What and how…..?

After 3 months I'm getting to know my way around in the ministry of education. Nice because now I can get my hands on stuff that shouldn't be necessarily in my hands. But sometimes it's just nice to get stuff, like now…….

I got my hands on the curriculum of English language for senior secondary school (SSS) 1 till 3. As you may think that the curriculum in The Netherlands was directive, you'll be lost in this one. Everything that has to be learned is written down. Every word that a child needs to learn during the first year of secondary school or the other years is written down. Even the way how a teacher should teach and evaluate! It's 129 pages of tight formulated objectives and summarize of teaching and learning materials that are needed to teach. The best thing though is that the schools I work in don't have the facilities to get the needed materials or the money to do the things that are mentioned.

Example: SSS1 vocabulary development. SSS 1 is a school year in which most pupils are about 14 or 15 years of age. They all went to Junior secondary school and primary school before this first year of senior secondary. One of the pages in the curriculum looks like this.

Topic	Objectives	Content	activities		Teaching and learning materials	evaluation
			Teacher	Pupil
fishing	Students should be able to: 1. Explain the word fishing 2. list words related to fishing 3. tell the meaning of the listed words 4. Make sentences with the words	Meaning of fishing   Words associated with fishing: Hook, fishtape, line, fish pond, fish season, fish dam, fishing equipment	1 teacher leads students to explain the meaning of fishing using diagrams, charts and stories 2 leads them to identify words associated with fishing 3 explains meanings of selected words 4 makes sentences with some of the words and examples for the students to emulate	1 listen to the teacher and explain the meaning of fishing 2 mention words associated with fishing that they know 3 tell the meaning of some of the words listed on the charts, pictures and diagrams 4 make sentences with selected words following the teachers examples	1 real objects 2 charts 3 diagrams 4 Pictures 5 a visit to a fish farm where available 6 a reading selection from text book	1 explain the meaning of the word fishing 2 list 4 words related to fishing 3 tell meaning of selected words related to fishing 4 make sentences with the following words: Fishing net Hook, line and sinker fishpond

 

I have never seen a curriculum so detailed as this. Most untrained teachers see no room for creativity. Maybe that's the effect of not having a teacher trainer college anymore in Nigeria. A few years ago, 1990, the government decided that it's not necessary to teach students about psychology and sociology, teaching methodologies and other important skills before you put them in front of a classroom. Maybe it's good for international volunteers because otherwise we didn't have work here in Nigeria. The elder teachers do have a lot of knowledge though. I don't understand why principals don't use them to teach their colleges.

Yesterday we were out for drinks, Mr Peter, a friend of him, Mike, Richard and I, Mr peters friend asked me my opinion about the Nigerian school system. This is a question I don't like to answer because it's double; there are a lot of possibilities in the Nigerian system. The only problem they face is a lack of good teachers; this is because they need so many teachers they cannot keep up. Teachers only earn 15000 Niara (75 euro) a month. Teachers who can get another job after a few years will leave, most of the time these are the good teachers with good skills. The newest gossip is that the minister of education is thinking about scraping the present qualifications you need to be a teacher, diploma of college of education. The new rule will be that a teacher has to proof he or she graduated from University. Proofing something like that is quite easy to falsify.

So maybe a business proposition: Starting a teacher trainer college in Nigeria!