What If Our Weapon of Education Is Blunt?

8 min readSep 19, 2020

‘We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.’ — Albert Einstein

I currently work in an education technology firm in Nigeria with a sole aim of revamping access to education and it’s modus. Expressly, let’s train the young minds to be deep independent thinkers and problem solvers and still not leave the confines of the curriculum rather than our present-day traditional pedagogy — facts and figures. To be leaders of their tomorrow, they must possess the ability to think and make sense of whatever information they receive.

Speaking retrospectively, I have once not mulled over our education system or perceived a fault with the teaching approach until I got the job. If you are out of school, you can recall how you were instructed on a subject like biology. You have a teacher promenade to a class based on a regimented schedule to teach a subject like pollution. The instructor explains directly from textbooks the types of pollution it causes and probably few examples of its effects across the globe, right? And after the perpetual memorizing and cramming, we were expected like a compact disc to play every word that was fastened into the brain in an examination perhaps. This was the approach for about 20 or so years of my life with few exceptions. And that is still the modus operandi at least speaking from a Nigerian perspective.

On the flip side, the media is scattered with employers’ outcry and relentless hunt for well-rounded and innovative graduates. Graduates who can think constructively and systematically solve problems on their toes. As key players in the education system, the tertiary institutions for instance are set up for this task. Prepare students for the ‘job market and sustainable employment by enhancing technical and supportive skills for the field of work’. But the education system is plagued with a myriad of problems such as poor funding, paucity of qualified teachers, poor learning environment, outdated teaching aids (I found out that some states still use a high school curriculum as far back as 2008!) etc, leaving them almost incapacitated to fulfilling their objectives.