Education in Nigeria – The Storytela

Growing up, we heard the famous lyrics of the song:
Time na money o! Time na money.

In plain English, Time is money.

Well, for my four year old, Time is whatever and whenever he wants it to be.

Anything that took place between yesterday and when he was born is referred to as having happened yesterday. So consider this classic:

Ikem: Mummy, yesterday, we went to the Jungle and we see Monkeys jumping jumping from one tree to the other…

Me: (Surprised and thinking real hard) Yesterday??? But we were home yesterday. ..

That was when it hit me, we had gone to the ‘Jungle‘ in December (our trip to NCF). LOL. Having understood, it helps me explain to people when he says something like ‘yesterday when I was a baby…’ stuff like that.

I thought we were just battling with the past until the future came up. Here’s another classic:

Ikem: Mummy when are we going to Shoprite?

Me: Tomorrow

Ikem: Is this tomorrow?

Me: (LOLING) No this is today, tomorrow is the day after today.

Ikem: Aha! Yesterday, we went to Shoprite and I ride a horse and ….

Phew! This was something that happened earlier in the year, I just sat listening and nodding my head.

Well, if you say time is money, try explaining that to a four year old.

Working on my son’s school project recently, something hit me and it hit me really hard.

You see, one of the tasks they were asked to do was to build a literacy album with pictures depicting words from a-z. In helping him out, I found myself looking for things like P is for Polar Bear and Y is for Yoyo.

At that point, a thought came to me. Why can’t Y be for Yam? P for Palm Kernel and Z for Zobo. Please can anyone tell me what a Yoyo looks like? Yeah I know I’ve seen pictures of it and all but we need more than pictures to learn don’t we?

I just took a lesson from that and immediately changed my search to everyday things that can be seen in Nigeria. Afterall, my son is growing up here and I can count the number of times I’ve seen a Polar Bear on none of my fingers.

The thing is, I’m resolving to make sure that my son is taught relevant things, to help him develop local intelligence that would be of benefit to not only Naija and Africa but also to the whole world!

I think that’s one of the issues we’ve had with the educational system in our country, it’s not real… We finish from school and can’t apply what we’ve learnt. But then, things are changing speedily, the curriculum of schools these days are amazingly real and the kids are receiving education for life. Thumbs up to the 21st century educationists.

We just have to tweak a little more, as we practice the British Curriculumn, let’s also completely adapt them to Africa so our children can learn real things.

Cheers to you with a glass of Zobo!

Tag: Education in Nigeria

Life With My Boy: Time No Be Money o!

Life With My Boy: It’s Zobo for moi!