taking the center stage.

When teachers become so arrogant and insensitive to the plight of the students and focus only on what they think they are and have achieved in their job, they miss the point and crux of the profession. No wonder teachers are no longer celebrated today. Many students do not wish to meet their teachers anymore or anywhere after school while many wish to meet them few years after to just shame them.

The major highlights I will want to briefly adumbrate on are the significant problems we have always treated in Philosophy of Education.

Here in Nigeria and maybe Africa, teachers see students as docile receptacles of information. For them, the students are just there to take in hook line and sinker all they say. But the reality and what is more reasonable is the etymological definition of education which simply means to draw out. And what do you draw out? It is what is already in the student.

It also follows from the philosophical maxim which states that "from nothing, nothing comes". If there is no knowledge in any person, there is no way to get knowledge in or from such a person. There must be knowledge in any person for such person to learn and understand at all.

This aligns with Plato's postulation of the two worlds viz; the Fleeting world and the World of Forms. For him, the child at birth is born with an innate knowledge. That innate knowledge is enabler of the capacity to comprehend thenceforward.

When the teacher understands the student as a contributor to gamut of learning, it grants him/her the required humility which comes with tolerance and respect for the student. The best way to treat your ward in the learning world is to relate with respect. Of course, respect always gets its feedback. Respect is one gift that does not go without returning. To get or receive respect, you have to give respect.

When the teacher realizes that the job of learning is of dualism and that it takes two to tango, he or she will begin to appreciate the limitedness of human nature and therefore value and accord respect to the other.

The hallow of know it all and the concept of giver and taker or sender and receiver in the Nigerian educational system is a major foundational problem to the system and has greatly hampered the accruals from the institutions of learning in Nigeria.

My deposit therefore is the redrafting of our education both in physical materials and mental disposition. If and when this is done, our education system will wear a human and humane face and will be able to grant the required cravings of the general public and polity.

I am,
KEMKA S. IBEJI