a letter to minister for human resources development with regard the removal of lapses in education system
Answers
Dear Sir,
I am writing you this letter hoping it will provoke an urgent reaction from you thereby saving our education system from further decay. A situation brought about by poor policy decisions that have lowered the quality of pedagogy and created chaos and inconsistencies in the national curricula at all levels. The purpose of my letter to you is to lament the unceremonious manner history as a subject was expunged from the school curriculum at all levels. I am sure as the education minister you are aware that the subject is no longer offered in our schools today.I read somewhere that you had also decried the situation where young Nigerians were denied the privilege of studying History especially in public schools. In the report, you had promised to return the subject to the public school curriculum. The purpose of this letter therefore is to heighten the need to strengthen our education system and enrich the quality of learning by bringing back the teaching and learning of history to our schools. My hope is that your concern about how history was unceremoniously expunged from the curriculum is not just one of the lamentations of public officials who will eventually renege on their pronouncements. You stand at the threshold of history to make this happen.
The return of history to the school curriculum is one decision that requires your immediate action. Before you wonder the pedigree of the person writing you this letter, let me add that apart from being a Nigerian concerned about the poor state of public education in our country, I am also an educator working in the country’s school system. As an educator, I am daily confronted with the consequences of the removal of history from the school curriculum. Today, we have a generation of students who have no idea about our contemporary history. In our schools, we are presently producing students who will leave school without any knowledge of Nigeria’s history -both past and present.
But we all know the importance of history in our life as a people and why it must be a mandatory course of study and subject in our schools. The need to make the learning of history compulsory has never been a more urgent need in our nation than now. Recently, I engaged a group of students in an informal discussion about the contemporary history of Nigeria. I led the discussion with context questions that probed their knowledge of our pre and post-colonial history till date. It was indeed shocking to discover the knowledge gap in the responses of the students. For example, many of the students who are currently in the third year of junior secondary and senior secondary levels lack any knowledge of our contemporary history as nation.
In private schools, students are being taught British History, American History and even Chinese and Spanish History while in our public schools, the study of Nigerian History is removed from the curriculum. The reason for the removal of history as a subject of study cannot stand up to scrutiny when the subject still forms an integral part of curriculum in other serious countries. The British, American and other education systems all over the world make the study of history an important course of study. Yet, in our country, the subject was wiped off of the school system. The three arguments for removing history lack merit: the dearth of history teachers, lack of job for history graduates and students apathy to the subject are no valid reasons for removing the subject.
dear Minister, save the education system by re-introducing the history as a subject in our schools.