Imagine if you were trained to fish in a stream, then sent out to the forest to hunt for a lion

This is exactly what is happening in most global education system today, and moreso in my beloved country Nigeria
I have observed that many Nigerian schools simply share information (both researched and unresearched) to its students
(Some of our science modules still have Pluto has the 9th planet when this has been found to be untrue)
Its students try hard to memorize as much of this information as possible so as to pass their exams and get certified
The students graduate and try to use the paper certificates as tools for jobs without much success


When we go to the West to learn, what they have available, and teach us is the knowledge that should be useful in their environment.
We then come back to Nigeria and try applying such knowledge without much success. So we scream and say that the system is not structured. For those of us that get into any form of employment, we make little attempts to make our environment as structured as the West so that the theories that we have learnt can work

It is my view that all these are the wrong approach to education

I believe that there are primarily two types or continuum of education/learning:
-The first has mainly an elitist objective, serving little purpose apart from creating a set of letterd people set apart from the commoners. I'll call this Elitist education
-the objective of the second type is to enable individuals apply themselves in their ever changing environment -I'll call this applicative education

so what's d way out ?

The elitist education was useful in Nigeria when few people were educated or furthered their education to doctoral level.
It enabled its practitioners to read and write aand apply themselves to a small extent.

Most of all, it seperated the elites from the others. All nations have their elites who contol power.
Such elitist education have always existed.
It could be as simple as a select set of people being trained to read the bible written in latin or Quran in Arabic
Sometimes a group of people were tought to read the stars -astronomy.
A posh accent or ability to dwell endlessly in meaningless poems were some of the hallmarks of such education

Ones ability to engage the 'elites' with some form of their education was therefore a useful skill that could open doors to you.
You were deemed to have washed your hands well, and could therefore eat with the elders

The Challenge that we have in this century is that everyone now access to the previously 'elitist' type of education
education has now been democratized. It has therefore lost its value
Even studying in a foreign land has lost its value as an elitist form of education

Offcourse, you can change your fortunes by bagging a Harvard certificate.
(I say this in the context of the education continuum i mentioned earlier)

In contrast to the elitist education, we have the applicative type of education

This type of education sources data from the internal and external environment and transforms it from information, knowledge all the way to action.

The west seem to be ahead in this type of education (though they've not fully tapped into it), while it seems our Nigerian educative system has held firmly to the past.

Applicative education is a massive topic. But I'll try examining it from as many paradigms as I can

Contemplate these :

-How come you were not taught to sign while you were in seconday school, seeing that most of your transactions would involve your authenticating documents through signing?
=How come your secondary school did not teach you how to open bank accounts?
-How many of your schools taught you how to use a calculator? This is a tool that would be used a lot in your later life
-How many of your schools taught you the value of good posture when you were growing up?
-Did your university teach you how to manage an interview?
-Did your university teach you how to network?

following

You will agree with me that those skills I have just mentioned are crucial for your survival
Yet, you were never taught by your school

Isn't that strange??

Though you were not thaught those skills by your school
some of you were fortunate enough to have familly and friends teach you the really important skills

This kind of gap in education, and the value of mentorship is documented in the book "Rich dad, poor dad"
-However, my goal is not neccesarily to discuss mentorship, but to open our eyes to the gaps that we need to close

i'm ur audience, ride on

Applicative education maps the building block science to the outcomes desired
It ensures that after studying engineering, you are actually able to build a bridge, and not just carrying files around.
It ensures that you can apply yourself in you work environment.

So how do we plug this gap?
I think there are two approaches to doing this. The first is on an individual level, while the second is in a systematic/national level

I'll start with the second one: The Systemic approach

The system (whatever that is) needs to put in place enlightened regulations and educational re-engineering that will support applicative education.

Let's break this down into manageable bits using a narrative that we are familiar with

Very informative. I'm following

Now imagine a Nigerian civil engineer trained in the UK -Bayo, and another trained in Nigeria -Emeka. Also imagine a 3rd british engineer trained in the UK -Dan
Also assume that all have the same mental capability.

