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SCHOOLING SHOULDN'T STOP IN SCHOOL

Working in both the private and public education spaces in Nigeria has opened my eyes to the advantages and disadvantages of both systems and also the important role that parents play in ensuring that whatever is taught in school stays permanent with the child.

In private schools, parents play a very active role in ensuring that their children have study time to go over everything they have been taught in school, in fact, sometimes, we find that parents go all the way to help the children with schoolwork, they go through the assignments with the children which further grounds the child in the said subject/topic, I can agree that this value on education differs from what we find in the public school system for a number of reasons chief amongst them includes the fact that most of these parents pay a lot of money on school fees in these private schools so they know better than to not to value it. Another reason would be that most parents who can afford to pay for a good private school for their children have some level of formal education which will mean that they are able to relate to the work done in class and lend a helping hand to their children.

Agnes Onyekwere with her pupils and Coach Bright 

This 'helping hand' is mostly the difference between a child who is performing well in a private school and a child who is barely getting by in a public school. Here parents are usually not educated enough to even concern themselves with what is being taught in the class when it's not like they spend anything to send the child to school, besides they would rather not embarrass themselves knowing they wouldn't know how to read what's in the notebook.

That is why in public schools you have a lot of undone homework, children with no study time at home (some children hawk on the street or help their parents sell certain items during the day till bedtime) a lot of repetition, because children don't remember what was just taught yesterday.

In the public space, when you tell parents they need to be there for their children, they tell you that they cannot afford to feed the children so they are usually out all day trying to see how to make a living and they tell you that most times the children have to hawk too so that they have a better chance at earning more.

Even though this has a very negative effect on the education of the child and most of the time we appeal to the parents to help their children at home or get someone in that vicinity who can help the child go through school work after, I have considered this to be in accordance with Maslow's theory of hierarchy of needs where he classified the basic needs of food, shelter, etc as the number one thing that a human being would want above everything else, if this is not in place then other needs such as education wouldn't be seen as a priority.

 

Comments

  1. Mr. E9 March 2023 at 01:45

    Very true Agnes, I think a solution will be for school teachers in public schools to give children assignments that are more practical than theoretical to their learners as homework. These kind of assignments can be related to by even uneducated parents since it may involve little or no writing or reading. While the theories can be kept in the classroom under the supervision of the teacher.

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