Are We Learning or Just Competing to Survive
The school system needs a whole lot of reformation if I must say. They say learning never ends but at the rate we are going, I doubt if I’d want to go back to school again even though I still look forward to furthering my education.
The learning ordeal I went through during the ones I studied doesn’t look like what someone wants to repeat again. It’s like an unending rat race. Some days ago, I woke up by 5am to talk an early morning walk and I saw some group of students in our common room reading that early.
Last night, I went to buy fruits almost late night and I saw another set reading into the night. This afternoon as I strolled out to get fruits, I saw a girl who is an engineering student 300l level pacing up and down the common room memorizing some things with a book in her hands.
On my return, I stop by briefly to ask them how the exam preparation is coming on. The one who is a law student was reading a voluminous book that I mistook for a dictionary. She said it wasn’t a dictionary that it was one the courses she’s writing on Monday named contract law.
Exam is by the corner and you can see that these students are doing everything within their power to pass their exams. The sleepless night, midnight candles, and all are taken its toil on them. Mere looking at them, you’d see that they are already stressed out. I couldn’t help but pity them.
Pity them? Well, I passed through the same thing while in school. The most painful thing is when you are trying your best to put in all your effort into reading and doing all the possible best genuinely to pass and you have to face the fact that there are also other students who are willing to pass and possibly be the top of the class too but don’t even put in a smidgen of work.
These set of students who won’t even come to lectures or do the necessary things would still want to be top of the class. So they are going to do anything possible just to get good grades including cheating in the exam, paying their way through school for those who have the money and those who are both lazy and broke would either steal to raise money to sort their courses and the girls sleep their way through.
While these other party on one hand is doing all manner of things to succeed, they are putting the good boys and girls on over drive to also succeed. Since you can’t join them, you beat them. Even if it means doing drugs to stay awake and be able to read into the night, taking coffe and co, pushing one’s self to the extreme.
We turn the entire learning process into competition. An unhealthy competition. During my school days, I was under pressure to be at the top. There was this particular girl that always took top of the class and no matter what I do, she was always top until she left the school after four terms and it was a breath of fresh air that a competition have left.
A lot of people may not be that intelligent with rote learning but they are actually very capable when it comes to skill, handiwork and other areas of talent. School should not be limited to intellect alone but should be in a way that everyone would have to find their fitting. In that way we are complementing not competing and even if we have to compete, then it’s healthy.
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