Bayo and Dan most likely have a better exposure to global standard engineering best practice and new research training than Emeka who has been taught with old text books with little lab and practical experience

Within the Nigerian context, Emeka's advantage is that he understands the Nigerian cultural environment best.
The soil types that Bayo and Dan are exposed to working with are exclusive to the UK

-Emeka would most likely find it extremely hard to get a civil engineering job in Nigeria (UK is a far away dream)
-Bayo would struggle hard and finally break through in the UK (hopefully as an engineer)
-Dan would most easilly get a job in the UK, and would most easily be giving senior positions and exposures ahead of Bayo the Nigerian

Next, lets imagine that there is a massive engineering project for ABC construction in Nigeria. ABC construction is the company that Bayo and Dan work for

ABC Engineering sends Dan to lead the project as an expatriate being paid hefty sums
they try to get Bayo to join in the project as a local hire (so that he comes cheap)
Bayo refuses,..he's finally granted the status of expatriate staff and part of the PMO

The PMO (project management office) which is lead by Dan comes into Nigeria to hire staff
Emeka presents his CV full of plenty lies
(When he finished university, he stayed at home for 3 yrs before getting a job in the bank. He was then laid off and heard about this oppurtinity from Bayo's cousins cousin who is his girlfriend)

Emeka gets hired by Dan
Emeka actually has little or no engineering experience plus his knowledge of engineering is grounded in outdated theories he was taught in university

esere826: The Challenge that we have in this century is that everyone now access to the previously 'elitist' type of education
education has now been democratized. It has therefore lost its value
Even studying in a foreign land has lost its value as an elitist form of education

Offcourse, you can change your fortunes by bagging a Harvard certificate.
(I say this in the context of the education continuum i mentioned earlier)

Modern education (circa 1800s) is mostly based on the Prussian model.
The Prussians in the 1800s introduced free compulsory eight-year education, tax-funded, for all its citizens.
This was generally copied by most Western nations, and Nigeria as well, post-independence. The objective was generally the same in all cases; equip the citizens to be rote workers, soldiers, and generally indoctrinated to the State ideals.

As opposed to the aristocratic model that characterized the previous millennia, where you had independent scholars and thinkers generally living off the patronage of wealthy aristocrats, and an ignorant plebeian/agrarian populace, the Prussian model was the way to go for the new industrial age. The previous paradigm had people functioning as individual silos paying tax to the aristocracy, and the military was the only synonym for 'company/organization'. However, the Prussian king decided to apply the military model to the entire populace, and the results were profoundly successful.

The concept of 'failed education' is not necessarily unique to Nigeria, it's a global paradigm in fact. Nowadays, even in advanced countries, the lament is that there aren't enough jobs available, leading to the concept that education has 'failed'. Education in itself isn't a guarantee for jobs, in my view. It should equip you reasonably to appraise the economy, and decide where exactly you fit in. Which is what isn't really happening any more.
Take your Harvard example. The statement 'Offcourse, you can change your fortunes by bagging a Harvard certificate' in itself is a fallacy, considering that you probably need to be either very financially buoyant, have access to significant funding, or be gifted to a particular level, to get into Harvard.

Though you could say the 'quality' of learning is poor in third-world countries like Nigeria or India, due to lack of adequate funding, but education as a whole has not really failed. Modern education has created, and continues to create, significant empowerment and second-tier wealth in a way that can't be created with tangible labour, even in countries like Nigeria and India. Whether Silicon Valley or Wall Street (in the US), IT and services outsourcing (India) or banking (Nigeria), you'll always find the reasonable examples of how education has helped to created wealth in different economies.

The real problem with education, in Nigeria and elsewhere, is that students are becoming increasingly disconnected from the raison-d'etre, the why of going to school. What people do is throw certificates at the problem, primarily because of the same fallacy you stated about Harvard. There is a global erroneous perception that elite education translates directly to elite opportunities. If government started to spend a billion dollars every year on university education in Nigeria, imported foreign lecturers, raised the standard of the JAMB to GRE/GMAT levels, but refused to diversify the economy, fix infrastructure problems, tackle corruption, etc., there would be zero impact on the economy. Just a huge drain on the national purse and an army of highly-educated youths with nowhere to go.

Sorry about the long post.

Construction starts

the PMO team realise that the niger delta soil type is different from types they are used to
They approach some Nigeria universities to help out in solutions, the dons tell them that it does not matter
Bayo resists this, because he realises that that is the reason why indeginous projects have failed in Nigeria

They expore the option of importing UK soil to Nigeria. Some politicians are happy about this as they calculate how much they can gain from contract review.
Bayo resists this and instead encourages that Niger Delta soil samples are taken back to UK for research

esere826: Construction starts

the PMO team realise that the niger delta soil type is different from types they are used to
They approach some Nigeria universities to help out in solutions, the dons tell them that it does not matter
Bayo resists this, because he realises that that is the reason why indeginous projects have failed in Nigeria

They expore the option of importing UK soil to Nigeria. Some politicians are happy about this as they calculate how much they can gain from contract review.
Bayo resists this and instead encourages that Niger Delta soil samples are taken back to UK for research

That's part of the problem.
Why not approach indigenous construction professionals/geologists, who have experience building in the Delta?
Why does it have to be universities first?

