Self-Devpt. Nuggets™

I’ve written severally on this theme in the past, and the current predicament of the millions of products from our so called “schools” (as seen in the news report linked below) further underscores the urgent need for people to WAKE UP and stop seeing “schooling” as an end in itself.

The truth is that if it is to work, schooling MUST always be dynamically provided as a MEANS to the ultimate end EACH learner that undergoes it, NEEDS to achieve authentic success and self-actualization.

Below is an excerpt (quoting alarming statistics) from an article titled “Millions of Nigerians are falling for a 27-year old Russian Ponzi scheme”?:

“A recent recruitment drive by a government agency helps put Nigeria’s unemployment problem in context. Advertising for only 500 positions, Nigeria’s federal tax agency received 700,000 applications—2,000 of which were by graduates with first class honors degrees. Similarly, in February, the Nigerian Police Force received almost a million applications for 10,000 listed positions.” – Click here to read the full piece.

The scenario painted in the above report says it all. Something is wrong with the schooling being provided.

Otherwise, why would products from our schools be acting so desperate???

In case you still don’t get my point, I’ve added links – at the bottom of this page – to some of my past articles in which I explain in more detail what I mean.

For now however, I pose the following questions as potential food for thought…to be considered by those willing to keep an open mind on this issue:

1. If our current schooling system is so useful, how come the supposedly best products from our institutions (e.g. those “with first class honors degrees”) seem to be at a loss for ideas of how to find their place in society?

Hint: If that was not the case, how come such high numbers of our schooled people keep falling over themselves to fight over such a disproportionately SMALL number of employment opportunities – as shown in the above mentioned news report?

2. Why do the wonderful products of our schools seem so averse to trying to pursue self-employment opportunities as compared to seeking paid employment? Shouldn’t what we teach them in our schools prepare them to pursue any or both avenues to success?

I could go on, but I think you get my drift here.

We need our schooling systems to turn out learners empowered to function in society in or out of paid employment primarily as PROBLEM SOLVERS.

In other words, our schools need to equip them with real world relevant, practical knowledge and skills, in addition to helping them develop the right mental attitude to pursue success with persistence, when they enter the real world.

The students must arrive society with the understanding that their natural talents, abilities and geniuses are the foundation on which they are to learn in school.

So, our schooling systems should support each child to pick and choose subjects to learn based on what s/he needs to know and be able to do i.e to make the most of his/her God-given abilities to succeed in or out of paid employment.

Right now, our schools do VERY little of that.

Instead too much abstract and theoretical stuff (often too far removed from the reality that the learners are to meet outside the school walls) is what dominates the MENU served to students in our schooling systems.

This is why we continue to see clueless graduates scrambling to be underemployed in poor paying jobs, when countless self-employment opportunities, based on viable vocations abound that they can tap into.

What is the point of spending YEARS in a higher institution if you emerge without the competence to take firm control of your income earning circumstances – when paid employment is scarce?

Our kids are told to go to school because they need “schooling” to prepare them to succeed in life: BUT the real world teaches them otherwise!

But then they graduate and find themselves stranded, and often – especially today – worse off than those who lack their level of education, who settled YEARS earlier on developing hands-on proficiency in vocations relevant to society’s needs.

Even those who have jobs in hand are under pressure, because what they earn is not enough.

And that’s what we’re seeing in the MMM schemes, scramble for low paying jobs, corrupt enrichment by highly schooled job holders who should know better etc.

Many are getting paid much less than their qualifications would have commanded 2 decades ago. As a result, they now readily lean towards opportunities like the MMM scheme to try and grow the money they earn.

Most of them are not bad or dishonest. They just want to make more money to meet their needs, but they lack the know-how/money making competence to do it. That’s why such zero effort schemes appeal to them. They lack the financial education about how to print their own money.

Hint: I do NOT refer to “financial education” as taught in business schools. Instead it is the kind of education preached for years by Robert Kiyosaki about the difference between an asset and a liability. The former being anything that puts money in your pockets and the latter, that which takes money out of your pockets.

I recommend you give your child the kind of schooling that will help him/her emerge with a sound understanding of all I have said above.

Otherwise, s/he will be unable to separate him/herself from the crowd of clueless and confused graduates often living what someone described as “lives of quiet desperation”.

1. [Workshop for Kids – by a Kid] Build Your Own Battery Powered Toy Bike!

2. [See Temi & Oluoma’s No-Oven Charcoal Stove Cookies]