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INTERNATIONAL DAY OF EDUCATION 2022: TRANSFORMING EDUCATION

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By John Ojoagbene.

 

To be born is one privilege that everyone on the face of the earth enjoys regardless of the condition that such a person is born in — life is precious when the essence of it is discovered and embraced. Just like life is the right of every one, so is education the right of all. Education serves as a tool for enhancing and facilitating the process of self-discovery and self-actualization. Education itself is a journey of self-awareness and life fulfilment. To be deprived of education is to be deprived of life fulfilment.

The threat of the COVID-19 pandemic to education in recent times is so alarming. Most especially, the hardship unleashed by the outbreak on families across nations of the world has resulted in many children dropping out of school. Families who cannot afford to eat, talk more of raise funds to continue to sponsor their young ones to school have no option than to stop the formal education of their children.

Stakeholders and government agencies in field of education must therefore not seat and watch while the destinies of the younger generation are put on hold due to financial challenges. This is a crucial issue that must be tackled. Effort should be made towards making education affordable for all, not making it a luxury that is hard to get.

Meanwhile, we cannot continue to operate the old style of learning and expect that we reap the harvest of a new breed of a well-educated populace. To produce this new breed, we must begin to deploy new strategies in our educational system across boards. One of such strategies involves deploying the use of ICT (E-learning)? This type of learning is being practiced in many countries of the world and has yielded tremendous results. Students learn and get educated and obtain certifications from schools far away from their countries and are able to deploy the knowledge gained to their immediate surrounding and better their lives.

E-learning will not require students paying heavy costs of transportation to reach a learning center or school. The learning can even take place in their homes. And feedbacks can equally be administered and monitored through same process with the help of electronic gadgets to prevent examination malpractices. And various learning and study materials can be massively made available for downloads, shares, and transfers from one user to another.

Education is a right for all, to prevent access to education is a worse life deprivation, and an act of inhumanity to man. Wherever a child is located in a nation, it is the sole duty of the government to deliver the child’s right to him or her. No human life can rise above the level of his or her knowledge, so education is the platform for self-awareness, life fulfilment, and life-long satisfaction. Illiteracy and poverty are two enemies of man, and it takes literacy to overcome these great enemies of man. When a person is ignorant of his potentials and essence, he embraces pleasure as the core duties of his life which becomes his only focus and motivation. But functional education opens a person to the reality of his life, and the essence of who he must become. People can only become what they are aware of, and only functional education can do this.

When education is also done as a routine not as a matter of importance, it will rob a child of the essence of life and education. Education is meant to move a child from the realm of ignorance, unformed state to the realm of discovering the essence of life, and the potentials that is in him or her. When the education that a child gets is not total; not rounded, it does not deal with the child’s general life being. Instead of turning him into a transformation agent, the child will become an added problem to the society.

Functional education is meant to solve problems in the society, but an aberration is seen in the world today, as youths, or graduates of different tertiary institutions who are supposed to be problem solvers are seen moving up and down cities of major towns seeking for who to solve their problems. This is a great setback in education, and it calls for urgent attentions, transformation of the system for maximum life impact to ensure equality of life and national development across nations of the world.

As parents, stakeholders, social workers, government agencies, and international bodies, we owe every child that is born a duty to educate the child for total life transformation. Except our educational system becomes a transforming system for the children that are raised up daily, the society cannot get an all-round transformation and see improved standard of living for all and sundry. Education for all must be established irrespective of location. Education is the right of all, let it be available and affordable to all.

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Flickers of Hope
Flickers of Hope is a Non-Governmental Organization with a primary focus on Education. We aim to educate, mentor, empower and equip young people, as beacons of hope for the nation.
Categories: Hope for the Hopeless

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