Like most problems we have in Nigeria, there's always an obvious solution, which others are obviously employing, but many others prefer to over-complicate the problem, for personal reasons.

A lot of money is spent on the resaerch in the UK
the result is patented
the knowledge gained is taught in the UK
and imported by ABC construction


The project is completed successfully
The president is happy. He makes a political statement and gives ABC constructions more contracts

Dan wites on his blog about Emeka and his lie lie CV and how Nigerians are corrupt
Nigerians wonder why Nigerians could not successfully execute the project
Bayo shakes his head at it all

Ajanlekoko, i dey come
make i finish d tori

From this story, you can actually identify a systemic challenge facing our educatonal system

the system is in need of research funding,
and for it not to be wasted investment, there needs to be a channel linking the knowledge gained from R&D to actionable results
When organisations utilize the knowledge, it is neccesary that they pay for it so that the cycle is sustainable

.....All this requires a minimum level of regulation and patronage from the government.

A summary of this approach is that there needs to be a nationwide restructuring of educattion that provides fit-for-purpose and actionable knowledge. This restructuring should allow for flexibility that maps learning directly to the need of the society

,,

esere826: From this story, you can actually identify a systemic challenge facing our educatonal system

the system is in need of research funding,
and for it not to be wasted investment, there needs to be a channel linking the knowledge gained from R& to actionable results
When organisations utilize the knowledge, it is neccesary that they pay for it so that the cycle is sustainable

.....All this requires a minimum level of regulation and patronage from the government.

At what point should we engage you?

AjanleKoko:

At what point should we engage you?

after the 2nd approach

The second approach to bridging the education gap is on an individual level

Thanks to the internet age, anyone can get as much knowledge as possibe
folks have even gained knowledge needed to make IED's by simply searching the web.

However, unlike formal knowledge which utilized a push strategy ( -u siddon for class wile teacher dey teach you wetin dem know)
This new frontier utilizes a pull strategy (-u actively search for information as required using ur laptop, ipad or mobile phone)

So although you were formally trained to hunt for fish
immediately you are thrown into the jungle to hunt for lions...

the sensible thing to do is to google "how to kill a lion", "what kinds of lions exist in my jungle", and use the internet to network with other experienced lion killers for more information (-called a community of practice)

I mean if you're going for an interview for a job in a company, it might be helpful to search the web for individuals that are presently in such positions and are willing to share with you what their day to day activities are like.

U can learn to breed catfish from research available on the internet

The internet thus provides the global community with an educative oppurtinity it had never dreamt of
Its time to seek for actionable knowledge ahead of paper certificates

Considering that big organisations/systems are by their nature extremely hard to turn around or change
we might be wasting our time bemoaning the falling standards of education and its irrelevance to match the current economic gaps

We might do ourselves a favor by taking to the clouds to meet our educational/gap-filling needs

THANKS

Can we engage you now?

AjanleKoko:

.......... The real problem with education, in Nigeria and elsewhere, is that students are becoming increasingly disconnected from the raison-d'etre, the why of going to school . What people do is throw certificates at the problem, primarily because of the same fallacy you stated about Harvard. There is a global erroneous perception that elite education translates directly to elite opportunities. If government started to spend a billion dollars every year on university education in Nigeria, imported foreign lecturers, raised the standard of the JAMB to GRE/GMAT levels, but refused to diversify the economy, fix infrastructure problems, tackle corruption, etc., there would be zero impact on the economy. Just a huge drain on the national purse and an army of highly-educated youths with nowhere to go.

Sorry about the long post.

Excellent
My belief is that education is systemic/holistic.

However, it is important that education is viewed within economic utility.
Within such economic approach, it is important that education maps skills to economic demands

If the government or individuals throws money after 'education' that the economy does not need, it would be a waste

The economy/society does not presently need certificates, or rather the supply of certificates is more than that demanded by the society/economy....

AjanleKoko: Can we engage you now?

ride on