Are schools preparing students for Work Space?

Unemployment has become the order of the day in Nigeria not only among illiterates but also among graduates. Over the years, studies have shown that even a first class graduates suffer unemployment.

Are schools preparing students for Work Space? this piece seeks to provide an answer to this controversial question from the stand point of the level of training a student gets from school before he/she graduates.

However, a child is groomed into what he /she becomes starting from its nursery and primary education at age 2-10 though this age varies among children depending on how fast they can go, here is the most important stage of their lives where they learn the basics though playfully. The next stage is the secondary education that most people call high school, 10-15 years. Here, school becomes more serious i.e. they begin to learn the basis of the career they want to pursue.

The last stage which is the main concern in this piece is the Tertiary Institution (university). Here, a child has chosen his/her field of study that matches with its career therefore is there to learn and master the important criteria that’s needed for the labor market.

Unfortunately, schools tend to deviate from this. According to schools, the only way a student can be smart is if they can memorize very well to pass an examination. While focusing on Memorization and fact regurgitation, they fail to teach students how to have new, real and original ideas generated by themselves. Here is why a saying goes ‘school teaches you what to think and not how to think’.

However, there is hardly any work environment that wants to know what a graduate memorized in school i.e. what they come out with is no longer needed. what is required is the necessary information to apply these things that they have learnt, this is where the problems begin, this means that you can meet a graduate that has all the text book definitions offhand and doesn’t even know the in-depth meanings of these definitions sadly. These students graduate and become adults that cannot handle the ambiguity of the real world therefore employers feel they are not ready, reasons why they demand for 2-3 working years of experience.

Most schools teach courses that are not necessary for the modern working adult. Here, they carry too many unimportant knowledge than the important ones to navigate the world.

Another scenario is a situation where lecturers make it mandatory for students in class to talk about a particular topic not caring if it’s their area of interest or not in front of their judgmental peers. This harms the way a student communicates and gradually they grow to fear communication, the ability to do so and can’t handle being criticized i.e. they want to talk less.

Most of these graduates carry much more than you can imagine but they lack the most important thing which is how to sell themselves in the labor market not how to memorize only and pass in every semesters exam. The answer to the question earlier asked is obvious.