Mrs Folasade Phillips is the Executive Director of Vine Crest College, Iperu-Remo, Ogun State. She has over four decades of teaching experience both in the public and private sectors. In this interview with GRACE EDEMA, she explains the need to invest in education
With your experiences outside the country where you have seen how basic education is run, what are those things you think the government and other stakeholders should take cognisance of in our education sector?
Our curriculum makes me want to weep, honestly. The reason why they introduced Civic Education was that they felt Nigerians weren’t patriotic and that wouldn’t even make them patriotic. You don’t do Civic Education if your country cares for you, provides things for you:, the environment, health, and education services are all okay. You would love your country. Those who love their countries do because their countries are serving them. The curriculum has to be redesigned and the people who know about it should be the ones to redesign it. It’s not people who don’t know anything about it.
When we talk about setting standards, who should set standards in our schools?
Personally, I will say that it’s the retired educators and school administrators who should be tapped in, otherwise it will be civil servants.
You need people who are committed, experienced, and they understand it. You have a basic school offering 16 subjects, for what? You put a burden on the school owners and government by providing teachers for all these subjects that you can merge into eight solid subjects that would take care of all that you want. Why break them? It saddens one, Children can get better education, be more focused and be more in-depth than scratching things on the surface or memorising when the number of subjects is reduced. Education is not for you to just learn, pour it down and after exams you forget about it. It should be an application of what you’re being taught to everyday life, that’s what it should be. When you bring children from overseas, they say, he/she is not smart and cannot score 100% in Maths but that child is very intelligent and can discuss any topic. But the best of our own student can score A in Mathematics or Chemistry, take that child out of that environment and go into other areas, he/she is lost. We need to change our teaching style, what are we even teaching? Are we developing our children’s self-confidence, ability to speak publicly, let them give presentations in class. Let it go round for all of them, they do the presentation one by one by giving the child a topic beforehand, let the child do that. A 5-6 years child is doing that abroad, I do that with my grandkids. I sit down, listen to them and teach them. We need to introduce it to the children and when they do it from time to time, they can face a crowd to speak and be also confident, it is important. You also take them outside their academics, let them just talk so we do away with all these long courses.
What should the government look out for while accrediting boarding facilities in schools?
I have thought of all these because they come to my mind. There should be a standard set. I know people would say she is talking like that because she started school because she has the wherewithal. But what is worth doing, is worth doing well and things should be done properly. Not that people should just rent one flat and call it a school. Missions went into school and they did it well. You don’t have to build all the classrooms in one day but you can be doing them little by little, there should still be a standard for the design of the school.
The schools are overpopulated, what is your advice to Lagos and other state governments?
The schools are overpopulated, the teachers are stressed and stretched. They have a population of 3,000 students with a maximum of 6-10 teachers. How do you expect them to mark class work or assignments and be thorough? They should decongest the schools which would cause a lot of money. Money has to be pumped into education. There is no two-way about it and you can’t cut corners, it wouldn’t work and it’s not working.
There is a heightened concern about insecurity now that parents tend to over protect their children but these children are supposed to be independent. How do you balance the two, that is keep the children secure and also make them street-wise?
Like in our own time whereby our parents sent us to the other streets to buy garri but these days it’s the parents or house-helps that are going.
True. They have to be concerned about not letting their children go stray while on errands. There is so much evil going on today but at the same time, one should strike a balance. Your children should begin to be responsible. It also depends on where one lives but they should be able to get some things. You teach them to be aware of their surroundings, be aware of who is following them, they should be observant. You shouldn’t send them out by night and when they go, they should know that they’re not supposed to answer anyone rather they should go straight to where they were sent to and get back. You just need to teach them how to be streetwise, you tell them where danger lurks so they are sensitive to things like that. You can’t say because of that you become the servants of your children and your children would not be useful to you in any way. When you’re going to the market, you go with them. They shouldn’t just be sitting down at home, playing while you’re working yourself to death. You go the market by yourself, and when you return, you sort the things out by yourself, it’s not okay.
Looking at making children go through chores, I really want you to speak on it. Today’s parents believe that the children are stressed through these chores.
That is the mistake these parents are making. They are not helping the children and they’re not helping themselves. You want to raise kids who would be useful to themselves, their families and to society, you must train children to survive in any situation. They may come from privileged backgrounds today and you don’t know what tomorrow holds but we pray that tomorrow holds good things for us. Although, certain things happen and things may change. If they can’t afford washing machines, what happens? They won’t be able to wash their clothes or what? If they don’t know how to wash or use their hands, what would they teach their children? That’s why you have issues in some families today between husbands and wives, some wives cannot cook or do anything and the same thing applies to the husband. They both go to restaurants to eat. How would they manage their finances? How are they going to raise their kids? A lot of these things are happening now and it’s not funny. Sometimes, this is what is responsible for the high rate of divorce. So, it is good to train your children to be able to survive under any condition, to be useful to themselves and not depend on house-helps, house-helps aren’t common anymore and the ones that are common aren’t very good, they are up to all sorts of things. You don’t want to expose yourself to that, you can do your things yourself and also train your children, you should be able to tidy your home, teach your children to cook, that was how I was brought up and I can’t thank my parents enough and that’s how I’ve trained my children.
Looking at the decision to have a residential kind of educational system, what informed that and do you think it’s better having that than the day school?
Quite frankly, I believe in boarding schools.
It’s all-around education you’re giving, apart from academics. You’re interested in their character moulding, that’s important. You want them to mature, to be independent. When they’re at home, there are assistants all over and they’re not able to do anything by themselves. But when they are here in the boarding school, they learn to do things, to manage their time because they have a daily routine. By a particular time you’re to finish your chores, you can’t be there forever. At a particular time, you must be up, praying, and doing other things. They learn to live with other people which is good, they learn to tolerate, cooperate with, and assist one another. They develop friendships that would be life-long. They may not be able to do all these quickly at home. I’ve heard from parents that when their children come in and go home for a half-term break, they can see changes in their children. By the time they go home for the 1st term break, they would have matured. I’ve had parents approach me to ask “Mrs Philips, where is my baby? I gave you a baby and now they have matured.” That’s the effect of boarding school and they begin to carry themselves with dignity and you would love it. The changes show faster in girls than in boys, for the boys you still struggle with them for a longer time but it comes eventually. It just takes a longer time to get them to lay their beds, some of them have not been doing this and some girls may have been doing this but not the boys. ,,
Copyright PUNCH
All rights reserved. This material, and other digital content on this website, may not be reproduced, published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed in whole or in part without prior express written permission from PUNCH.
Contact: [email protected]
