In Nigeria’s education system, presentation of handcraft is a common exercise and part of the requirements every nursery or primary school pupil must carry out.
Accordingly, it is an activity that brings kids to exhibit ingenuity and skills by way of submitting crafted materials to their teachers where, sometimes, emerging trends and innovations get to be discovered.
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Billed for the end of term of every academic session, the young talents are often seen lining up to participate and wait for remarks of erformance as the teachers assess and assign them grades.
This offers a convenient platform for experiment, drawing the kids far beyond theoretical explanations to more pragmatic issues while simultaneously affording their teachers the opportunity to identify best hands and see the prospects of developing very interesting and advanced ideas in them.
Unfortunately, today, some league of excessively corrupt and greedy miscreants unfittingly occupying the esteemed positions of teachers in our various public and private nursery and primary schools have, other than the common habit of imparting sound background knowledge to the pupils, unlawfully recruit themselves into kinds of outrageous activities, deviating from their primary responsibilities.
Specifically, some of our primary school teachers are engaged in extorting the pupils under the pretence of collecting handcraft.
It miffed me beyond measure when my niece, a Primary 3 pupil came to ask for money to buy noodles and airtime; both of which were to be presented as handcrafts to her form master.
I became completely shocked and amazed as I tried to inquire why she was buying airtime and noodles instead of crafting ideas which I believe is the basis behind introducing the framework.
The girl said her teacher would ensure she failed if she failed to submit the request.
To verify her claim or otherwise, I devoted time to conduct an investigation, after which I realised that not only was her teacher and the school into such unlawful business, other independent findings further revealed many others within the community and beyond who have keenly been extorting their pupils in the name of crafts.
This is very pitiful for Nigeria’s crawling education environment which has been suffering from the defects of sex-for-grades in most of the tertiary institutions.
I pray God to save Nigeria’s education environment from falling into a state of disdain.
Yusuf Mairiga Shekarau Yelwa, Plateau State.
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