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Learners' Inability to read: Ruining the public school system

 I often times write about the fact that I work with children from underserved communities who are unable to afford quality education due to the socioeconomic background of their parents. Many of these children want to read, in fact, most of them are open to ideas that would enable them read like their friends but their lack of proper foundation and positioning almost makes it impossible.

Most of the children have had to miss school for months or even years for one reason or another, a lot of them have been victims of the blame game where the government doesn't do its bit and the teachers use that as the excuse to not do their jobs as a form of reaction to the government but at the end of the day, the child gets a dysfunctional education and consequently, a dysfunctional life.

Children who cannot read struggle in so many areas, it is almost impossible for a child who cannot read to be able to successfully go through the school system.

Agnes Onyekwere and Learners at TACLAT Primary School, Jos.

As students, the fact that they cannot read affects their abilities in other subjects, for example,  Sodiq is a pupil in my class, I have noticed his love for numeracy and he's the type of child who would tilt towards the numbers but he could not read. When we come to solving maths problems he is always eager to come to the board to help answer a question but the problem now is when it's a word problem, My Math champion is nowhere to be found because he is not able to read out the sentences so he is not able to answer the problem so his inability to read is causing him problems even in his area of strength.

On the other hand, Moses is a strong reader but doesn't like Math but one thing I have noticed is that it is easier for Moses to get by a Math problem, since he is able to read, it is easier to just explain to him that he is to attach meaning to the words so they can make sense enough to help him solve problems and he is able to read and under word problems-so it is easier to teach Moses how to solve the problem than it is for me to teach Sodiq because he is not able to make out what the words are.

Moses is able to stand tall in other subjects without much effort because we are doing every other subject in English except Yoruba, so with the fact that he is able to read and make meaning out of words he excels in other areas like history, CRS, Social studies and so on.

Sodiq struggles in every single subject because he cannot read.

Then no matter how much he reads or practices, he always has to deal with the fact that he needs to read the examination questions to be able to answer them, and since he cannot read...he doesn't even stand a chance of passing at all except he is trying his hands on multiple choice questions.

Most of my colleagues working with under-served schools have also corroborated the fact that we are raising more and more children who cannot read.

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